Hermandad de Semana Santa

 March 30, 1989

Hermandad de Semana Santa

I’ve come from my Malaybalay hegira to an empty house, what with the family off to the beach in Bataan for the remainder of the week. Just as well, because reentering city clime after five days of awesome silence amidst pines, fog, stars and fireflies is daunting enough without the bustle of working parents and the racket of restless children.

Earlier I had wanted to join them on a trip to the old town in Sorsogon to observe the traditional Lenten rites, but plans changed overnight after word came through that the south road has become a virtual obstacle course, unsafe at any speed.

So I find myself marooned with the usual options: Visita Iglesia on Maundy Thursday, the Good Friday procession in San Pablo, San Fernando, or Bacolor, and the vigil at San Beda towards midnight of Holy Saturday. In between, there will be time aplenty to read, update my journal, write letters, clean out files, and spruce up the house for Easter.

Aurora Cruz was right the other day, of course, when she lamented the passing of the Christian Holy Week of our grandparents and remarked that, “When one social web disappears without an adequate surrogate, an uncomfortable vacuum ensues.”

But not, she bears reminding, in Agoo up north. There, this past decade or so, her old friend Joe Aspiras has been trying to revive all the rituals of Semana Santa, largely succeeding in restoring their religious character  and involving the entire community, patriarchs and urchins alike, un a colourful and moving panoply of ancient customs and traditions.

Literally the whole town is in ferment and flux the whole week as people from the furthest-flung baranggays converge on the Basilica de Nuestra Señora de la Caridad and the adjoining Plaza de la Virgen for the various events.

Kicking off the festivities is the traditional blessing of the palms on Palm Sunday, followed by the Estacion General and Via Crucis through Agoo’s main streets on Holy Tuesday. The public chanting of the Pasion at the public plaza begins on Maundy Thursday, immediately after the re-enactment of the Washing of the Feet and the Procession of the Blessed Sacrament inside the Basilica.

After the Siete Palabras in the afternoon of Good Friday comes two processions: that of the Santo Entierro at six, participated in by all the carrozas or statuaries depicting the various scenes and personalities of the Passion, and at eleven, of the Soledad.

Both are spectacular, but though the first is the more lavish production, the effect of the second is more dramatic.

When Joe first stepped into the picture, most of the old carrozas were either in a sorry state of disrepair or had simply disappeared, and the procession was a puny, half-hearted affair. Today, there are 27 of them, most life-sized and refurbished or crafted by the best artisans of Betis and Paete on commission by scions of Agoo’s principalia or Aspiras’ many equally devout friends from elsewhere.

Bejewelled, brilliantly illumined and enthroned on banks of massed fresh flowers, the images take nearly all of three hours to traverse the poblacion. That is because behind each carriage walk whole baranggays, brass bands and religious, civic and school organizations, making the town glow ethereally with thousand of lighted tapers.

The second procession is vastly more subdued and solemn. Only the statue of the Sorrowful Virgin, the Dolorosa, is borne aloft. Solitary, she goes round looking for the Dead Christ, accompanied only by women garbed from head to toe in mourning black. There is no music. The only sound heard is the shuffling of unshod feet, both tender and calloused, on the pavement.

The Soledad, I like to think, is my own personal contribution to Agoo’s religious festivities. Four or five years ago, I remarked casually to my old boss that, of all the features of Holy Week in Bicol when I was growing up and sideways, it had left the most profound impression. Aspiras introduced it in Agoo almost immediately after.

This is the reason why, I imagine, he has now recommended membership in a unique new feature of the sacred rites in that town, the Hermandad de Semana Santa, which entitles me to wear a special medallion and scapular and binds me to certain duties and responsibilities, among which are as follows:

   ..partic ipation in, as well as support for the liturgical rites of the Holy Week such as decoration of the Basilica, sponsorship of masses and other religious events, the feeding and housing of participants in said events when necessary and possible…

The membership also envisions that I will one day look after a carroza of my own in Agoo. It is for life, to be passed on to my heirs on my demise. I hope they will be as exceedingly proud of this rare honor when their turn comes, as I am, because it endeavours to keep a most precious heritage of our people alive for all time.

 

Sufficient Unto the Day

 February 27, 1990

Sufficient Unto the Day

For me a day in Baguio has always sufficed. A two or three day sojourn is grace, and more a heavenly windfall, fervently desired albeit yet beyond reach. But no matter how briefly, you come up each time laden with every care in the world and come down recharged, serene and ready to afce the onslaught of a dry and dizzy city.

I was up this weekend to visit an ailing aunt. A nun, she lives and works in a hospital run by her congregation. She entered the convent in 1940, and will shortly celebrate the 50^th anniversary of her religious life. At 72 she has known no other.

My aunt suffers from acute diabetes. So frequent and severe have been her attacks in the recent months that the mother superior, a gentle Cebuana half her age, thought I might speak to her about going down to Manila. She thinks it is time. My aunt knows it is.

More and more these days her mind is on the Bridegroom’s coming. But though eventually she would like to be laid to rest with her other sisters behind the motherhouse in Antipolo, for now she prefers to do the waiting up there. Largely unlettered, my aunt is guileless and stubborn as a child. Clearly there is no point arguing.

Meanwhile she is all childlike joy in anticipation of her jubilee. That and my anointing. About the first I can only be sanguine. Of the latter she seems absolutely certain. I pray that hers be both longer life and beatific vision.

My travelling companion, another aunt, opts to spend the night in the hospital. No nun myself I roam the city seeking cushier lodgings elsewhere, but where? Homey Inn Rocio is too far, and stylish Burnham Hotel just off Session Road is booked solid. In the end I land where I most desire to be, that other Baguio of ancient towering pines and more discrete charms.

The Safari Lodge on Leonard Wood Road fully lives up to its name. Over its main hall looms the grisly stuffed head of a black elephant, ivory tusks intact. Around are many trophies of owner Celso Tuazon’s big game junkets to Africa. My room is vast but the bath is filthy. The only other guest is Tessie Tomas, who is here to write. By nine the place is boarded up and all the lights are out.

I sleep fitfully, tired from the long trip but also anxious not to miss the early mass at the hospital chapel. By five-thirty I am silently cursing sour Nescafe Instant at a hamburger and sushi deli below the cathedral and marvelling at how much of the old mission town still remains: a local station was airing, not rock or jazz, but the day’s homily.

Even St. Augustine would have been pressed to improve on the readings Sunday, the last before Lent. First Isaiah: “Does a woman forget her baby at the breast, or fail to cherish the son of her womb? Yet, even if she forget, I will never forget you.” Then Matthew: “Look at the birds in the sky…Think of the flowers growing in the field…do not worry about tomorrow……” Truly my aunt has chosen the better part.

Later my other aunt and I tour John Hay and South Drive leisurely. As she hies off to the market I amble down to Session café, only to find a dreary new high-rise where it used to be. Refurbished the Star is brighter but lacks character; I linger at the counter of dingy Dainty bakery instead, before parking myself on a bench in Burnham to bask and peruse the papers.

Manila’s reek of EDSA; Baguio’s hardly make mention. All the front page of Saturday’s Gold Ore carries is a photo of soldiers, activists and Coryistas encamped on cathedral grounds four years ago, while only Pablito Sanidad bemoans Cory’s betrayal in his Sunday Midland Courier column. Here the real hot items are the granting of autonomy to Ifugao, the ejection of squatters from the Busol watershed, and the suspension of the city’s lotto permit.

More honest and engaging are the signs posted around the park. On one tree: “Please don’t hurt me / I too feel pain / I give you fresh water / I give you fresh air / I always bow down to you / why do you cut me down?” Beside a pumping shed: “Water is not made from magic, it is a carefully manufactured product, don’t waste it.” In Baguiol’s lung, I am happy to report, the trees and the flowers seem gayer today.

The nun looks lost when we say goodbye. My travelling companion is devastated, I am speechless. The afternoon sun blisters as we hit Manaoag to pay homage to Apo Baket, the North’s most renowned and ravishing virgin. I do not light a candle, but touch the hem of her skirt, asking that she guard my loved ones and guide my journey to Rome. Long after dark we sneak back into the city unimpeded and untainted by EDSA frenzy.

“Each day has enough trouble of its own,” says Matthew. Maybe not. This one only had light.

Beyond Sceptic Moths and Cynic Rusts

 February 13, 1990

Beyond Sceptic Moths and Cynic Rusts

Tomorrow is the Feast of St. valentine. It is the day of the year traditionally set aside for lovers, of which there are too few, or fools, of which there are too many. When, depending on your station in life, a diamond geegaw, a bouquet of flowers, a date in a fancy restaurant or a motel, or just a card is made to cover for 364 days of oblivion or infidelity, lassitude or indifference.

For not a few it will be a day of frantic waxing to forestall the inevitable waning of that most rare and precious commodity – love. The feast’s red symbols remind of fragility as much as they proclaim intensity: roses that bloom so gloriously but wilt too fast, hearts that throb so vigorously and then break into pieces of their own accord and at the slightest touch.

Love is not a permanent state. It is a fleeting moment. Learn that and make the best of life’s most gratuitous gift. Forget it and resign yourself to a limbo of pining and regretting. What did e.e. cummings write? “Be of love a little more careful than anything else.” In the end only those who love carefully – warily – understand that it is life, rather than death, which has no limits.

Show me a Hallmark card that says all that and I’ll celebrate this feast. Otherwise, I’m taking the advice of a girlfriend in New York who has made it a habit to report sick on Valentine’s and curl up in bed, alone. I have a mind to do exactly that this year and every February 14 hereafter.

I might because the very idea of compressing all my affective faculties into one day of frenzy repels me no end. And I might to damn the notion that the only way to love is to be busy and dizzy about it, for my own limited experience of such matters proves the contrary.

Love is not anticipation or manipulation; it is surprise. And I have found (as well as lost) it in the most unlikely places, at the least expected of times:

In dead of winter, keeping holy silence with a friend by a fountain in the Tuileries; alone in my garden, contemplating a scraggy pine my father planted the morning he died;; on a deserted beach in Bohol, breaking out into a hymn to the God who made sky, stars, and sea with a soulmate. But mostly, as the autumn of life impends, on rereading letters from those who have loved me in words I know for certain will last longer than I shall.

Sex? Yes, that too, in the sudden rushing of the blood to my head, the little deaths that coupling brings, now alas but too rarely. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Now it is no longer the rage of the sharing and the abandon of the melding, but the perfect comprehension the smallest, tenderest gestures bring – a look, a caress, a sigh speak just as eloquently of desire, evoking past and promising future pleasures too ineffable, too profound.

To love is to be weak, not strong. It is to recognize in this, the apex of my life, that I am vulnerable and porous, still pervious to pain, still capable of wonder: that to be whole, I must be incomplete, and not anything I myself am and do can fill the vacuum. To love is to accept why there must be space within and distance without, because both are necessary for the savouring, the forgetting as much as the remembering.

To love, finally, is to understand as well as I am understood. It is to submit to a love always stronger and deeper than my own, and to be thankful that even in my innermost recesses, where not words nor gestures nor even pain or wonder will touch me, I am, because He is. To quote Chesterton:

In a time of sceptic moths and cynic rusts,

And fatted lives that of their weakness tire,

In a world of flying loves and fading lusts

It is something to be sure of a desire.

To love is to will one thing only. It is to be pure of heart.