21st Sunday in Ordinary Time – The Lord is faithful to His promises

Once again, good afternoon to everybody.

And since today, when we are doing our liturgy both in English and Filipino, so I might as well at times switch from one language to another. And today is, of course, Sunday, it’s a day of thanksgiving. More importantly, it’s also a day for glorifying the Lord, giving thanks for all the blessings that He has given to us for the past six days, and in our important moments in our lives. But also, it’s a day to once again ask for His guidance and His grace that we go through another six, another week in which we put our labors, put our affairs to completion. And so for this, in the manner of thanksgiving, in a very Filipino way, we give the Lord a round of applause.

Palakpakan po natin. As it was said in Filipino, as part of our Filipino culture, we would wait on the nature of promises. So much so that part of our sayings is that promises are made not, and must absolutely not be broken. In Filipino, and please help me out with this, ang mga pangako ay hindi, hindi dapat napapako. Promises should not be failed. (1:56) And we know the weight of the words.

We know the weight of the promises that we make. To the point that sometimes we make jokes out of it. That they are meant to be broken anyway.
You are meant to be unfaithful to it anyway, so why make promises? But I guess the other side of that is, we know how serious they are when we make a promise to another person. And our readings today in the Gospel, help us reflect on the nature of these promises, which lead us to ask, what is the quality of our promises? Sini seryoso ba natin yung mga pinapangako natin sa atng buhay?

Reading 1, Joshua 24:1-2
Reading 2, Ephesians 5:21-32
Gospel, John 6:60-69