REFLECTIONS TODAY In today’s Gospel, Jesus states his commandment of love. In the preceding verses, he tells his disciples that the way they could remain in his love is for them to keep his commandments (Jn 15:9-10). His commandment demands that his followers should love one another as he...
REFLECTIONS TODAY Today’s Gospel speaks of the Lord Jesus as the vine and of his followers as the branches. The vine-branches imagery is one of the beautiful imageries found in John. It depicts our intimate relationship with the Lord. It also poses the challenge to continue growing in this...
REFLECTIONS This year 2021 the Church in the Philippines celebrates 500 years of Christianity. As part of the preparations, the local Church declared 2020 as the Year of Ecumenism and Interreligious Dialogue. This theme on dialogue capped the nine-year preparations. We are also invited to reflect...
REFLECTIONS TODAY Today we celebrate the Feast of Sts. Philip and James, two of the twelve apostles chosen and commissioned by Jesus. The James being referred to here is the son of Alphaeus (Mt 10:3; Mk 3:18; Lk 6:15). The Gospel tells of Philip requesting Jesus to show them the Father. Jesus tells...
REFLECTIONS TODAY God never wants us to be separated from him. Today’s Gospel reading is one of the most beautiful and powerful imageries in the Gospel of John, depicting how God always wants to relate with us and the kind of response that is expected of us. This is the imagery of the...
REFLECTIONS TODAY Today is Labor Day. The Church also honors St. Joseph the Worker. In the Gospel, Jesus is teaching the people in the synagogue of his own native place. The people who heard him are astonished but are unable to believe that the person they apparently knew to be the son of a...
REFLECTIONS TODAY As the passion of Jesus approaches, the disciples are distressed at the prospect of seeing him no more. Jesus assures them that his going away is necessary, because he is going to prepare a place for them in heaven, in God’s dwelling. Using a metaphor, Jesus likens this place of...
REFLECTIONS TODAY In the hierarchy of authority, all power begins with God. Jesus, on the other hand, is aware “that the Father has put everything into his power and that he had come from God” (Jn 13:3). In this sense, he can apply to himself the divine name “I AM.” And whoever receives him...
REFLECTIONS TODAY This section of the Gospel closes the Book of Signs, containing the seven “sign-miracles” that the evangelist focuses on so that people may believe in Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God, and through this belief they may have life in his name (Jn 20:31). We have here the...
REFLECTIONS TODAY The Feast of Dedication (Hanukkah) celebrates the victory of the Maccabee brothers over the Greco-Syrian king, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who forced the Jews to worship the Greek gods, to abandon the Law of Moses, and prohibited the reading of the Torah. Even the altar of the...
REFLECTIONS TODAY Jesus borrows the image from the early morning practice of the shepherd leading out the sheep to pasture. He presents himself as the Good Shepherd, calling his own sheep by name and leading them out. His concern for the flock is reciprocated; they recognize his “voice” and...
REFLECTIONS TODAY JOHN 10:11-18 Jesus said: “I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. A hired man, who is not a shepherd and whose sheep are not his own, sees a wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away, and the wolf catches and scatters them. This is because...
