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PREX Opens the Door for the Social Doctrines of the Church

The National Association of PREX Secretariats is holding its 11th National Convention in General Santos City this February. The convention is going to be significant because it opens the door of a lot of parishes in the Philippines to the Social Doctrines of the Church. The theme of the National Convention itself -- "The Call to Social Transformation" -- is timely, given the present level of awareness Filipinos have of the relationship between the Christian life and the social order.

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The Priest and New Technologies

The World Communications Day Message of the Pope for priests and the new and intense evangelization that the moment calls for: use the technologies of this digital age.

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Last Class for 2009

Today we held our last class for BEC Advanced Training 2009 with a lesson on the Christmas liturgy. We started holding classes on the Scriptures, Liturgy and Theology in order to help our cell leaders prepare for their weekly task. Since February of this year we've had sessions on the study of Scriptures, biblical theology, the encyclicals of Benedict XVI and other subjects that our cell leaders need.

At the moment, our cell leaders serve about ten cell groups and bible study groups distributed in six sections of our parish. Training is shared. Our more advanced cell leaders teach the others according to a schedule

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Deny Yourself, Take Up the Cross, Follow Me

Augustine's Sermon 96 is dated 416 or 417 by Edmund Hill, OP (Sermons III/4 in The works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, New City). Internal evidence suggests that it was preached after the Ascension but before Pentecost. It is a sample sermon where Augustine goes through a passage phrase by phrase. I already said in one of the articles here that the Fathers of the Church repeated lines from the Gospel reading during their sermon in order to impress the reading on the memory of the faithful. Exhortations to be like ruminants had its place in a time when the only time that the faithful came into contact with the Scriptures was during the Mass. Here, Augustine explains Mark 8:34 phrase by phrase and in doing so recalls other bible passages that the faithful have heard in other Masses. Another point of interest in this sermon is how Augustine weaves in other themes that he has explained in his sermons using the bible passage being explained.

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Augustinian Spirituality

During these past fifteen years or so, we have been hearing so much about Augustinians sharing their "Augustinian heritage" to the laity as a something owed. During this time also, we have seen groups of lay Augustinians cropping up in the different circumscriptions of the Order. Groups of lay people who try to live the charism of the Augustinians is not a new phenomenon. We have had them since the fourteenth century. These lay groups however should be distinguished from the religious organizations which bear some Augustinian elements deriving from the institution that gave them birth.

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Things Are Looking Up at Maligaya VI

Finally we have a roof over our heads, thanks to Bgy. Captain Norvic Solidum and the Homeowners’ Association of Maligaya VI.

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e-Sword

E-sword from http://e-sword.net is a freeware Bible application that can compete with commercial ones. For one thing, it provides the user not only a functional software but also a website that can help one make the most of its software. "E-sword" is so named because of the passage in Hebrews 4:12; the prefix "e-" has become a fashionable way of indicating electronic versions of an object. So "e-sword" actually refers to an electronic "Bible"

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The Word

There are a lot of Bible softwares available on the web that I am quite sure some people would find useful. There is one however that I've found more useful than others. It is called "The Word". Currenly it is in version 3.+ and allows one to access multiple bibles including ones in the original languages. The website offers most of these for free. Lately, the author has also made available old Filipino Bibles in the Cebuano and Tagalog languages.

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Gregory the Great on Luke 3:1-6

The Fathers of the Church made sure that the faithful who listened to them remember not only their words but also the text of Scriptures they were preaching on. Line-by-line commentaries are considered pedantic now, and preachers are dissuaded from doing it. But in the days when the only copy of Scriptures is the one heard and proclaimed in Church, the line-by-line commentary is an aid for memory.

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Of 2012 and Augustine's Sermon 97

Today, the movie "2012" -- a film based on the prediction that the world will end in 2012 -- began to be shown in our cinemas. Providentially, yesterday and today, the Gospel readings from Luke refer to the day of the Son of Man, and so I had the opportunity to speak about how Christians should prepare for the last day. I reminded our congregation that the last day coincides with the return of Christ and the revelation of the sons of God. Hollywood distorts the picture when it only shows the end of the world and does not include the renewal of creation and the final establishment of the reign of God in Christ, just as the book of Revelation describes it.

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Bible Software for Offline and Online Study

John Dyer is a pastor; he is also a programmer.  He has created two websites that allow a reader to read the Hebrew and Greek, i.e., the Old Testament (Protestant canon) and the New Testament in the original languages.  He created the Greek and Hebrew Bible Reader (http://bible.johndyer.name), he explains, because he wanted a tool that allows him to learn to read the Scriptures in the original languages in a way that Bible software do not.  The other website is found at http://biblewebapp.com which allows one to read the Hebrew, Septuagint and Greek New Testament side by side with modern translations or standard (Protestant) Bible notes.

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An Augustinian Platform in the Middle Ages?

Lucio Guttierez, OP -- our professor in Church History at the University of Sto. Tomas -- once said that Martin Luther could only have been produced by the Augustinians. That was almost thirty years ago. I didn't understand what he meant when he said that, but I am beginning to get interested in the matter. Thanks to a book preview by Google for Saak's "Highway to Heaven: The Augustinian Platform between Reform and Reformation 1292-1524". The book, a hefty 880 pages, is published by Brill as the 89th volume of the series "Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought."
I had a glimpse of the contents of the book through the scanned pages that were presented for viewing -- a very small percentage of the 880 pages printed. And I found the book intriguing...

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Augustine and Prayer

This morning I gave a lecture on Augustine's idea of prayer at the CSA-Biñan as part of the school's program in understanding Augustinian core values. During the course of the preparation for the talk, I looked at the way the Catechism of the Catholic Church makes use of Augustine's works. I already knew that Augustine is the most quoted Father of the Church in the Catechism. I was surprised to find out that even in the fourth part of the Catechism, he is also quoted more than any of the Doctors, Fathers and spiritual writers referenced there.

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That Strange Friar

"So how come he is not ordained?" asked one parishioner pointing to a friar whom I introduced as a class mate. "Why did he enter the religious life if he wouldn't want to be ordained a priest?"
That in essence is the difficulty of lay people in understanding that strange friar called the "religious brother"; they think that anyone who gets consecrated as a friar should also be ordained a priest. If that were the case, then even religious nuns should be ordained. But in fact, the male counterpart of the religious nun is not the ordained priest -- as some would think -- but the "religious brother."

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How Does One Konek-Konek? III

An example of what I call the free association of ideas in the Scriptures through the liturgy is Mark 10:35-45. This is Mark's account of Jesus' lesson about "sitting at his right and left" as given to the disciples on the occassion of the request of John and James to sit by him in his glory. The first part of the account is about the request of the sons of Thunder and Jesus' response to it. The second part is the lesson given by Jesus to the disciples who were offended at the request of the brothers. In the first part of the story, Jesus mentions the cup he is to drink and the baptism he is to undergo.

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Joining A Great Adventure

This year's friars' retreat was held at the Carmelite Missionary Spiritual Center in Tagaytay with Fr. Pat Fahey, OSA as retreat master. The theme of the retreat is the Rule and its spirituality. The retreat master provided us with lists of texts from Augustine and other related materials arranged logically in topics like "Interiority", "Love and Friendship", "Prayer", the vows and about contemporary concerns like "Justice and Peace." In other words, the retreat master reviewed with us things that we were expected to know but from the perspective of one who has been living the life of a friar for more than fifty years.

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A Cell Group In Every Street

This morning, we reached another milestone of sorts in our parish's BEC Project. For the first time, those who have been actively involved in promoting the growth of basic ecclesial communities in parish talked about the present status of the cell communities they are helping sustain. Our cell groups have come from different directions and are only now coming together under our PREX BEC Project. The goal that we have set before us is "a cell group in every street". It is a goal that translates into practical terms the Church's mission of evangelization: to build up the reign of Christ.

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Outlining a Bible Passage IV: Working on Themes

An outline of a bible passage is a summary for the close reading you make of a passage when you make a sentence flow of it. A well-made outline can serve one a lot of purposes later on, especially when one has to to work on consecutive sections of a book (as the example we have from Colossians) or to work on a theme

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Outlining A Bible Passage III: Colossians

It is one thing to outline a bible passage from a narrative like the Gospel of Mark. It is another thing to outline a passage from the Pauline letters or any discursive type of biblical literature. The key is to make a good sentence flow of the text and then to see where one idea ends and another one begins. If in narratives, the key for the division of a pericope are most often the changes in characters, places, actions, in a discourse, it is most often the words or the theme that is crucial. Below are two examples from the selections from Colossions for Wednesday and Thursday of the 23rd week of OT Year B

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Ephphata

What Jesus did in the miracle is being continued now by the Total Christ: Christ the Head of His Body, the Church. In the baptismal rite, the gestures of Jesus are repeated when the priest after laying on the hands, touches the ears and tongue of the candidate and says: "Ephphata. As Jesus opened the ears of the deaf and the mouth of the mute, so too may your ears be opened and your tongue be loosed so that what you hear you may believe and what you believe you may proclaim." By those words we are empowered to publicly profess the faith.

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Outlining A Bible Passage II

Mark 10:17-31 is the gospel reading for the 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year B). Below is an outline of the text based on the sentence flow found here.

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Outlining A Bible Passage

Two Saturdays ago, I introduced the activity of outlining a bible passage in our BEC Training Module. We associate outlines for term papers and speeches we are assigned to write. But outlines are also important for understanding an article one is reading or to follow a lecture that is complicated. Outlining can also be important for reading and studying Scriptures especially when one has the responsibility of helping other people to understand the message of Scriptures.

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A Novena for Sts. Monica and Augustine

This year being "The Year for Priests", our celebration of the feasts of Sts. Monica and Augustine emphasizes the priesthood of the laity and the priesthood of the ordained. St. Monica is an example of the priesthood common to the baptized. By her prayers she was able to regain her son and bring him over to the Catholic Church. Augustine is the example from the ordained priesthood. The overall theme of the novena is a slightly modified Augustinian quote: "With you I am a Christian; for you I am a Pastor". So for a period of eleven days beginning on August 12 with the first day of the novenario, we at the Mother of Good Counsel Parish (San Pedro, Laguna PH) will be celebrating the memory of this mother and son team with a view to a more lively participation in the Church's Year for Priests.

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Building Communities through the PREX

Since 2005, I have been harping about the need to provide for a PREX Advanced Module for those who complete the Parish Renewal Experience. This was due to the discovery that not all PREX graduates join parish mandated organizations and not all religious organizations in the parish are responsive to the need of the PREX graduates for on-going formation in the faith. The "PREX 201 Module" I suggested years ago was designed to lead new PREX graduates to join Basic Ecclesial Communities (BECs) and to exercise a ministry geared towards the building-up of the Church through the BEC.
Since February of this year however, the project took a different turn after we made a few changes to the way we hold our Parish Renewal Experiences.

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Lay Augustinian Spirituality

Geocities is closing down so I have moved some articles housed at the old Agilawan website to AgustinongPinoy. I did not move all the articles though ; I moved only those which I and others still continually go back to.

The articles revolve around the theme of Augustinian education and date back to the years when I was still at the University of San Agustin.

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A Friar's Story

A repost of the story of how I became an Augustinian. The account was originally published at Tripod.Com. I intended it for students who came to me yearly to interview me for an assignment on the Sacrament of the Priesthood. I am reposting it here since the last free host in which I posted the article is closing down.

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Call for Lay Participation in Honest Elections

The CBCP has issued a pastoral statement entitled Lay Participation in Politics and Peace. The pastoral statement is prefaced with a theological conviction that justifies its call for an active lay participation in the coming 2010 elections

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Caritas in Veritate

Pope Benedict XVI’s third encyclical is now available. It is called Caritas in Veritate and you can find it here. I have also made a PDF version of the document for distribution to my students in the Social Doctrines of the Church. The file is in a zipped archive. You can download it from here. I do not know when it will come out in our bookstores. But the document is only about 40 pages long with footnotes occupying about five pages.

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Records of an Ecclesial Experiment

The BEC Project at the MGCP is progressing. Since the last time I wrote about it (three months ago) we have begun holding training sessions for our BEC leaders regularly. We have more than ten cell leaders under advanced training now coming from four areas of the parish and three more under basic training. The BEC Training modules were developed from the seminars we have been holding since 2005. Below are BEC-related posts in this site; they are also records of what we are doing at the parish. There are others, but the ones below are representative and carry links to the other articles. I am posting this here as a record for those who are interested to find out about this ongoing experiment.

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Where is "Ten Augustinian Values"?

"Where is the site for Ten Augustinian Values?" I've been asked this question several times and in several ways for the past few months. The reason is that the website that used to house the article called "Ten Augustinian Values" yields an empty directory. This is because I stopped paying the hosting services for AngFrayle.Net . After Yahoo ownership changed, the hosting services became so expensive for me that I simply had to stop using it. So I transferred the article "Ten Augustinian Values" to AgustinongPinoy (http://www.agustinongpinoy.net/values) where it can be accessed now.

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The Lord's Supper and the Passover Meal (Jewish Seder)

While I was writing a Bible Workshop article for the Feast of Corpus Christi, I came across certain blogs written by Jewish Rabbis on the Last Supper. I was searching the web for articles on the Passover meal as Jesus and his companions would have had it, and I did find one: a reconstruction based on the Pesachim and -- get this -- performed by a congregation of Christians.

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He is Seated at the Right Hand of God

From the depths of Hades, the Lord moved upwards to the land of the living and beyond that to the right hand of the Father where He is now seated in glory "far above the principalities and powers", as Paul would say. "From there, He will come again to judge the living and the dead", we say as we profess the Creed. The Ascension of the Lord makes us look forward to His second coming and assures us of the glory that awaits us. In sum, we are already winners. That thought should make us more generous, more loving and caring in a world that gives us more reason to be selfish, unloving and uncaring. We know that the world is passing, that it does not have the last word. The last word belongs to the Lord; and He does not lie.

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Cartoons and the Bible

Cartoons can be a great way to bring across the message of the Scriptures. This it does through a rereading of the Biblical message and present it to a "visual" generation in an attractive way. But there is also a price to be paid, since "rereadings" can distort rather than enhance. "The Flying House" is a cartoon series intended to bring the Bible closer to a generation that is attracted to cartoons. In this particular sequence on the Temptation of Eve, Genesis 3:1-24 is rendered into a cartoon with Tim Curry playing the role of the Snake.

Read it here.

Sentence Flows - Making Sense Of It

The most recent addition to AgustinongPinoy is a website that extends Res Biblica. It is called The Bible Workshop. It was created to meet the needs of some of our parishioners who are engaged in the biblical apostolate. It has articles on the Sunday Gospels written in the form of a how-to. The method of study that underlies these "how-tos" is exegetical diagramming called "the Sentence Flow." The Sentence Flow is not original to me. In fact, others have written about it. We have applied the method to the gospels since it is easier to use on narratives. But it can work well with discourses too, like the letters of Paul.

Read it here.

Research With Biblioscape

Just after writing the article on note-taking, I found a software application that can help one take, organize and process notes with a computer. I have discussed some information managers in this website but not one of these come close to Biblioscape which started out as an organizer for bibliographical references. Biblioscape version 8 has a text editor, a very simple graphics editor (for creating charts) and in the Professional and Librarian editions can also function as a draft outliner with word processing functionalities.

Read it here.

Augustinian Friars in the News

The Lancaster Diocese has a new bishop, and he is an Augustinian Friar: the Rev. Michael Campbell, OSA. He has been coadjutor bishop for the Diocese since March 2008. He takes over from Bishop Patrick O'Donohue who has retired. More news from a Zenit press release here.

Read it here.