Morning Voice

October 10, 2021 Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time – B. READINGS: Wis 7:7-11; Ps 90:12-13, 14-15, 16-17; Heb 4:12-13;Mk 10:17-30. An Ivorian proverb says: “He who has the choice has the pain.” And a Bantu proverb adds: “When a lion cannot find the flesh to feed on, it has no choice but to eat the grass.” Life is a choice. Here is a beautiful reality we should all agree with. To live is to make the decision to let go of something for another. Unless one is able to choose, his whole existence is a succession of unhappiness and unfulfillment. He always feels that something is lacking. That he has something more to do to reach his goal. In this process of choice, a man goes from mistakes to mistakes. He thinks he can supply what he is missing with material possessions and riches. But in truth, we all thirst for something greater than material. We thirst for God, and God alone. The way to gain what one needs the more is to let go of the ephemeral and passing possessions and real...

October 3, 2021 Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time – B. READINGS: Gn 2:18-24; Ps 128:1-2, 3, 4-5, 6; Heb 2:9-11; Mk10:2-16 or 10:2-12. A Romanian proverb says: “Love is blind, but marriage finds a cure.” And a Filipino proverb adds: “Marriage is not just a porridge that you spit out if it's too hot.” All things are established within God's will. All that exists, exists because of his divine plan and there is nothing that can resist his will. Even marriage and family life find their origin in that will of God. In his project, the Lord established marriage as something very sacred. “The love of the spouses requires, of its very nature, the unity and indissolubility of the spouses' community of persons, which embraces their entire life: "so they are no longer two, but one flesh." They "are called to grow continually in their communion through day-to-day fidelity to their marriage promise of total mutual self-giving." This human communion is co...

September 26, 2021 Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time – B. READINGS: Nm 11:25-29; Ps 19:8, 10, 12-13, 14; Jas 5:1-6; Mk9:38-43, 45, 47-48. An Albanian proverb says: “If a man is right, he cannot be too radical; if wrong, he cannot be too conservative.” And a French proverb adds: “Too much zeal spoils everything.” In religious as well as in social or political life, some people think detaining the whole truth. They think to have an exclusive right on everything. These one run the danger of fanaticism. I tried to look for a quite fitting definition to fanaticism, and here is what I found: "Fanaticism (from the Latin adverb fānāticē [fānāticus; enthusiastic, ecstatic; raging, fanatical, furious]) is a belief or behavior involving uncritical zeal or an obsessive enthusiasm. The philosopher George Santayana defines fanaticism as "redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim". Every religious belief has its fanatic members, and some of them easily fall i...