priest

In a world still fractured by walls of enmity and distracted by the urgent noise of the present hour, Christ our peace calls us to keep our lamps burning and our hearts ready. Today is Tuesday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time. It is also the optional memorial of St. Paul of the Cross, the eighteenth-century Italian priest and founder of the Passionists, whose life was spent keeping the memory of the Cross alive as the true source of reconciliation and peace. The first reading from Ephesians 2:12-22 reminds us who we once were and who we have become. Once “far off,” strangers to the covenants and “without hope and without God in the world,” we have been brought near “by the blood of Christ.” He is our peace: in His flesh He broke down the dividing wall of hostility, abolished the enmity, and created “one new person” in place of the two, reconciling both to God in one body through the cross. We are no longer strangers but “fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of ...

St. James the greater was called great because he is holier that the other James who is the Son of Alpheus but to distinguished them. St, James the Great is the son of Zebedee and Salome, and the brother of John. He was called the great because of his stature who is taller than the other. He was a fisherman like the other disciples. One of the early apostles whom Jesus Christ called to follow him along the seashore of Galilee. One of the three apostles whom Jesus selected to bear witness of His Transfiguration. Along with his brother, called to bring fire to the Samaritan town that earned them the name Boanerges, sons of thunder. The first apostles to be martyred.Patron of Spain and Portugal. He is also the Patron Saint of Paete, Laguna. With the priests of the Diocese of San Pablo, I joined thanking God with the father of the Diocese, Bishop Buenaventura Famadico in momentous occasion for giving us a model of apostleship in following the footstps of our Lord Jesus Christ in p...