Cristina Montes, from the Philippines, is a lawyer, writer, amateur astronomer, a gardening enthusiast, a voracious reader, a karate brown belter, an avid traveler, and a lover of birds, fish, rabbits, and horses. She is a die-hard Lord of the Rings fan who reads the entire trilogy once a year. She is the eldest daughter in a large, happy Catholic family.
An article came out in the Philippine Daily Inquirer where the author, a college sophomore, tries to justify why he is no longer a Catholic. To his credit, the author maintains a civil tone and seems to be sincerely searching for wisdom. But his thinking exemplifies a common malady of the modern mind: that of [...]
It was 2006, the time the Da Vinci Code movie was released. Debates buzzed in Catholic blogosphere, while the billboards advertising the movie were displayed throughout the city. It was hard not to see Leonardo’s Last Supper and not think “Dan Brown”. But another feature of the painting caught my attention. This, and all the [...]
The lot falls upon me to post in this website today, February 28, 2013, the last day of Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificate. It is also my lot to have lived through the start of his pontificate, and now, it shall be my lot to live through the conclave to elect his next successor. Twice I [...]
I’m one of the young Catholics who, thanks to Pope Benedict XVI’s Summorum Pontificum, were able to attend a Traditional Latin Mass in the Extraordinary Form for the first time. I distinctly remember that Sunday, how I dressed up and wore high heeled shoes despite the long commute from my house and the church. I [...]
The revived popularity of Les Miserables reminds me of when I first read Victor Hugo’s timeless tale at the age of 14. I loved the book because it appealed to my adolescent inner revolutionary. The prospect of mounting the barricades to free the world of poverty and oppression looked attractive. As I matured, I realized [...]
That Christmas has become more and more secularized is obvious. But we are not helpless against the tide. There are things we can do to restore and maintain the meaning of the holiday for ourselves and for our families, and for those around us. We can start by making our own personal observance of Advent [...]
I remembered the Lord of the Rings (LOTR) trilogy several times while I was reading Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Spe Salvi five years ago. When someone, upon encouraging me to read the encyclical, recounted to me the encyclical’s treatment of eternal life, death, immortality, and the human dilemma between not wanting to die and not wanting [...]
St. Pedro Calungsod, whom I wrote about in my last post, was not the only one who was canonized on October 21, 2012. Also canonized with him were two Americans (St. Marianne Cope and St. Kateri Tekakwitha), a German laywoman named St.Anna Schafer, the martyred French Jesuit St., Jacques Berthieu, the Italian St. Giovanni Battista [...]
Update: The canonization of St. Pedro Calungsod can be watched via livestream on October 21, 2010 here. The Pope will canonize a teenage Filipino martyr on October 21 of this year. Pedro Calungsod, from one of the Visayan islands (the exact one is unknown), will be the second canonized Filipino saint and, like St. Lorenzo [...]
Ever since I’ve learned about the Camino de Santiago – a centuries-old pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela, where the cathedral housing the remains of St. James the Greater is located – I’ve been obsessed with it. When I was preparing to leave for Pamplona, Spain to pursue further studies, walking the Camino figured in [...]
As my one-year master’s degree program in Pamplona, Spain closes, memories of my first days here flood back. I remember with fondness and embarrassment my first attempts to speak and understand Spanish. One of the tips I found useful was to read in Spanish something I am already familiar with in my own languages. I [...]
Q. How do you pronounce “ignitum”? A. Well, you have some options. The Romans would have said ig-NEE-toom. In church, we’d say “in-YEE-toom.”
Why?
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