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By Jun Terra
The Lenten season in Britain is a very mild
affair. The crucifixion on Good Friday is commemorated by eating hot
cross buns. On Easter Day, children gorge themselves on chocolate
eggs and bunnies; the adults do the round of car-boot and shop
sales. “It is just a spring festival . . . school halls are
decorated with pagan fertility symbols,” the writer Susan Elkin
sniffily observes. She fails to mention though that paganism is the
old religion, that it has a longer history compared with
Christianity’s 1,400 years in Britain, and that many of its rites
and symbols—yes, including the cross—were adapted by
Christianity. “Chicks, rabbits and eggs abound. There is hardly a
cross in sight,” she moans. If she misses the cross during Lent,
then she should spend the season in the Philippines where
Christianity is even younger, a mere 487-year-old toddler. There she
won’t see bunnies and chocolate eggs, but the instruments of
torture that accompanied Christ on his way to martyrdom.
On Good Friday, the via crucis is re-enacted all
over the country. A penitent who takes the role of Christ carries
the cross through all the stations to Calvary and he is lashed with
whips by those who play the role of Roman soldiers until he bleeds
and falls to the ground. He is then crucified upon reaching the last
station at the exact hour of the original crucifixion. In San
Fernando, Pampanga, a penitent who acts as Christ leaves nothing to
the imagination and has his palms and feet nailed to the cross.
Miraculously, he survives to come back for more punishment the
following year.
The sleepy town of San Marcelino in Zambales
gets roused up once a years when thousands of visitors from the
neighbouring towns come to watch its colourful via crucis, complete
with penitents flaying their backs with lashes.
Other rites have grown around the suffering and
martyrdom of Christ. Every year, according to Rorie Fajardo of the
Philippine News and Features, thousands of Catholic devotees crowd
into the village of Dampol in Pulilan, Bulacan to witness the
penitents cut one another on the back with the sharp end of broken
glass. Then, with their faces covered, they walk and dance around
the village as pray and flay their bleeding backs with whips. They
make their way to the church where dancing old women wait for them.
Some enter the church and lie, face-down on the floor, spread-eagled
in front of the altar. Devotees come and whip their legs with ropes.
Those who stay outside under the scorching sun are similarly
whipped. There is no escape from the whip. Before four in the
afternoon, all the penitents jump into the Angat river to wash the
grime and blood off their punished bodies.
But it is not all blood and gloom on Good Friday
in Barrio Dampol. “Parang piyesta dito sa amin,” says
78-year-old Amanda Sabino to Rorie, “tuwing Biyernes Santo.”
Every household prepares food for guests and for anyone who joins
the rites at the chapels. All kinds of food except meat are served.
And, with the establishment of the rites as a fixture in the tourist
calendar, vendors, pedicab drivers and other enterprising souls make
a killing. Once a year, at least, the economy of Barrio Dampol
experiences a surge.
In the town of Jordan, Guimaras, Christ’s
passion and death is commemorated with a play called Ang Pagtaltal
sa Guimaras. Pagtaltal in Hiligaynon, the dialect of the place,
means to hammer off the nails, or the taking down of Christ from the
cross. The play which follows the triumphal entry of Christ in
Jerusalem and his crucifixion at Golgotha, is enacted on a stage
with members of the community participating. It has echoes of the
world-famous Oberammergau passion play in Germany. Since 10 years
ago when it was first performed, it has become the most popular
Lenten draw in Western Visayas.
At Calinog, on the slopes of the scenic Marikudo
hills in Central Iloilo, a serial play called Ang Paghuhukom (or the
Judgment of Jesus) is performed daily from Palm Sunday up to Easter.
Kapiyas or makeshift altars are set up in the side streets to serve
as stations of the cross. These altars used to be made of bamboo,
coconut palm fronds and colorfully woven straw mats. These days, OFW
petrodollars have seen to it that the native materials are replaced
with kitsch tapestry from the Middle East, mechanically-operated
figurines, artificial waterfalls, blinking lights and other special
effects.
But as in Calinog, in Mount Banahao—revered as
a sacred mountain by New Age devotees—and elsewhere in the
Philippines, Holy Week is not the preserve of Jesus Christ. Folk
healers take to the caves dotting the hills and craggy mountains of
Dingle town, 42 kms. north of Calinog where they utter arcane
incantations to archaic rituals. The vegetation in the caves is said
to ooze with potent powers to cure the sick, summon dead spirits and
to make one invincible. Herbalists gather roots vines, barks and
leaves to make into a potpourri mixed with oil which they then cook
on Good Friday. The oil is used to repel malevolent spirits,
especially the dreaded aswang that still pervades the island.
When Susan Elkin complains that there is hardly
a cross in sight at Lent in the UK, she could have a surfeit of the
cross in the Philippines, where the re-enactments of the martyrdom
of Christ have been elevated to theatrical and realistic heights
they can rival the original event. She may be able to get away from
furry toys and chocolate eggs of the British Lent, but one thing is
sure, she will not be able to avoid having a brush with that darned,
old-time religion, paganism, even in the Philippines especially
during the Lenten season.
Juntrr@yahoo.co.uk
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