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To starve for Eternal Sustenance

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Every week, on the Lord's day, a Eucharistic minister pays my family a visit to enable my mother to receive Holy Communion despite her temporary inability to go out and attend Holy Mass in church. My mother had been hospitalized in 2015 for a heart ailment, and though declared well enough to be discharged after a couple of weeks, her doctor was emphatic about limiting physical exertion and avoiding all sources of stress. This warranted significant adjustments on her lifestyle, including doing away with trips to the nearby church – on Sundays and any day for that matter. As any Catholic faithful knows, being deprived of the Eucharist all of a sudden is akin to going on a hunger strike when one has been accustomed to taking three squares a day. One simply becomes weaker in the spiritual sense when the soul isn’t nourished by the Lord in the Eucharist. Hence, my mother’s reception of Holy Communion was soon worked out after making arrangements with the parish in our community. The wee...
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Orchestra in the moonlight

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Over dinner tonight I was flabbergasted to learn that my mom was once serenaded with a complete orchestra as accompaniment! Don't those things only happen in the movies?? Apparently not. We started talking about it when I asked her if she had experienced studying in a Catholic school. “Yes, at Blessed Academy,” she replied. It was in the province where she grew up, and she said she and one of her sisters were sent there by their parents to be far from the Japanese soldiers, who came in droves when the Philippines got involved in the war. This was in the early 1940s. She related how she attended about a year of high school there and lived in the same place for the duration of the school year. Then she casually mentioned the time she was serenaded and chuckled at the thought of the nuns and her schoolmates enjoying the treat immensely. ”Serenade?  Harana? Yung kinakantahan ka tapos nakadungaw ka sa bintana sa  2nd floor?” ” Oo, pero  full orchestra.” ”Full orchestra?! Pati ...
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icicle works

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There's one picture from our old photo albums at home that remains clear in my mind: that of a snapshot taken during my sister's birthday party. The scene was of children seated at little table and chairs in a garden, with balloons tied to the back rests of the chairs. Seated on one of the chairs was my childhood friend Mark, seemingly deep in concentration as he dug a wooden spoon into his ice cream cup. It's all too familiar for most kids in the 1970s when Magnolia was the unchallenged choice of ice cream, whether it was a popsicle or a drumstick you had in mind. I certainly had my fill of all of the offerings that Magnolia had in its heyday that seeing this poster of "Howie" and those "frozen delights" simply fills me with a sense of nostalgia! I instantly remember Aling Ising, the nice, bespectacled lady who stayed behind the ice cream cart under the big tree on the school grounds all throughout my years of elementary school. Come recess time, we...
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