BLOGGER MUSINGS OVER COFFEE

          To a retiree like me, with nowhere to go out to in the morning, breakfast is a pleasant ceremony of waking up to the physical world, provided there is no Duterte aggravation in the news.  From my chair at the table, through the parted curtains the promise of a sunny day is clear in the cascade of morning light spilling all over the garden lawn and somehow that wholesome feeling embraces you like the warmth of coffee spreading all over inside.  And intrusively, from somewhere you do not wish to define at the moment, comes a reminder to be thankful because you realize that despite the aches and discomforts of ageing, you are among the fortunate who may spend the afternoon of life without much of the burdens and pains that you see weighing down others around you.

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             Thoughts and feelings compete in a slow unruly race for priority in your order of business for the day which, to all indications, you will be spending alone.  The wife told me she will be in church the whole day for this "summit" where all the ministry heads and members, lay ministers, lectors and commentators will go through rites of renewal and recommissioning in the service of the church.  Yesterday, she spent half the day for choir practice as head of the Parish music ministry.  Some days she goes with her St. Paul's College Manila classmates of yore for their regular lunch out and visit to the hospice where some of their nun-teachers are retired to bring them goodies and cheers.  If not this or that, she would have her nearest grandchild or two fetched and turn our house into a day care center.  So even when she is around, I would miss her and so I would take her out for dinner to be alone with her while we are still both awake.  But I am also enjoying it all for yet another reason: she never learned to play mahjong.

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          A friend, one among maybe a dozen who have the disposition to follow my blog told me he liked what I posted a few days ago and suggested that I should be posting and sharing my brainstorms more often.  That is an idea that is always there but there are more days when I would opt to do something more relaxing physical activities than composing a blog which is really not easy and could be demanding.  You have to come up with fairly sensible thoughts, arrange them in effective and sequential logic, and convey them with the best vocabulary and grammar you are capable of without ignoring your feel about cadence and syntax.  This must be the reason why even the accomplished commentators in newspapers we love to read do not write a column every day and even among the literate class, writing is a rarely attempted as a diversions.  You have to have the bent for it or,  like a golf buddy who also writes,  you believe in the medical theory that writing avoids or delays the onset of dementia or Alzheimer's disease.  I  subscribe to that, less as a medical fact and more as a basis for hope and so I persist to write as I am doing, in the hope that I will never be talking to myself aloud ever, debunking the title of this blogspot.

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                 On our way to go to Sunday mass usually at our village Parish, I would wonder how the sermon will be this time and more often my expectation is not wrong.  Admittedly overworked in their physical and mental capacities, our visiting or parish priests can, understandably only deliver lullaby homilies or recycled admonitions on faith and Christian values often tenuously and vaguely applied or related to the laymen's daily existence.  Prodded by this frequent disconnect, I had asked: Why cannot or will not the Catholic Church adopt the Protestant practice of inviting and allowing notable laymen to occasionally deliver the homily in the mass? 

                 The question is not irreverent and it is not to doubt the abilities of our priests.  Adopting the Protestant practice just could provide a positive break from a routine that many awake churchgoers sleep through.  A view from the pulpit, in many ways, is not the same as the view from the pews and occasionally having both could well bridge the disconnect. A layman will conscientiously and deliberately prepare his sharing which a priest cannot always do for lack of time  and  the result will likely be a more down to earth conversation easier for his fellow laymen to understand and relate to their lives.  Consider this also: When a layman repeatedly turns down an invitation to participate in the mass, he admits to something negative about himself which he may not accept for long,  But once a layman accepts the responsibility to give an occasional homily or sharing, he assumes a moral stature in the community that, human nature being inherently good, will subconsciously encourage and motivate  him to live up to, providing quite unintentionally a laudable model for others to look at.   This kind of involvement when put in place and propagated by the Church could begin, albeit imperceptible, an evolution that, over time, can effect social and moral transformations starting from the Parish community level and spreading beyond.  

                  I  recall to mind that as a young professional I would occasionally attend Sunday service at the Ellinwood protestant church in Malate just to listen to then Col.Fidel Ramos, the late senators Jovito Salonga and Neptali Gonzales Sr., whenever one of them was to deliver the sermon. They were members of the Ellinwood congregation even before they rose to prominence and because I looked up to them, listening to their words and points of view were particularly inspiring in lay terms and to which I could relate to more than those from common bishops and priests. I do not know much their roles as occasional preachers influenced the shaping and direction they took in their public lives but over the years, I came to believe that they have generally lived the Christian values I heard in their homilies . The personal point is, they were models easier to emulate because they were not religious  models but laymen like me. Also the  additional argument I am trying advance is : Maybe the Church should deliberately reach out for the potentials of upstanding laymen  to assist in pursuing its social indoctrination and evangelizing, not just  being contribution collectors, host givers or gospel readers. 

             I repeated the question I began with to a friend who is demonstrably religious and knowledgeable but he could not give me any cogent answer except to say that only priests have the authority to give the homily as part of the mass, basically the same answer given by priests citing no clear gospel justification for support.   Quite dogmatic and unarguable.

                       I just hope that someday soon the Church will re-examine this idea among other human realities in our times to which the Church has not yet chosen to adjust .