Just in case you have forgotten, today is the 1st day of April, which is fondly called April Fool's Day. So let me remind our readers that your friends may just pull a prank on you…or surprise you with a gift that's practically empty because these fools believe that they have the right to do a prank and literally get away with it!
April Fools also remind me of that Internet joke where atheists went to court to ask the judge for a day for them. They complained that the Christians already have Christmas, the Muslims have Ramadan and the Jews have their Hanukkah, so they insisted that they must have a day for themselves. But the judge ruled…saying "You Fools! You already have a day for yourself on April 1st… which is April Fools Day!
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Today is Holy Wednesday and we are practically in the middle of our observation of Holy Week, which is one of the holiest weeks in our Catholic calendar because so many things have happened in just one week. Again last Sunday was Palm Sunday and our Lord Jesus Christ was greeted by the Jews in Jerusalem in triumph, shouting out "Hosannas Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." But as we already noted in our past columns, this joyous occasion was short-lived because the very same people who greeted our Lord in the gates of Jerusalem are the very same ones who cried out to Pontius Pilate, "Crucify him!"
So for our Holy Wednesday reflection, I dare ask our readers if we are akin to those Jews who greeted our Lord with Palm leaves, then a few days later, they were seeking for his blood? I guess it is time to ask ourselves how deep is our faith in the Lord… or are we like most of us Filipinos who embrace the phrase, "Weder-weder lang?" Few Catholics believe in the need for conversion, which means turning back from your previous path and turning towards God.
It is my earnest hope that for this Holy Week, Catholics would look at the faith of our Muslim brethren who during their own Holy Week of Ramadan deny themselves of food and drink by fasting as a way of atonement. Surely we Catholics can make this Holy Week meaningful especially in our lives. Many of us enjoy the pleasures of the flesh with wine, women and song. But our souls are literally malnourished because of lack of prayer.
Lest you already forgot, the difference between man and animal is that, animals are only flesh, while man and woman are both flesh and spirit. So when you do not have a spirit-filled life, sometimes the flesh gets sick. If you recall our Lord Jesus Christ cleansed many lame people or the blind and he would say that it was due to their lack of faith. More importantly, our Lord Jesus Christ cured many people due to their faith in him.
Allow me to mention only the case of the Syrophoenician woman in Mark 7:25 who heard that Jesus was in a region of the Gentiles. This woman was identified as a Greek and therefore a Gentile. She fell on the feet of our Lord and asked him to cast out the demon out of her daughter. But our Lord Jesus Christ flatly refused her saying, "I was sent for the lost sheep of Israel."
All the more the woman begged the Lord and worshipped him.
But our Lord Jesus said to her, "Let the children be fed first for it is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs." You can say that our Lord was literally insulting this Gentile woman. Yet she replied to him, "Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children's scraps." Then this softened the heart of our Lord and he told her, "O, Woman, great is thy faith! You may go, the demon has gone out of your daughter!" When she got home, she found that the demon had been driven out of her daughter.
Let me remind our readers that we Filipinos are considered Gentiles and therefore, if you believe that our Lord could drive out demons from the Syrophoenician's daughter because of the faith of her mother, how much more for us who have been a Catholic for many years?
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It was Daily Tribune columnist Bobi Tiglao who first exposed in his column a couple of weeks ago that the so-called Jabidah massacre was a hoax. It sounded unbelievable at first; after all we were still in high school when we learned about this incident. But reading Tiglao's column one can see that it was well-researched.
To further strengthen his claim that the Jabidah Massacre was a hoax, he recently wrote that the National Historical Commission which preserves historical places refused the request of Pres. Aquino III to place a historical marker for the Jabidah massacre in Corregidor. Wow! Even PNoy has been fooled all these years! What a shame!