inklingfair I used to dread Holy Week. My earliest remembrances of it weren’t so bad, when in AIT we held Easter vigil in Village 3 and children were allowed to stay up late and play with the candles. But when we came back to uber-Catholic Manila, Holy Week was a slow and sweltering progression of days beginning with Palm Sunday when we had to dress up in starched, smartly-pressed clothes to go to mass. The palms helped; they gave me something to fiddle with during the long gospel reading. The rest of the week, everyone was home, fanning themselves and watching the Jesus movies and masses on TV.
There was one horrible Holy Week when I was nine or ten, when I had a weeklong head-to-toe skin allergy and a maternal aunt, Mama Nora, gave me branches of a leafy medicinal tree (I forget the name) which one is supposed to use as a switch on the skin. It was surprisingly soothing, whipping my hives into submission, not unlike those men doing penitensya (self-flagellation) in parades outside.
Despite our old family home being just at the foot of Bangan Hill, I have gone up for the Stations of the Cross exactly once, with my mother. It was at high noon in the middle of the hot/dry season. I remember trying to duck under every available scraggly tree and overhanging rock to escape the sun, and exhausting our water supply by the time we reached the top.
When I started working, I found Holy Week a respite from the stress and traffic of Metro Manila, but I felt a bit sad that I couldn’t really go to summer spots like Baguio or Puerto Galera or Boracay unless it was a work outing – I was often cash-strapped or saving up for something more important. I was only able to go to Palawan when I got a job there, and went island-hopping just once in the six months I stayed in Coron.
In the metro, even the trains stop and malls close during Holy Week. The jeepneys still ply their routes, but places like Makati are ghost towns on Good Friday. I remember finding this refreshingly peaceful, though still sad. When I started to participate in the Paschal Triduum because of Josh, though, everything changed. It started one Easter vigil when I had just joined the community, and Josh brought me to the preparation for the vigil, in the auditorium of a school beside our parish church. The place was abuzz with people wiping chairs, polishing silver vessels and crosses, arranging flowers. There were large thermoses filled with coffee, water, and soup in a corner, which I found out later were for the people who were fasting. That evening Josh picked me up, dressed to the nines, and when we entered the auditorium, the energy and excitement was palpable. People were expecting something, something joyous and weighty. Something – Someone – not of this world was arriving that night.
We all went outside, in the dark, where a small fire was ablaze, and we waited expectantly as the priest said a few words and lit the large white candle. One of the congregants lit his candle from the large candle’s flame, and people slowly, silently crowded around to light their own candles. And I felt transported back to when I was four or five, in Village 3, lighting candles with my friends, brimming with the excitement of being allowed to stay up late. Except this time, I would finally understand what it was we were staying up for. The clear voice of the priest singing, “O, happy fault, which deserved so great a Savior!” The gleeful rhythm of Miriam’s song, “He has thrown into the sea horse and rider.” The sound of instruments swelling around the Alleluia. Dancing around the flower-adorned table singing, “That would be enough for us, dayenu, dayenu, dayenu.” For forty days we were solemn, and we were mourning, and we were dead, and now Christ is risen and so are we.
Now I look forward to Easter more than any other holiday, more than even Christmas. Amy was baptized on Easter, submerged, not sprinkled on at the font. I had hoped Daniel would be baptized this year, but ECQ was once more declared, and we’ll have to wait. But we did celebrate Easter at home, and Amy sang the song of the children, “Why is this night so different?” and Josh and I answered. She may not fully understand it now, but I hope someday she will experience it as I did, with wonder and joyful expectation.
Photo by Thays Orrico on Unsplash
