Every year I approach the Holy Week with a certain amount of trepidation. As the city's denizens make the trek back to their home provinces or flee the country to escape the heat, Metro Manila winds down and its incessant hum comes to a stop. Shopping malls shut, streets empty, and there is only stillness. It was worse when I was a kid: in the days before cable television the only shows that the TV channels aired from Maundy Thursday to Black Saturday were The Robe, The Ten Commandments, and Ben-Hur. It's uncanny how from one show to the next the characters all looked and talked alike - hirsute and with the voice of God. It was a penitent's dream blockbuster lineup. Denied all distractions, there was not much one can do but look inward. Which is not always a pretty sight. Hence, to this day, the trepidation.
But bad television and the severe silence notwithstanding, I've come to accept the Holy Week and embrace it. For one, traditions that I would not normally notice are served up sometimes spare (the starkness of a church whose statues are covered in purple cloth) or sometimes gaudy (the last mass at which the priest washes feet while incense lingers in the air and the choir chants tantum ergo), enriching symbols of my Catholic beliefs of faith, charity, and hope.
Hope, most importantly. In a world hit by one financial crisis after another, rocked by national and international (not to mention my own internal) conflicts, yet never once losing its commercial bustle, these few days give me an opportunity to reflect about my place in it and to discover - once again - that redemption is always an available option. That though I sometimes do things that I'm not necessarily proud of, I must always strive to be a better person - sometimes failing, but always trying. To me then the Holy Week closes the circle that begins at Christmas, revealing to us that the story that starts off with great joy, and is marked with great loss and sadness in the Passion, ultimately ends in glory and triumph. Now that, as the philosophers say, is what life is all about. Happy Easter to all.
But bad television and the severe silence notwithstanding, I've come to accept the Holy Week and embrace it. For one, traditions that I would not normally notice are served up sometimes spare (the starkness of a church whose statues are covered in purple cloth) or sometimes gaudy (the last mass at which the priest washes feet while incense lingers in the air and the choir chants tantum ergo), enriching symbols of my Catholic beliefs of faith, charity, and hope.
Hope, most importantly. In a world hit by one financial crisis after another, rocked by national and international (not to mention my own internal) conflicts, yet never once losing its commercial bustle, these few days give me an opportunity to reflect about my place in it and to discover - once again - that redemption is always an available option. That though I sometimes do things that I'm not necessarily proud of, I must always strive to be a better person - sometimes failing, but always trying. To me then the Holy Week closes the circle that begins at Christmas, revealing to us that the story that starts off with great joy, and is marked with great loss and sadness in the Passion, ultimately ends in glory and triumph. Now that, as the philosophers say, is what life is all about. Happy Easter to all.
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