AND 1: The Art of the Bank Shot

returning to sacred heart novitiate reunited me with its basketball court. this is where i learned to use the backboard (well, in this case a metal backboard) in shooting from mid-range. i was able to bring this to tuesday basketball at xavier during regency and even in afternoon basketball upon returning to the seminary. knowing how to use the glass as a weapon is surely a plus especially for an undersized big man like me (height-wise, that is! haha). it's quite helpful especially if i have no chance in hell sneaking a shot with a bunch of beanpoles in the paint.

i saw this video featuring current nba players who uses the glass often to make their shots. it's interesting to know that zach randolph, a resident fantasy basketball player in my rosters, and tim duncan, one of my favorite big men of all time, also use the glass as part of their arsenal. other players featured in this video were luis scola and dirk nowitzki.

i suppose using the glass in offense has been a lost art, as ballers prefer the sweet swish on the net rather than the hard hit on the backboard. even in lay-ups, there's a tendency to let the ball find its way to the hole than using the bank as insurance for the shot. well, it all boils down to what the player finds useful in the game. on my part, if the bank is open, i'd gladly cash in the shot.

Tempus Fugit

tempus fugit. time flies.

my first batch of students in xavier school will be graduating today. wow, those four years in high school went fast. i can still remember their faces after meeting me as their h1 cle teacher (for 5 of 8 h1 sections), and now they are walking down the aisle to get their high school diploma from one of, if not the best high school in the philippines.

Congratulations to Xavier High School Batch 2012, especially to my former students:
H1 B, C, E, G, H of school year 2008-2009
H2 D, G of school year 2009-2010
especially to my former students who will receive special distinctions: Kendrick Kyle Chua Santos, Matthew Tan, Jude Liao, Hadrian Ang, Jeron Teng, and Axel Ngui!

IGNITE THE LIGHT AND LET IT SHINE! LUCEAT LUX!

AND 1: LEGO + basketball = cute

for someone who used to play with lego as a child, this looks really cute.

when i taught scriptures to 1st year high school students, one of my favorite websites used was the brick testament, where bible stories were creatively (sometimes irreverently) portrayed using lego blocks.

i found the depictions of the "5 greatest nba finals moments" using lego blocks as somewhat innovative. recreating the gar heard buzzer beater, dr. j's reverse in the baseline, magic's endgame heroics against the celtics, the "microwave"'s dagger jumper, and his airness' "last shot" using legos was just... cool.

Happy Birthday Coach Crisostomo

wow, it has been a year since my students made this video for my birthday. good times.

Love Notes: Final reflections on love

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a few days before valentine's day, i thought on posting something from my h4 cle lessons about love, particularly those taken from m. scott peck's book "the road less travelled."

Looking back: God as Love in Salvation History
In salvation history, we have witnessed God’s love, and as we’ve discussed before, love as eros and agape. With M. Scott Peck’s definition of love involving the willful extension of oneself, it is once again applicable to our relationship with God. God made Himself known and came to aid the Israelites and thus, God’s infinite ego came to include man; man became part of God. But the relationship does not end there for God calls on man to love. Man thus allows God into his ego boundaries, to let God dwell in him and be part of his being. Moreover, God went even further and became man in Jesus Christ, who exemplified a model of love. Christ extended his ego boundaries towards the marginalized and the rich. Christ’ perfect love (life and sacrifice) moves us to love as he did. He shows us the power of love as a fulfillment of one’s being and thus we are all called to be Christ-like in loving ourselves and others. 

God is Love, both eros and agape
God gave humanity the freedom to love. We are drawn to God (eros, cathexis), but are called to freely choose and extend ourselves for that God (agape, breaking down ego boundaries). The result is that we continue to grow in freedom and in love.

We have the freedom to choose what we do, or at the least, how we feel and what we think of our lives. We have the freedom to do things that promote our growth and the growth of others. We have the freedom to love.

Hence, love is not mere attraction, nor is it mere sacrifice. Rather, freedom and love are messy, complicated things that require serious effort and attention. It is easy to simplify love according to what we see in the movies. Unfortunately, life is not that easy. However, because of that, it is much more rewarding. 

From Love to Justice
Love is the ultimate vocation that we are called to. It is our universal vocation, which can be uniquely expressed by every individual. However, after understanding the nature love—it is true; that our vocation, as much as it is ours, is one that involves others. We must love our neighbors.

Love of the beloved, though good, is not yet the fullest expression of love. Love must transcend this and be infused to society or it should become the standard of conduct in life. With this, we need to extend ourselves not just to those close to us, but to society in general, and more precisely our neighbor. This is where the call to justice begins.

Love Notes: Love as decision and commitment

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a few days before valentine's day, i thought on posting something from my h4 cle lessons about love, particularly those taken from m. scott peck's book "the road less travelled."

Looking back: Myths of Love
Each myth always involves the movement of the ego boundaries. It’s apparent that in many of these myths of love, the ego boundaries have been restricted or is sacrificed to the point that a person no longer grow. In such cases, since love is unable to achieve its goal (spiritual growth of self and others), these experiences are thus myths or in the words of Pope Benedict, “a caricature or an impoverished form of love.”

Love as decision and commitment
True love, according to M. Scott Peck, goes through three stages. The first of which is "falling in love", or infatuation. Here, love presents itself as a feeling, an emotion that we seek and enjoy. It brings pleasure, excitement, and ecstasy, but sooner or later, it will have to die down like other emotions. Love begins in physical attraction, but it takes more than that to be truly and really love.

As reality begins to set in to the picture, realities about love, the partner, and the decision come into the fore. This is the second stage known as "falling out of love" or disillusion. Here, love ceases to feel good, things to back to its normal and ordinary ways, and the love once found seems to be lost with the reality of the "other-ness" of the partner.

Some people stop on the first stage, others last until the second stage until partners find themselves torn apart by love itself. But the challenge is to bridge these stages and make a concrete decision to love.

The third stage of love is "choosing to love" or decision. Going beyond the feelings and imperfections, partners get to care and accept each other: to love each other in richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, for better of for worse. In the context of marriage, this love finds fulfillment as it builds a partnership of whole life: a total sharing that involves physical (love as bodily, as "two become one" in love), spiritual (commitment of spouses, with God at the center of their lives), material (sharing in building up the family and raising children), and psychological (union of mind, heart, soul) realities.

Love is therefore the capacity to share and care for the other. This decision to love brings forth a commitment to love oneself authentically ("to love your enemies") and perfectly ("to love the another as God has loved me").
 
tomorrow: final reflections on love

Love Notes: Myths of Love

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a few days before valentine's day, i thought on posting something from my h4 cle lessons about love, particularly those taken from m. scott peck's book "the road less travelled."

M. Scott Peck will continues his discussion on love by discussing other myths of love. He looks at what relationships aren’t really love because they fail to achieve what love is meant for.

1. Romantic Love / Fairy Tale Love
According to this, there is one person “out there” that is “destined” for us forever. This cannot be love because once again, it removes the role of free will and of effort.

2. Dependency
In dependency, a person may be putting forth tremendous effort, but it is not yet love because it is not truly free. True love must come from one’s freedom.

3. Cathexis without Love
You can cathect many things (hobbies, people, etc.) but it is not love if there’s NO personal spiritual growth. If we make what we cathect our end goal, then we don’t grow spiritually. Reminder though, cathecting itself is not necessarily bad since it allows us to extend our ego boundaries and grow (through our hobbies, etc.), but it becomes the myth, hence detrimental to growth when cathexis becomes obsessive 

4. “Self-Sacrifice.”
In this myth, the idea is that someone should always in order for it to be love. Again, we see a misconception of the act for love. It is not love because it does not lead to spiritual growth of the self and others.

Given all these myths, it is apparent that love is not a simple affair. It’s so easy to rush into love because of the “good” feelings it may provide us. But alas, emotions and feelings don’t last. To dwell on just this aspect of love draws us to the danger of bitterness and disappointment once we lose it later on. Relationships are tricky and very dynamic. M. Scott Peck (and even Pope Benedict) invites us to have a strong resolve; to have commitment in love. Couples have to work things out and think it through all the time.

tomorrow: love as decision and commitment

Love Notes: Love and the Myths of Love

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a few days before valentine's day, i thought on posting something from my h4 cle lessons about love, particularly those taken from m. scott peck's book "the road less travelled."

M. Scott Peck defines love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” Perhaps it is important thing to note that he does not define love according to what it is like (or characteristics of it), but rather according to the purpose it serves.

The Myth of Falling in Love - Man naturally wants to “Fall in love”
“Just as reality intrudes upon the two-year-old’s fantasy of omnipotence so does reality intrude upon the fantastic unity of the couple who have fallen in love. Sooner or later, in response to the problems of daily living… One by one, gradually or suddenly, the ego boundaries snap back into place; gradually or suddenly, they fall out of love.”

Falling in love is a myth holds that love is something that takes over us, much like that “mad passion” described by Pope Benedict XVI in Deus Caritas Est. Remember from Benedict XVI, Love is not something that just takes over us. We must work for it to happen. Moreover, Love is not a feeling because it is not an uncontrollable emotion, but rather a choice as exercised by our freedom that leads to personal growth.

Although falling in love is not yet real love, it is very similar to true love because of the experience of ego boundaries. When we fall in love, the boundaries of our ego are temporarily suspended. In authentic love, the boundaries are extended to include the other. Exercising real love gets us closer and closer to the “ecstasy” of transcending our ego boundaries.

The experience of falling in love must also move towards the experience of choosing to love. We may not control the experience of falling in love, but we are free, and responsible, for continuing to love.

Love is AGAIN both eros and agape: According to M. Scott Peck, the process of love involves stretching and thinning our ego boundaries to include the other. In other words, we are trying to expand our ego (a process that seems to be self-enlarging, i.e. eros). However, in doing so, we are paradoxically giving up the ego we once had. We have to sacrifice certain things in order for our ego boundaries to give. This is where agape comes in.

We can also begin to see parallelisms with our understanding of happiness and suffering from the previous lesson. The joy of growth and the happiness we derive from the fullness of our being should enable us to transcend the suffering of having to sacrifice and suffer for the growth of others.

tomorrow: myths of love

Love Notes: Ego Boundaries and Love

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a few days before valentine's day, i thought on posting something from my h4 cle lessons about love, particularly those taken from m. scott peck's book "the road less travelled."

What is the ego?
Often, we think of the word “ego” as having negative connotations. The way psychologists use this word, however, the word “ego” is not something bad. In Latin, ego merely means “I” or “me.” This includes all the values and attitudes and opinions we have about ourselves. It shapes the kinds of things that we will do. For example: We may be tempted to steal money, but then we decide not to because we say to ourselves, “Well I should not do that, because I see myself as an honest person.” And so we don’t.

Moreover, the ego we have drawn through the activity also reveals something more to the ego. The ego obviously has a shape (in this case, a circle), a line that distinguishes who we are from who we are not. The self is contained within the circle and what we are not or what we have yet to become remains outside. The line surrounding the ego represents what M. Scott Peck calls “ego boundaries” 

What are ego boundaries?
Ego boundaries are the limits of how we view ourselves. They usually develop naturally within an individual as he grows up and matures: from childhood all the way to adulthood. They continue to either extend (expand the ego) or retract (limit the ego). We want to extend our boundaries because by doing so, we end up with a “fuller” ego. This act, however, is not an easy task.

The hard reality is: to get the most out of life, we need to get out of our comfort zones, which is hard and we are not comfortable with this. We need to break free and experience many things to attain a fuller life. At the same time, we must remember that there are many things in life that are fixed and should be respected (i.e. laws, traditions and cultures, etc.)

If we want to discuss love, particularly how we as individuals love, we need to have a sense of how our identity is formed. Know that our conscious identity is largely determined by our habits, our attitudes, but most importantly, how we understand ourselves. In other words, our identity is not a fixed, genetically determined thing. From the perspective of our faith, we are not just our genes and our brains. We are something more—something flexible, something free, something with infinite possibilities.

tomorrow: love, and the myth of falling in love

Feast of Presentation of the Child Jesus

today is the feast of the presentation of the child jesus. mary and joseph brought the child jesus to the temple in jerusalem forty days after his birth, as part of the jewish ritual of purification after child birth. it was there where they met simeon, who said the words we pray during night prayer:
"lord, now you let your servant go in peace, your word has been fulfilled. 
my eyes have seen the salvation which you have prepared in the sight of every people, 
a light you reveal to the nations and the glory of your people israel."

these words were composed into this song by hangad, entitled "simeon's canticle." i used to show this video clip to my students in cle when we talk about vocation or god's call.



may we, like simeon, be witnesses to christ through our small yet significant deeds of letting his light shine in our lives, so that others may see his light.

xavier fair memories

in my three years as a xavier teacher, one of the events that i enjoyed the most was the xavier school fair. scheduled usually during the first weekend of february, it's the time of the year where people flock to xavier for the class-made booths, carnival rides, and the highly-anticipated variety show. traditionally, fairs have an "xs" integrated in the title, depending on the theme used for the given year. looking back, i had fond memories of three editions of xavier fairs: scorched, big bang theory, and foxsilized.

my first fair had the "wild wild west" theme, complete with horseback riding as one of the featured rides in the fair. that year, our class won the best booth as we got the highest income from among the booths in the fair. i also enjoyed the variety show, as it featured what perhaps was the "tail-end" of the resurgence of opm rock. that fair was also quite "colorful" with all the sub-plots involved. but that's another story.



my second fair had the "outer space" theme. unfortunately, i had rather vague memories of that fair, though i remember that i even "broadcasted" that such could actually end up as my last fair, but wasn't exactly so. our class booth was at the tail end of the income list, but i guess it didn't really matter at all. for some reason, i also forgot what transpired during the variety show. oh well, maybe it wasn't that much of a highlight then.



my third and last fair had the "dinosaur" theme. it was the first time i had to be "hands on" with a fair booth as a class adviser, and it was quite difficult juggling things with all the academic stuff at hand. but i enjoyed preparing the booth, from buying the prizes to the entire process of brainstorming and executing the plans. there was also much "drama" then with my advisory class, but that just made my final stretch at xavier quite memorable. the video above had some of the major highlights of the fair. i actually had a cameo somewhere in the middle. hahahaha!



this year, xavier will be using the "superheroes" theme. i won't be able to enjoy the fair this year due to prior commitments, but looks like it will be one interesting fair ahead. i am truly amused by this video done by my former students dancing to the tune of super junior's "sorry sorry"... even inside the director's office. wow. hahahaha.

in the end, all these are memories now. i enjoyed my three years working at xavier, and i can say that "i had my time." for now, there are more pressing things to deal with, and with the clock ticking, i guess i'm running out of time.

Bible talk: Praying with Scriptures

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in celebration of national bible week, i shall be sharing some of the lessons from my high 1 cle classes at xavier school last year, particularly about the sacred scriptures.
As we conclude our Bible talk series, we as Catholic Christians are challenged to do the following:

1. Read and interpret the Scriptures in the way the Church teaches us to do it.
The Bible is the written record of the memory of God’s people. As such, it must be read and understood in the context of time and space when it was written. To understand God’s message for us, it is important sometimes that we know the author’s intention at the time the message was written. But in reading the Bible, we must always make a constant effort to focus on its faith message.

2. Show reverence and respect in the way we handle it.
The Bible is not an ordinary book. It should be accorded the reverence and appreciation it deserves. It is a Holy Book, a book that can transform us and lead us to God.

3. Pray with it.
For the Bible to help us really understand God’s message in faith, we need to establish a certain pattern in reading the Scriptures. We do this in the spirit of prayer, since it is God who speaks to us. The following are some steps in doing this:

• Read the text. What does it tell? Paraphrase it in your mind
• React to the text. What is it telling you in particular? What words or verses or phrases in the text struck you?
• Talk to God about this word/phrase/verse that struck you. Tell Him about your difficulty if you are to live out His Word.
• Read the text again slowly. Go into quiet. Simply listen. Allow God to give you spiritual thoughts and insights about the text.
• Discern what God wants you to do based from His message in this particular text. And resolve to do something concrete about this.
• End with a simple formula prayer.

4. Live out its message.
To live by the Word of God is really the ultimate goal of our reading, praying and studying the Bible. The more we apply the message of the Bible in our daily lives, the more we can really understand and appreciate it. This will help us see the true meaning and value of our life in relation to God who loves us and who transforms us into His loving children.

Bible talk: The Scriptures and the Liturgy

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in celebration of national bible week, i shall be sharing some of the lessons from my high 1 cle classes at xavier school last year, particularly about the sacred scriptures.

The Church holds this book in high regard because it is the primary source where we draw the foundation of our faith as God’s people. This is concretely expressed in the Church’s prayer life, especially in the Liturgy. During the Mass, God’s Word is celebrated in the Liturgy of the Word. Bible readings are taken from the Old and the New Testaments. The priest, in his homily, helps the faithful to interpret God’s message in the present time and context. Several gestures are likewise done to show reverence to God’s Word during the Mass. (e.g. standing position during the Gospel reading, incensing the book of Gospels before reading the Gospel, etc.)

Tomorrow: Praying with Scriptures

Bible talk: Old and New Testaments

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in celebration of national bible week, i shall be sharing some of the lessons from my high 1 cle classes at xavier school last year, particularly about the sacred scriptures.
 
The Old Testament
The Old Testament is a collection of inspired books which present the story of God’s original covenant/agreement with His chosen people and the many consequences of this covenant on their lives not only as individuals but especially as a nation. “Old” should be understood as original when referring to the Old Testament. These books bear witness to God’s loving plan of salvation for man as manifested in the history of the chosen people, the Israelites. The Old Testament was deliberately so oriented that it should prepare for and declare in prophecy the coming of Christ, the Redeemer of all men. The 46 books of the Old Testament are divided as follows: the Pentateuch/Torah/Law; the Historical Books; the Wisdom Books and the Prophetic Books 

The New Testament
The New Testament deals with the new covenant of God’s people with Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten Son who became man to save humankind from sin. The New Testament is a collection of inspired books about the life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the life of the early Church. The New Testament fulfills what has been prophesied in the OT about the Messiah. Jesus Christ is the ultimate truth of God’s revelation, the central figure in God’s plan of salvation. He is the Word Incarnate, the Unique Word of the Sacred Scriptures. The 27 books of the New Testament include: the 4 Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles or letters to the Christians and the Book of Revelation.

The Old Testament and the New Testament are distinct, yet closely linked. We are to read each one in light of the other. The Old Testament should be read in the light of Christ in the New Testament. St. Augustine used to say that: "The New Testament lies hidden in the Old, and the Old Testament is revealed/unveiled in the New." What he meant is that Jesus showed us how the things that God says and does in the Old Testament pointed to what He says and does in the New. In turn, what Jesus says and does in the New Testament sheds light on the promises and events we read about in the Old Testament.

Tomorrow: The Scriptures and Liturgy

Bible talk: Canon of the Scriptures

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in celebration of national bible week, i shall be sharing some of the lessons from my high 1 cle classes at xavier school last year, particularly about the sacred scriptures.

If God has revealed Himself by communicating His will to man, man must be able to know with assurance where that revelation lies. Hence, there is the need for a list of books of the Bible.

The official list of Bible books was determined by the believing community which had a “sense” of which books told the truth about who God is. This list is known as the Canon of the Bible. This refers to the books in the Old and the New Testaments, which are recognized by the Church as divinely inspired since they truly reveal God’s love and His relationship with His people then and now.

Guided by the Holy Spirit, the Church determined the inspired books in terms of their apostolic origin, coherence with the essential Gospel teachings and constant use in the Church’s liturgy. (CFC 88) The final list of books of the Bible officially came to us through the Council of Trent in 1546. There are 73 books in the Catholic Bible, 46 from the OT and 27 from the NT.

Tomorrow: The Old and New Testaments

Bible talk: Sacred Scriptures and Sacred Tradition

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in celebration of national bible week, i shall be sharing some of the lessons from my high 1 cle classes at xavier school last year, particularly about the sacred scriptures.

The word tradition comes from the Latin tradere which means “to hand over/ to hand down.” Tradition is a term the Church uses to the “living transmission” of the deposit of faith/message given by Christ to the apostles and to the Church. This “living transmission” is accomplished through the power of the Holy Spirit guiding the Church. Church’s Tradition is inseparable from Scripture.

Since Sacred Scriptures is written in a culture, context and language which is very far from our own, we need Church tradition to interpret the Scriptures and to make the message a reality in our present context.

Both Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture come from the same source—God, with the same goal of revealing God. Therefore we cannot draw truth from Scripture alone, or Tradition alone. The Magisterium, or the teaching office/authority of the Church, has the task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God in the name of Jesus Christ.

Tomorrow: Canon as the official list of books in the Bible

Bible talk: How was the Bible formed?

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in celebration of national bible week, i shall be sharing some of the lessons from my high 1 cle classes at xavier school last year, particularly about the sacred scriptures.

The Bible took centuries to take shape and many groups and individuals were involved in this long process. The contents of the Bible particularly the Old Testament came from stories/events personally or communally experienced by God’s people that were handed on to succeeding generations through oral tradition which was mostly in the form of story telling and later on compiled, edited, and re-edited through written tradition. Some of the content from the oral traditions dated back to 1900 years before the coming of Christ. These included songs, narratives prayers and poems as well speeches and writings of the prophets and codes or laws. Priests and other trained scribes who were employed by Israelite kings gathered these oral and written materials, edited, organized and compiled them into books. Then they had to decide which books will be included in the final list. These process of gathering, writing, editing, selecting and compiling these materials into books and accepting them as inspired or authoritative took many years. The development of the OT alone must have taken more than 1000 years.

On Biblical Inspiration
Biblical inspiration means that God or the Spirit of God is at work in the community of Israel and in the early Christian community to produce through a number of authors, a series of books that witness to God’s revelation of Himself. This means that God worked in and through the human authors in such a way that they use their skills, ideas and other talents in writing what God wanted them to write for the sake of our salvation. With this, we can say that God influenced the entire formation of the Bible. He inspired and guided the preachers, writers, editors and copyist and other people who selected and compiled the Sacred Scriptures.

Vatican II states further, “ Since all Scripture was written, compiled and edited under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of the Scripture firmly, faithfully and without error teach the truth which God for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided in the Sacred Scriptures” (Vat. II Dei Verbum II). Through this, the Church teaches that the religious messages found in the Bible are without error, that the discrepancies and inaccuracies in the details of the narratives do not affect the truths about salvation that teach us who God is and who we are, and God’s ultimate plan for our journey through life.

Tomorrow: Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition

Bible talk: What is the Bible?

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in celebration of national bible week, i shall be sharing some of the lessons from my high 1 cle classes at xavier school last year, particularly about the sacred scriptures.

In life...
Why do we read?
What do we usually read?
What constitutes a good reading material?
Reading is a basic skill that needs to be developed and loved. It is a basic tool for communication, expression and understanding. We read different materials for different reasons. Reading enhances individual growth.

What is the Bible?
• The word Bible originates from the Latin word “biblia” which means “book”
• The Greek word “biblia” which is the plural form of ‘biblion’ means “books”

The Bible is...
• the most translated, most studied and most venerated book in the world;
• known with different names: Bible, Holy Scriptures, Word of God, Good News, Holy Book, Book of Life. These different names are indications of the different ways it is regarded by people through the ages.
• a collection of 73 books or sacred writings about God which come in different literary forms such as poems, historical accounts, prayers, laws and exhortations, narratives, prophetic writings, parables, letters.
• divided into two main parts: the Old Testament and the New Testament. In the Catholic Bible, there are 46 books in the Old Testament and 27 books in the New Testament. The Protestant Bible has only 39 books in the Old Testament and 27 books in the New Testament.
• the 7 books which are recognized in the Catholic Bible are called Deuterocaconicals (books of Christian Old Testament that are not included in the Jewish bible, i.e. Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1&2 Maccabees)

What makes the Bible unique?

1. Its Message
God reveals Himself to us as Love. Revelation is God’s self-communication to man. This self-revelation of God took place primarily in history: in the lives of the patriarchs, in the saving events of the Exodus, in the covenant of Israel with God, and finally in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Through the Bible, we are able to read about how God has acted in the lives of the particular figures/people of Israel in the Old Testament to communicate His great love for man. This self-communication is made concrete in the very person of Jesus Christ who is “God-with-us” as we read His life in the New Testament.

Although not always directly expressed, every word of the Scriptures tells us about God’s will for salvation, for the fullness of life for His people and for all creation. This divine will for salvation was fully made clear in Jesus. (Read Col. 1:15-20, Eph 1: 3-6, 3:2-6). This is why the entire Bible is often referred to as the record of “Salvation history”. As such, salvation history is the story of God’s plan of salvation, which began with Israel, reached its climax in Jesus Christ, continues to our present time in the Church and will go on till the end of time. Indeed, the Bible gives us a glimpse of who God is – His character and His purpose in creating, redeeming and sanctifying us.

2. Its Origin
The Bible is the Word of God in the words of men. In the words of Vatican II,
“...the books of the Old and New Testaments, whole and entire with all their parts were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on such to the Church itself.” (Vatican II, Dei Verbum II) This confirms what has been said by St. Paul in his letter to Timothy. (see 2 Timothy 3:16)

3. Its Purpose and Nature
The Bible is a book of faith, which grew from a believing community. The books of the bible are read in the light of faith. We should read the Bible on its own terms: not as a science or history book but as a religious book about the love story between God and man. The Bible must be read and understood in the sense in which it was intended by God and by the biblical authors. Their purpose was not to write a history book in the modern western sense, but to set forth the history of God’s plan of salvation. In a way, we can analogously compare the Bible to a romance novel than any other form of literature. It is basically a book narrating the love story of God and his people. What is special about the Bible as a romance novel is that the reader is invited not just to read it but to be part of it! The Word of God, when it is read or listened to in the openness of faith can bring God in His self-revelation closer to us and can lead us to a close encounter with Him.

We read the Bible for many reasons. But it is only by reading the Bible with faith and with an open heart that we can experience God’s word in a living way. Ultimately, we read it with the hope that God’s Word will fill up our minds, set aflame our hearts, transform us and draw us to communion with the living God who speaks to us through it. In faith, we accept completely that God Himself is speaking to us through the events, characters and figures we encounter in the passages. When we read the Bible with faith, we allow God’s Word to touch us, to inspire us, to give us hope and to help us find meaning, comfort and strength. (Read Hebrews 4:12) 

Tomorrow: How was the Bible formed?

Bible talk: References

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here are the sources, both primary and secondary, for the series entitled "Bible Talk"

Primary Sources:
• New American Bible / New Revised Standard Version
• Catechism of the Catholic Church
• Vatican II – Dei Verbum
• Catechism for Filipino Catholics
• Class notes: Faith and Revelation, Scripture, Tradition and Magisterium (Loyola School of Theology, 2005-2007)

Secondary Sources:
• Called to Discover Our Christian Roots by Frago & Salvosa III (Sibs Publishing House)
• Hanep Biblia by John Aranda Cabrido, SDB (Salesiana Books by Don Bosco Press)
• The Word of God for Us (Sadlier Series)
• XS CLE High 1 Lesson Plans /Syllabus S.Y. 2009-2011

And the winner of the Jeron Teng sweepstakes is...

from archer pride's twitter account

xavier school standout jeron teng commits to play for de la salle university in the upcoming 75th season of the uaap men's basketball tournament. la salle won the "jeron teng sweepstakes" against other teams like ateneo and nu who reportedly tried to convince him to play for their school's basketball team.

teng, a former rp u-16 player and youth olympics participant, made the news by scoring 104 points against grace christian school in last year's tiong lian tournament. he is expected to the the "future" of the la salle basketball team, which underwent a coaching overhaul after missing the final four in season 74. a few months back, coach gee abanilla took over the head coaching job from dindo pumaren, who resigned after a disappointing finish last year. with a fresh system at hand, it would be interesting to watch "mr. 104" take a splash at college basketball against the likes of former rp youth teammates bobby ray parks and kiefer ravena.

for sure, much pressure will be on him as he is expected to lead the green archers back to their glory years. this is indeed an interesting start of the things to come season 75 and i expect a few more surprises around march before the start of the pre-season tournaments.

initially, i was hoping that my former student would take over kirk long's #12 jersey in the ateneo next season, but i guess that's how things go. i may be at the "other" side during the rivalry game, but i will surely show support to jeron in his endeavors especially in basketball. i'll always be proud of jeron in the same way that i'm also proud of my former students who thrive in their respective fields.

luceat lux!