Opinion

Our gospel reading is the continuation of last Sunday’s narrative wherein Jesus starts his Sabbath day by preaching in the synagogue and driving out an unclean spirit from an afflicted man. In today’s gospel, Jesus proceeds to the house of Peter where he finds Peter’s mother-in-law sick with fever and heals her. By sundown, the whole town of Capernaum gathers at Peter’s door to bring their sick and those possessed by demons.Jesus heals them too. Early the next morning, Jesus goes to a deserted place to pray. After finding him, the disciples tell Jesus that more people are seeking him. He replies by saying that he must go and preach also to the other villages.In the gospel of Mark, we see this pattern of activities recurring as Jesus does ministry. Today’s gospel gives us a gli...

That's a question we can ask ourselves as we celebrate the 500 years of Christianity in our country. After 500 years, we have reason to believe that we have somehow “arrived” at a significant level of the Christian life.The drama involved in that period must have taught us precious lessons, must have raised us to a certain level of Christian maturity, if we can call it that.Now, are we ready to spread and share our Christianity with other people, not only within our country but also in others? Let’s remember that if we truly have imbibed the Christian spirit, we would surely be given that same mandate Christ gave to his apostles before he ascended to heaven to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.” (Mk 16,15)As appropriately articulated in the motto...

I was both miffed and amused while listening to the interview of a senior citizen who went to one of the local radio stations here to accuse the Bacolod City government of inefficiency in so far as management of returning residents is concerned.This man, who has dabbled in media through a local cable TV show and write-ups as well, portrayed himself a victim and slammed the local government for their failure to inform travellers of health protocols.Based on his narration, he left for Manila a week ago for a business engagement. Based on the travel papers he had, he was supposed to secure a swab test with negative results, valid within 72 hours before his return.In fairness to him, he followed the process and flew back home. Upon his return, he was stopped at the airport bec...

SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus causing COVID-19 has now infected 103,425,328 people and killed 2,235,179 all over the world – yet, some people still downplay how dangerous and deadly the pandemic really is.Perhaps they might change their minds if they know that four months after their release from the hospital, more than half of adult COVID-19 patients in northern Italy still had impaired lung function or mobility issues, and about one-fifth had symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – this according to a study recently published in JAMA Network Open. The findings are not new and they add to growing evidence of the so-called COVID-19 "long-haulers," or patients with function-impairing symptoms persisting for months after their initial recovery.Researc...

After almost a month-long of success in so far as keeping our COVID-19 positive cases down, we’re back to square one due to the sheer ineptitude of a BPO company to enforce protocols in place. Indeed, as the song goes, some good things never last.From single digits to sometimes nil, we got surprised when the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) reported an outbreak at Transcom that warranted their temporary closure over the weekend.According to EOC chair and City Administrator, Em Ang, 41 employees tested positive for the coronavirus and contact tracing has become a nightmare because Transcom failed to implement the BacTrac system in their establishment.That news became a fodder in my group chats and a friend of mine commented that this may once again fire up the public to di...

Last Sunday, we witnessed the beginning of Jesus’ ministry as he started to preach repentance and the gospel and called his first disciples.Today, we see him taking his ministry into the synagogue and turning into an instant celebrity. “The people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes… his fame spread everywhere throughout the whole region of Galilee”The scribes were the official interpreters of the Torah or the Law of Moses, hence the most authoritative teachers of the scriptures. Yet the people noticed at once a great difference between the authority with which the scribes taught and that of Jesus.No doubt, Jesus must have taught with extraordinary eloquence and deep insight, but the authority of his words was ...

They say that everything is political but we all hoped that it would not be so in the management of the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed thousands in our country and affected hundreds of thousands more.Yet, every day we read stories of how this administration, both national and local, have embroiled politics in dealing with the pandemic from meting sanctions or lack thereof to those who violate the minimum health standards imposed.If you are a who’s who, you either get a slap on the wrist or even excused from violating the laws. But woe to a nobody and either you get picked up, penalized or shamed, depending on your ranking in society.You have Gen. Debolt Sinas who famously became the Mananita King and was rewarded the top post in the Philippine National Police. I do wond...

I still see lots of comments about the vaccines being rushed – reasonable and valid comments - so I really hope you read the whole article and share it with people who are still skeptical about the speed of vaccine development for COVID-19. Development for most of the vaccines we currently have took several years to several decades. Here’s a summary of the vaccines we have and when each respective vaccine became available. I summarized this during the early months of the pandemic to give people a sense of how fast (or slow) the different vaccines for different pathogens were developed considering the different "era" these germs were discovered (different levels of science and technology). The keyword I have been repeating is different. We are also in a different situat...

In today’s gospel, Jesus inaugurates his ministry of preaching and calls his first disciples. He begins his ministry where John the Baptist ends his mission. John had earlier announced the kingdom of God and prepared the people for its coming through the baptism of repentance.Now Jesus proclaims, “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel.”Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God continues John’s proclamation. And like John, he preaches the kingdom in the context of repentance.However, the preaching of Jesus far surpasses that of John because Jesus is the fulfilment of all that John had preached.In Jesus, John’s announcement of the coming of “one mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop...

I’m getting a lot of questions about the new variants of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, the virus causing COVID-19, and thought I’d summarize what we know so far and what we can do about it. While viruses and bacteria undergo mutations all the time, many of them do not affect how infectious the virus is or the course of illness. SARS-CoV-2, like other coronaviruses, is generally slow to mutate thanks to built-in error-correcting proteins that fix most mistakes in replication. It generally accumulates one or two mutations per month. However, the number of mutations in the important “spike protein” that plays a key role in infection and is the target for most COVID-19 vaccines, as well as the association with a rapid rise of cases in these locations, has raised concerns.In rec...