After mass last night, we proceeded to another church to do a Visita Iglesia. We chose a church where there was a parking lot.
It is a huge church named Sta. Clara de Monte Falcon at the corner of Mercedes and Raymundo Streets. It is also an Ossuary; underneath the Church Proper, I saw small locker-type tombs.
The Church altar was huge, and the Blessed Sacrament was kept in a garden-like setting where candles sat among flowers. It was beautiful. There were several other churches nearby, but there were no parking areas.
As kids, we went on occasional Visita Iglesia. Usually, it commenced at eight in the evening, and we went as far as the San Miguel Church near the Malacanang Palace. We did this whenever our father was home early on Maundy Thursday. Otherwise, after the church procession, we just amused ourselves at home by talking underneath our breath because Mother never liked noise during the last week of Semana Senta.
On Maundy Thursday, the Aglipayan Church had the streets of Mandaluyong all to itself for the procession. At six and a frail kid, I was already honed at handling a lighted candle, and walking along with my siblings at the foot of St. Veronica's carosa was a childhood high.
On Good Friday, our family got split into two. My father, a Roman Catholic would join the
procession of the Romanos, dressed in a black Barong Tagalog, while my mother and us and an aunt trailed the Aglipayan procession. Years later, we children, converted to Roman Catholicism, but because the two churches are practically one and the same in terms of rites and beliefs, I still identify with both churches.I remember being in Vigan, Ilocos Norte one Lenten Season of my younger adult life, and being awed by the grandeur of its Good Friday procession. Twice, we were in Baliuag, Bulacan for its famed Good Friday procession, and while at the Fatima Shrine in Portugal where a procession also took place, I marveled how we, the faithfuls, have kept this tradition going and very much alive in our hearts.
Apart from the colorful Lenten rites such as Pabasa ng Pasyon (reading of the Passion of Christ), Palaspas (Palm Sunday), Prusisyon, (Procession), and Pagkabuhay Na Muli (Resurrection), the part that I look forward to as a child was the Pagkain (Food).
On Good Friday, my mother or aunt always prepared a special daing na bangus with patola. Then, on Eater Sunday, which we usually celebrated in Nueva Ecija, my grandmother had for us a grand fiesta feast complete with lechon de leche.
If we were in Manila on Easter Sunday, me and my elder sister would tag along with our Aunt for the Salubong, which took place very early Sunday morning, a rite which commemorated the moment when Jesus met his Mother, after His Resurrection.
Yesterday, my younger sister commented on her facebook account how she misses our Mother during this Lenten Season, how she kept us grounded on the practise of reading/singing the passion of Christ. I commented that maybe our family can initiate a family passion-book reading which later on, we could pass to the second and third generation children.
" Yes, let's do it," she replied.
After all the pain in Lent, and all the pomp of Easter, we could all look forward to the pleasure of having discovered again the true meaning of our Christian Faith.
