The Newsletter Archives

Also published in this series

• Psalm 129 I Yearn For The Lord and Hope In His Word
• Psalm 6 Turn To Me, O Lord
• Psalm 51 The Miserere
• Psalm 32 (31) Blessed Are They Whose Sins Are Forgiven

Also published in this series
9880b86c802ec3cd803317913479f789 The debates with the Jews on the Feast of Tabernacles concludes with one on Jesus’ glory. At the end of this debate, the Jews will pic up rockes to stone Jesus who hides and leaves the Temple (v.59)The Feast of Tabernacles recalls the sojourn of the Israelites in the desert. During this period of special care under YHWH, the Israelites saw His glory. They saw it as a column of cloud by day and a column of fire by night accompanying them. On Mt. Sinai, it settled as a cloud (Ex. 24:16) which the Israelites saw from the foot of the mountain as a consuming fire (Ex.24:17).The glory of God appeared each time an act of salvation is performed: at the feeding of manna (Ex. 16), when water was drawn from the Rock (Num. 20). It was also the signal of God’s presence among His people: the cloud of God’s glory (the Shekinah) settled on the Tent of Meeting whenever God met with Moses (Ex. 33). It was this same glory that filled the Temple that Solomon built.

Also published in this series
c82b0f1da2bb052505d599c8b856153c Jesus’ exchanges with the Jews during the Feast of the Tabernacles (see John 7) continues with the theme of freedom, Abraham’s children and being of God. These are also themes of the event that the feast of Tabernacles commemorate: the journey of Israel through the desert as they make their way to the land promised to Abraham and his posterity.After Yahweh (“I AM”) had liberated his people from Egypt , the “house of slavery” (Deut. 8:14), he led them through his servant Moses via the desert. In Deuteronomy we are told that the sojourn in the desert was a course in following the Lord.

Also published in this series

• Psalm 129 I Yearn For The Lord and Hope In His Word
• Psalm 6 Turn To Me, O Lord
• Psalm 51 The Miserere
• Psalm 32 (31) Blessed Are They Whose Sins Are Forgiven

Ang ika-32 Salmo (31 sa bilang ng Griyego) ang ikalawang salmo penitensyal. Ipinahihiwatig dito ang kahalagahan ng pagkukumpisal ng kasalanan. Sa talata 5 ay makikita ang paralelismo ng kumpisal: “ipinaalam … ang kasalanan/hindi itinago … ang nagawang pagsuway/ikukumpisal … ang kasalanan.”

Ang pandiwang hdy yadah sa pormang hophal ay may kahulugang “mangumpisal” tulad ng makikita sa Kawikaan 28:13: “Ang mga nagtatago ng kanilang kasalanan ay hindi uunlad; nguni’t ang nangungumpisal nito at nagbabagong buhay ay tumatanggap ng awa.”

The ninth PREX National Convention will be held on May 13-14 at the Colegio San Agustin-Biñan campus. Since not all of our PREX graduates will be attending the convention, we will be holding prayer vigils and a prayer service for its success. This will also be a venue for me to train more people for our BEC-building project.

Our prayer vigils will be held on May 13 from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. It will be capped by an hour prayer service. I have approached the Kawan ng Mabuting Pastol, the parish’s charismatic community to provide prayer leaders for the vigils. Tomorrow, I will talk with the St.

Just a few days more and Passion Sunday is upon us. It is also known as “Palm Sunday” because it is the time we go to Church to re-enact the last entry of the Lord into Jerusalem. It was a triumphal entry marked by shouts of “Hosanna”, the clamor for liberation, the desire for another Judas Maccabeus expressed. In the gospel of John (cf. John 12), it is also the moment when the Lord becomes aware that his hour has come.It is also called “Passion Sunday” because the Passion of the Lord is read during the Mass on that day. The reading is quite long and boredom will be avoided by a dram

I have just read the address of the President of the Pontifical Council for the Laity entitled “Ecclesial Movements and New Communities:  The response of the Holy Spirit to Today’s Challenge of Evangelization.”  One can find a copy of it at AngFrayle’s.  )The article is a description of ecclesial movements and new communities which have cropped up alongside the more traditional religious organizations during the past years.  The Cardinal (Stanyslaw Rylko) begins his address by pointing out that “making disciples” is synonimous with “making Christians.” 

Jeremiah 31:31-34 (LXX: Jer. 38:31-34) is a prose oracle about the new covenant. It is inserted between two poetic oracles about the return of the Northern tribes from exile which event Jeremiah was sure would happen (cf. vv.35-37). Perhaps the renewal of the covenant during King Josiah’s time as occassioned by the discovery of a part of Deuteronomy in the Temple inspired Jeremiah’s hopes for the return of Israel/Ephraim.

If you are into Internet research, this page from AgustinongPinoy may be of help. Currently, the best internet browser for doing online research is still Mozilla’s Firefox. Apart from being built better than Gate’s Internet Explorer, it can be extended through the use of “Extensions” which turn it into a research application.

Firefox has different extensions for different goals. For research, I make use of the following:

• Scrapbook — this is an application for getting webpages and storing them for offline browsing. This is better than the Windows offline browsing pack since one can save pages into the folders one specifies;
• Quicknote — a notepad that one can use for writing. One can make it sit on one side of the browser, or as part of the browser. It is good for quick copy and paste operations.
• The A9 Toolbar — Amazon’s Search Engine gives the user a webpage for storing searches. It works with Google so one is guaranteed good search results.
• Wizz RSS NewsReader — One can get the latest feeds from favorite newsfeeds via FireFox. This is great especially if one is in the habit of checking the “papers” upon log on online.

Other desktop enhancements can also be found on the web that are free. One of this is AbiWord. It is a desktop publishing software that is free. It can save documents in different formats … even in Microsoft *.doc.

For graphic creation and manipulation, I would recommend Photofiltre.
If you are not into graphic creation but you need a software that can resize or even resample images that you scan or download from a digital camera, then use Irfanview.

More about this next time…

On the surface, the present section of John is a discourse on the will of God set against the background of a healing miracle on a Sabbath. The scene is the pool of Bethesda and the temple area. It is in this last where Jesus’ discourse — an answer to the charge of Sabbath violation — takes place.Outline:1-9 Healing at the Pool of Bethesda10-18 The Charge: Violation of the Sabbath

It is now official. SicIgitur.Worldfreeweb.Com. The signs of its demise were already there some months ago and so I transferred Otium Sanctum to its present host. I wasn’t able to transfer the MGCP Interactive website however, and so with SicIgitur, it is no longer accessible.

Ang pinakakilala sa mga salmo penitensyal ay tinatawag na “Miserere” mula sa titolo nitong Latin. Mapapansin na ang tetragrammaton hwhy ay hindi ginagamit dito. Ang titolong bigay sa salmo ay “Awit ni David nang puntahan siya ni Natan dahil sa kanyang pagpasok kay Batsheba”. Kung gayon ang salmong ito ay ekspresyon ng pagtanggap ni David ng kanyang pagkakasala kay Urias, asawa ni Batsheba at sundalong tapat sa kanya. Maaari rin namang unawain ang salmong ito bilang tugon sa Salmo 50. Kailangan lamang itama ang pagsalin ng ekspresong hdwt yhbz, “alay na pag-amin ng sala” (tingnan ang Ezra 10:11) at hindi “alay na pasasalamat.”

Todah hdwt from the root hdy is most often translated as “thanksgiving”. It is a noun formed from the Hiphil of hdy ydh which can have two meanings. The more frequent meaning is “to give thanks, lauds and praise”; the less frequent meaning is to confess, either the name of God or one’s sin:

My sins I made known to you
my iniquity I did not hide.
I said: “I will confess (hdwa ‘odeh) to Yahweh”
and you took away the guilt of my sin (Psalm 32:5)

Also published in this series

• Psalm 129 I Yearn For The Lord and Hope In His Word
• Psalm 6 Turn To Me, O Lord
• Psalm 51 The Miserere
• Psalm 32 (31) Blessed Are They Whose Sins Are Forgiven

John 12 is the closing chapter of the Gospel’s Book of Signs. Whle it ties up some of elements from chapters 1-11, it also introduces the Book of Glory, the moment when the Son of Man is raised up in His Death and His Ascension to the Father. An important moment in the life of Jesus and His disciples is the coming of Jesus’ Hour.

Jesus Christ is the great High Priest, the mediator of the New Covenant. By His death and resurrection, the economy of salvation which the earthly Jerusalem’s temple, priesthood and sacrifices pointed to has been brought to perfection. This is the main thesis of the letter to the Hebrews. Hebrews 10:4-10 is part of a demonstration that shows how the temple sacrifices, incapable by themselves to sanctify, has now been replaced by the more perfect sacrifice of Christ, the High Priest.

 Hosea 14 is the last chapter in a prophetic book that is both beautiful and difficult:  beautiful in poetic imagery and in the message it gives about the love of God, and difficult because of the state in which we find it now.  I saw this last because it is obvious that in the course of its transmission, this book, which was read a reread as it was handed down from one generation to another, incorporates in its pages even the revelations it has given to its readers.  The present chapter is an example of this last.

Ang ika-6 na Salmo ay ang una sa pitong “salmo penitensyal.” Hindi binabanggit dito ang kasalanan ni ang paghingi ng tawad, gayunpaman, ang salmo ay may maipapahiwatig sa mga nananalangin na nakakaranas ng paglayo at katahimikan ng Diyos.

Ang paliwanag tungkol sa salmong ito ay nasa Otium Sanctum
Continue reading “Salmo 6: Bumaling Ka Naman Panginoon”

Question
Why is it that some psalms in the Jerusalem Bible have two sets of number: one that is normally printed and another that is in the margins? E.g., “Psalm 74” in bold and then right in the margins, “V 73”.

Answer
What you find printed “normally” in the Jerusalem Bible is the numbering of the psalm as it appears in the Massoretic text of the Hebrew. What you find in the margins as “V 73” means “In the Vulgate (the official Bible of the Catholic Church), this is Psalm 73.”