Agustinong Pinoy

August 27 and 28 are the feast days of St. Monica and St. Augustine, perhaps the two most well-known mother and son saints in the Catholic Church.  The image above is a depiction of a scene from the Confessions where Augustine describes a moment with his mom as they wait for the boat that will bring them back to North Africa from his Italian sojourn.  He has just been baptized and she is just content that her prayers for her son have been granted.  The painter’s brush captures them at the moment when — as Augustine narrates — they have a foretaste of the blessed life.  The description of the experience is found in the Confessions IX, 10.

… well, not really. 

Our community has decided that every last Wednesday of the month we would have our community outing.  We had our first community outing yesterday, and we did go around Laguna a bit.  The itinerary we followed brought us to Cavinti, around Caliraya Lake, Kalayaan to Pakil and back.  The destruction that typhoon Frank was still visible in some of the places we saw.

Here are the pictures for this year's Feast of the Sto. Niño at the Mother of Good Counsel Parish. It is not as big as the one at the Basilica Minor de Sto. Niño and we caused a bit of traffic during the procession but it was well attended. The presentations after the 6 PM Mass were well appreciated. Kudos to the Adelina group -- they had a big presentation.

The Augustine Quizzes which used to be at the Augustine Page have now been moved to the new St. Augustine Info Center. Currently, there are three quizzes: brief description, multiple choice and matching type. I made the quizzes for my students in Theology 106; questions are based on the Confessions. Future additions to the quizzes will include trivia quizzes about the History of the Augustinians as we used to have them at the Augustine Page.

I was looking for homily guides for the 19th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C and I came by a website called Augustinian Friends. It is maintained by the Augustinians of the Villanova Province and is described as "An online ministry of the Province of Villanova." Just by reading some of the pages available, one can surmise that the Villanova Province has a "Way of Life Center" and that the website is directly associated with it.

I caught the members of the St. Monica Prayer Guild of our parish feeding some fifty children from Maligaya VI. The activity is part of the parish's feeding program done in association with the KIWANIS unit of Chrysanthemum Village, San Pedro Laguna.

Yesterday, the DOST ICT4D round table discussions were held at the Development Academy of the Philippines in Tagaytay. There were four speakers for the occassion, Mr. Randy Borromeo (Shepherd's Voice Publishing), Dr. Nasroden Guru (Mindanao State University), Dr. Israel Andoy (Adventist University of the Philippines) and myself. We delivered our reports on three questions:

• Should faith communities be interested in Information and Communications Technology (ICT)?
• What are the uses of ICT in religion and spirituality?
• What are the possible contributions of ICT to evangelization and governance?