AGAIN, some wily Pharisees tried to test Christ by asking him whether it was lawful for a husband to divorce his wife. (cfr. Mk 10,1-12) This was when Christ clarified the true nature and purpose of marriage. At that time, divorce was allowed because of...
THOSE are very intriguing words of Christ found in the gospel of St. Mark. “Everyone will be salted with fire,” he said. “Salt is good, but if salt becomes insipid, with what will you restore its flavour? Keep salt in yourselves and you will have...
“Whoever is not against us is for us.” (Mk 9,40) With these words, Christ told his apostles, and is telling us now, that we have to be wary of our tendency to be exclusivisitic in our outlook in life due to the unavoidable differences and...
ON the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, the Apostle, which is celebrated on February 22, we are reminded of these very intriguing words Christ addressed to Peter after Peter rightly identified Christ as “the son of the living God”—"I will give you the...
MORE than our need for food, water and air, we all need to pray. Prayer is the most basic necessity we have, since that is what unites us with God our Creator and Father in whose life we are supposed to share knowingly and lovingly....
The World Day of the Sick that the Church celebrates every 11th of Pro-life month, February, gives us that signal that caring for the sick is an actualization of being pro-life. It is because Christ claims to be the life, “I am the way, the...
The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) in a report released in their website dated January 17, 2022 said that during the first nine months of 2021, ischaemic heart diseases were the leading cause of death with 110,332 cases or 18.3 percent of the total deaths in...
Several times in this Shalom column of the Davao Catholic Herald I have repeatedly written that, before Pope Francis brought up the word, Synodality whose essence is Listening as a prime discerning process, we in the Bishops-Ulama Conference, BUC, have painfully learned that, 1) God...
(An excerpt from the Homily of Most Rev. Romulo G. Valles, D.D., Archbishop of Davao, January 30, 2022 during the live streamed mass of the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, National Bible Sunday and Pro-Life Sunday at San Pedro Cathedral Parish, San Pedro Street, Davao...
MAKE no mistake about this. We are clearly commanded by Christ to love our enemies, to do good to those who hate us, to bless those who curse us, to pray for those who mistreat us, etc. (cfr. Lk 6,27-38) That may sound impossible to do,...