Under One Roof

February 17th marked the start of the Lenten Season. Ash Wednesday is the signal that Lent is here. Catholics everywhere go to church to get ash on their foreheads.

Turn away from sin and believe in the Gospel.

Have you been to church last Wednesday? Are you practicing fasting during Lent?

I find solace in my faith. Whenever I feel troubled, or even when I feel like saying thanks, I go to the church. When we went to Tagaytay, our first stop was the Pink Sisters Convent. I love the Pink Sisters. They have convents in Hemady Street as well as in Baguio City. I’ve been to the latter twice.

What I love about the convent is the peace and quiet you can find there. You feel as if your prayers will be answered because God is there in the solitude of that place.

Have you been in a Pink Sisters Convent? Try to go there and tell me if you feel the same way.

Our family goes to mass every Saturday. We attend the anticipated mass service because there’s less people in the church and it seems more solemn to us.

Every Saturday, I feel the need to give the church some feedback regarding the celebration of the mass. Last Saturday, the priest droned on and on during the homily. Nothing wrong with reiterating the point of what he’s talking about. But then if you are listening attentively to these kind of priests, they are redundant. They repeat themselves over and over again to make them look like they are spewing a lot of good. When in fact, they make the churchgoers sleepy with the drone of their voice. It would be good to make it short and sweet. People have short attention span when inside the church. They should always remember that.

And then after the homily, because he took his sweet time with it, he now glosses over some parts of the mass. He would rather recite than sing a song. For me, one of the most important parts of the mass is the singing of Our Father. He recited that instead of singing because I think he’s running out of time. Or he might be going somewhere? My sister and I looked at each other when the priest started speaking fast. Sigh.

Last night, the priest seemed so bored.

San ka pa ba naman makakakita ng maayos na nagmimisa? I think the best Catholic mass services that I was able to attend were those by SVD priests. They give the best homilies and are not fast or slow with the liturgical rites. They sing songs. The Our Father is always sang beautifully which is the right way to do it because we are speaking directly to our Father.

Priests need to step up. With the scandals and churchgoers leaving by droves, I don’t think they can afford to be neglect of their Holy Mass duties. Calling Sto. Domingo Church priests!

I am a Catholic. Our family has an annual tradition where we attend the 9-day novena in honor of the Our Lady of Queen of the Holy Rosary of La Naval de Manila. On the Sunday immediately after the novena is the feast day of our town. Every year, there is a procession of all the saints of the Dominican order and Our Lady of La Naval that we join.

This year, there are fewer people who joined. I have a theory as to why this happened when every year, the crowd increases. Maybe, there are some people who lost faith in Him because of the recent tragedies that hit the country. Typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng wreaked havoc in the country and people are still asking why it had to happen.

I have petitions for every novena that I attend. Some get answered, some not. I pray that people will keep their faith in spite of all the bad things happening right now. Easy to say, hard to do. But if we will just lift up everything to Him, we might find it in our hearts to forgive and forget.

If you are a Catholic or is well-versed with a Catholic mass, you would know what I will be yakking about. A long and winded homily…

I am a Catholic all my life. I don’t have any intention of converting or have not even considered it. But I have an open mind and have always been aware of other religions. Particularly of Christians and Buddhists. And I am totally aware of the flaws of my own religion.

I go to church every week. I am attentive inside the church but there are priests who just get into long and winded homilies that will cause you to get drowsy within minutes. I know some people can relate to this. It doesn’t matter if what the priest is saying is sensible. Most of the time, they just drone on and on about something or other. Injecting some humor that fall flat on their faces.

Let me cite an example. There is this priest in our parish who dishes out the same homilies for a particular gospel year after year. How should I know? When the priest is new to the parish, I love his sermons. But in no time at all, we notice that he’s recycling his homilies and injecting government issues that leave a bitter taste to the mouth. It’s just plain annoying. The last homily I heard from him was about the gospel on rich and poor people. The way he explained it you’d think if he studied Theology at all!

I just wish the Dominicans would study preaching more. They suck at it! SVDs are more well-versed to preaching and always deliver great sermons.

And please stop with the long and winded homilies! Short and sweet does it good. Straight to the point is more like it.

When Gelliane sent me a text message about Francis Magalona’s death, I must admit I was affected. Aside from being a long time fan, I saw my brother in him. FrancisM died of leukemia, the same sickness that took the life of my then 15-year-old brother.

Cancer is like a thief in the night. It’ll strike when you least expect it. When my brother was sick with it, there were days when he’s showing signs of getting better. Then all of a sudden, he’ll turn for the worse. It broke our hearts seeing him like that.

One of FrancisM’s last photos posted in his Multiply account.

You know the photo above (where FrancisM was already bald due to his chemo sessions)? He looked so much like my brother when he was also bald already. FrancisM’s death just triggered this deluge of memories to resurface. At least FrancisM reached his 44th year on earth before His creator took him back. My brother was only 15.

Both gone too soon.

Sometimes, no matter how hard you think of a reason that will make sense of everything, it is just so elusive. No reason can be enough to justify why people die early. We just have to console ourselves to the fact that there is a bigger plan for us in the end.