News

The Gallery has been updated with new pictures from some of the more recent events at the Mother of Good Counsel Parish, San Pedro. The pictures are contributed by different people involved in those events.

I was invited to the PREX General Assembly of the Holy Family Parish, Bgy. Sampaguita, San Pedro Laguna. They have PREX batches numbering to about twenty-five or six and their concern during the assembly was to renew the warmth of their early devotion. The concern is legitimate: there is no PREX chapter that does not experience the dampening of commitment among its members.

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?

The photos from my visit to Iloilo are ready and are now available here. I was invited to the University of San Agustin Personnel Recognition where I, together with some other friars, were the recipients of a Service Recognition Award. It was also an opportunity for me to visit Iloilo after seven years of absence (the brief visit during the centennial celebrations of the University in 2005 does not count since I didn't really get to see Iloilo then).

The BEC is the diocese of San Pablo's main project. It has been 14 years since PCP II institutionalized the BEC making it "the look" of the Filipino Church for the present. I am aware that the program has been ongoing in Iloilo (since 2000) and in Negros (since 2004). It is only now that we are beginning here in Laguna. After some of our parishioners attended the BEC seminar given by the Diocese of San Pablo, I decided to call them in for a "bible" workshop that was asked by the Adelina visita of the parish. I thought it was a good opportunity for introducing the idea of the BEC while at the same time helping the street coordinators of the visita to see their work within the greater mission of the Church.

Two old subsites of AgustinongPinoy are back: AngFrayle and The WebLab. I closed down AngFrayle for some time in the hope of rearranging its contents. Since last year, I've been trying several applications to automate its pages. I think I have finally found the right Content Management System for Ang Frayle and it is called Mambo. Right now, the site operates with a fully functional download manager. Some AgustinongPinoy files -- especially the gift downloads from August 28 -- are available there. I am centralizing the file downloads at AngFrayle since it is most keeping with its archivial nature.

I got back from Tagaytay at around 2:20 PM this afternoon. The retreat ended with a ceremony where we friars renewed our vows within a eucharistic celebration. Fr. Camacho reminded us that the retreat has been dealing all along with discipleship according to the state of life we have chosen. We have reflected on our baptism which set us on the way to discipleship; the religious life merely intensifies it for us.