Fr. Manol's Reflection

Spared from the stain of sin, but not from suffering

Sunday, 01 January 2012 00:00

January 1 is a holy day of obligation not because we celebrate the first day of the year, but because we honor Mary as the Mother of God.

Non-Catholics think we commit idolatry by deifying Mary. We don’t. But if Mary is human and not divine, how can a mortal being be the mother of the eternal God? Indeed, only God is absolute; nonetheless, out of infinite love for humanity, the infinite God has freely chosen to become human. The eternal Son has embraced our human nature and has been born of woman. Mary’s motherhood of God is certainly not about Mary becoming divine, but about God becoming truly human.

Who God is and whom we are called to be

Sunday, 04 December 2011 00:00

GOD'S WORD TODAY (The Philippine Star)

This Sunday of Advent, we await anew Christ’s coming into the world and into our lives, but we also commemorate in a few days Mary’s Immaculate Concepcion. Allow me to share a few reflections on divine self-emptying love, manifested in the incarnation of Jesus Christ and responded to by Mary.

All for God, except.

Sunday, 02 October 2011 00:00

As we have it, the parable retold by Matthew is most likely an embellishment of the original story narrated by Jesus. Jesus castigated the religious leaders of his time for rejecting and persecuting the prophets of old, including him. Very often the religious leaders held on to their power over Israel, symbolized by the vineyard, making life burdensome for the people, signified by keeping the fruits of the vineyard for themselves.