Morning Voice

March 08 2020: Second Sunday of Lent - A   READINGS:  Gn 12:1-4a ;  Ps 33:4-5, 18-19, 20, 22 ;  2 Tm 1:8b-10 ;  Mt 17:1-9 An Iranian proverb says, “Necessity can change a lion into a fox.” Another proverb adds, “If you dance with the devil you can't change him but he will change.” Many people suffer today, not so much of the worship of the personality, but mostly for the cult of the body. We live in a world where all will like to have a slim-fit body with developed muscles. The advertisings and medias today are all about the so-called star-body shape. We all, therefore, want a physical transformation. In that frenzy for physical transformation, no one think about the transformation of the spirit. Our body preoccupies us most than our spirit. The Lenten journey sounds today on this need for spiritual change or the metabolism of our spirit. We are all urged to undergo a process of transfiguration, that is, to have not a quantitative, but rathe...

March 01 2020: First Sunday of Lent - A READINGS:  Gn 2:7-9; 3:1-7 ;  Ps 51:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 17 ;  Rom 5:12-19 or 5:12, 17-19 ;  Mt 4:1-11 A Spanish proverb says, “He who avoids the temptation avoids the sin.” Another proverb adds, “A man of character is resistant to temptation.” The forbidden is delicious! That is what they say. And at times, prohibited things can seem pretty good. So, we tend to do things that should not be, to disobey or to violate the taboo. The temptations of man are in general, to make him selfish, to lose his relationship with God. Because the real temptation is to break man's dependence on his God. It is about the idolatry of the self. People today, love to do everything without God. Everything by ourselves and for ourselves, caring less about other and even about God. Many are we who understand idolatry as worshiping the sun, the moon, the rivers or any other created things surrounding us. In that sense, we categorize s...

February 26 2020: Ash Wednesday - A READINGS:  Jl 2:12-18 ; Ps 51:3-4, 5-6ab, 12-13, 14 and 17 ;  2 Cor 5:20—6:2 ;  Mt 6:1-6, 16-18 A British proverb says, “A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus.” Another proverb adds, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if the Lord doesn't get you, the devil must.” Today, penance of Lent has begun. We have embarked into a forty days journey of special meditation on human nothingness and God’s providential love; a love that looks not on our sins, but rather is eager to forgive till giving himself for us. Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of God tremendous love that will lead him to sacrifice himself for the salvation of sinners. Opening us into that journey, the sign of the blessed ashes is an invitation to respond to the Lord’s call for conversion. We are all exhorted to come back to him with all our heart and to express him our inner desire for renewal. Before getting into the dee...

February 23 2020: Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time - A   READINGS:  Lv 19:1-2, 17-18 ;  Ps 103:1-2, 3-4, 8, 10, 12-13 ;  1 Cor 3:16-23 ;  Mt 5:38-48 A Kikuyu proverb says, “A son as cunning as his father knows the arrows like father.” And another well-known traditional proverb adds, “Like grape, like bud. Like father, like son.” A son has the moral, as well as biological obligation to incarnate some, if not all of his father’s provenances. When a son behaves so much differently from his father, that raises questions on the genuineness of his filiation and their relationship. What is said on moral and biological aspects, could also apply to the spiritual attainments and attitudes.   Today’s liturgy is a call on each one of us to incarnate God, because, we all are his children. All could be summed up in two excerpts. The first, from the first reading where we read, “Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy.” And the second from the ...

February 16 2020: Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time - A   READINGS:  Sir 15:15-20 ;  Ps 119:1-2, 4-5, 17-18, 33-34 ;  1 Cor 2:6-10 ;  Mt 5:17-37 or 5:20-22a, 27-28, 33-34a, 37 A Bulgarian proverb says, “Draw water from the new well, but do not spit in the old one.” Another proverb adds, “Until the old moon disappears completely, the new moon cannot come.” Is love a new law or the ever-renewed expression of the law? Love is nothing new. It is something which is called to be always renewed and translated into hands-on actions. For, in the kingdom of love, what was before is what will always be, nonetheless, only expressed in different languages. “You have heard that it was said to your ancestors ... But I say to you.” The French Philosopher, Antoine Lavoisier would say, “Rien ne se perd, rien ne se crée, tout se transforme” (Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed). Today’s liturgy is an invite to transformation. It is about ...

February 9 2020: Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time - C   READINGS:  IS 58:7-10 ;  PS 112:4-5, 6-7, 8-9 ;  1 COR 2:1-5 ;  MT 5:13-16 A Japanese proverb says, “Proof rather than argument.” Another proverb adds, “works, and not words, are the proofs of love.” There is an African rhetorist writer, Wole Soyinka who said, “A tiger does not proclaim its ‘tigerness’: it leaps on its prey and devours it!” This dictum will be a great help taking us into today’s liturgy and understand in a certain way the Christian life. To be a Christian is not the fact of a proclamation or a public announcement of who you are. It is about living a lifestyle that testifies to God's love embodied in Jesus. We could in that sense paraphrase Soyinka saying, the salt does not say I am salty, nor does the light say I am bright. That are obvious. When a salt starts losing its taste or a light getting dim, they are no longer of use. Christian life is a life of testimony. The day...