The Underpinning

  By Roy Cimagala What is Pharisaical legalism? At bottom, it’s the understanding of law that is based only on our human ways, ignoring the ultimate basis of law who is God as revealed fully in Christ. As such, it tends to be rigid, to be quick to judge and to claim it has the …

  By Fr. Roy Cimagala That’s right! If we are truly and consistently Christian, fear would have no place in our heart other than that wonderful gift of the Holy Spirit himself that is the fear of the Lord, which is a healthy kind of fear. The fear of the Lord is the fear of offending …

  By Roy Cimagala In our liturgical celebrations, we can either be lavish or austere depending on the circumstances. What is important is what is in our heart — whether there is real love or not, whether there is a sincere effort to worship and please God or we are just making a show, whether we …

  By Fr. Roy Cimagala In life, we have to learn how to give due attention and care to both the pressing things and the precious ones. In the end, we have to learn how to give due attention and care to all the different aspects and dimensions of our life: The material and the spiritual, …

  By Fr. Roy Cimagala That beautiful gospel story of a centurion who approached Christ on behalf of his dying servant, importuning Christ for a miracle to happen, that is, for his servant to survive, (cfr. Matthew 8:5-11) tells us precious lessons about how our faith in Christ should be. It should be a faith that …

  By Fr. Roy Cimagala “As Jesus passed from thence, there followed him two blind men crying out and saying, ‘Have mercy on us, O Son of David.’” (Matthew 9:27) This part of the gospel reminds us that we have to have a strong faith to get the attention and favor of God. We need to …

  By Fr. Roy Cimagala That gospel story of the paralytic brought by his friends with great effort to Christ for healing, (cfr. Luke 5:17-26) can tell us a number of things. One is that we need a strong faith when we need to ask God for some special favor. Another would be that miracles are …

  By Fr. Roy Cimagala There’s that funny part in the gospel where some leading Jews were accusing Christ of being “possessed by Beelzebul,” and “by the prince of demons he drives out demons.” (Mark 3:22) Christ, of course, saw the blatant contradiction of their reasoning. “How can Satan drive out Satan?” he said. “If a …

  By Fr. Roy Cimagala That gospel episode where Christ in the synagogue in Nazareth faulted the people for their lack of faith (cfr. Luke 4:24-30) reminds us that we have to learn how to live by faith, with our thoughts and intentions and everything in our interior world mainly inspired and directed by faith rather …

  By Fr. Roy Cimagala What can we learn from the parable Christ told the chief priests and the elders of the people, about a father with two sons whom he asked to work in the vineyard? (cfr. 21, 28-32) The first son at first said no, but later on changed his mind and went to …