As a cradle Catholic, I grew up thinking that the saints were as real as my friends. Only, they had more power—although not quite dressed as fashionably as the Super Friends. Aside from my family, they were the constant in my life. And I don’t just mean in a spiritual abstract way. I mean, their photos and statues were in all the places I spent most of my time. They were there in our house. In my grandmother’s house. My aunt’s house, where I spent summer vacation. At church. In school. They’d even be at the department store—even if they were there for different reasons. They were always the same. Always in the same pose. Always dressed in the same way. Always with a halo.
What is Your Lampstand?
“…When the light comes, is it to be put under a tub or a bed? Surely, it is put on a lampstand…” (Mark 4:21) “There are so many ads of apartments up for lease…” I uttered as my wife and I drove by the curve. Jeng smiled, “I think you just notice them now because we are thinking of investing in real estate.”
Single Blessedness
When I became a teacher, I learned the hard way that my private life and public life didn’t really exist. There was just, my life. And all of it was for public consumption. My students didn’t really care that I could have a professional life and personal life. They asked me whatever question they could think of. And those that I didn’t answer, they just filled in with rumors.
On Gratitude and Hope
There is a blessed word in Greek which continues to escape any adequate translation in English. Anamnesis is almost synonymous to remembrance or calling to mind but both fail to render justice to the reality which anamnesis signifies. In liturgical parlance, it means much more than psychological recall. Anamnesis connotes making present in the ‘now’ that which is being recalled from the ‘past’. Such is how we speak of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, as the making present of Christ himself, and his words and actions, making possible the communication of grace to us.
Love and Suffering
It does not out work out the way romantic movies tell us. These movies conclude on an ecstatic but idealistic assumption that love ends happily ever after. Not all are lucky in love. Not all live happily ever after. Or those happily ever afters are not the ones we consistently dreamed of as happy. There are always struggles within. Relationships still break apart. Lovers reveal themselves as all too human, prone to error, temptation, and strife. Love manifests itself not as a matter of luck but a dreadful battlefield—an exhausting war of comings and goings, of sin and forgiveness, of toil and suffering. Stripped off of its eros, magic, and fantasies, what we are left with is a fragile and futile reality of love that hurts, decays, and is finite. Love, as we imagined and desired it to be, remains (reminiscent of Descartes) an elusive dream. It is an elusive dream that torments us.
A Mighty Good Man
These days, there are plenty of magazines and TV shows sprouting information about what a “real” man ought to be. If you look through any of these articles, you might find that today’s man is defined by the gadgets he owns, the car he drives, the money he earns and the number of girls he can seduce. The boy next door is passé. The metrosexual is in. This man exudes confidence and charm because deep down he knows that he really is all that. Sometimes, if you’re a lucky girl, he’ll let you see him under his armor and you will get a glimpse of his sensitive side.
The Game of Love
Housed in the Galleria Borghese in Rome is the life-sized marble sculpture of Apollo and Daphne made by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Prominent during his time, Bernini is known to have possessed the unique ability to capture in marble, the essence of a narrative moment with a shocking dramatic realism. A viewer can readily perceive this gifted ability by gazing at Apollo and Daphne, one of his famous works.
Lessons Learned from the RH Bill War
The Reproductive Health Bill has divided our nation into two factions (with a third faction of those who passively--or actively--don't really care about it). This is unprecedented. In the past, the factions were drawn around political and even cultural lines. The EDSA Revolution was about anti-Marcos civilians (of which a vast majority was a Cardinal Sin-led Catholic Church) and troops against a pro-Marcos military.
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