2 weeks Ago By Bong O. Wenceslao
As I was writing this column, my son showed me the report on his cell phone about the death of Pope Francis. The pope had been sickly for months now, so his death was not totally unexpected. But at least it happened after the Holy Week.
Popes live and die, so one thing we can do now is to move on. The Christian faith has already instituted a process of succession every time a pope dies. I think the next step would be to hold a conclave to choose the next pope.
Of course, it would be difficult for Filipinos to look beyond one of their own in Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle. But I would not belabor the point but rather join the whole Christian world in mourning the loss of a pope that, at least for me, preached the faith a bit differently from the previous pontiffs. Pope Francis was leading a church that had to face the challenges of a changed world.
Indeed, many people have become non-believers and the church needs to find ways to preach a gospel that is being challenged by modernity. I would say that the “center of gravity” has changed in the past decades with the Philippines, as the only predominantly Catholic country in Asia, taking a leading role of spreading the faith, especially with its own version of the diaspora. Overseas Filipino workers and Filipinos leaving the country for abroad always find solace in the faith that they grew up in.
We always look for Catholic churches wherever we are. *** The Holy Week came and went, and after years of doing the ritual, one thing has remained constant: the reminder about the essence of Christianity. I once again remembered that Mel Gibson movie “Passion of the Christ” and of how the death and resurrection of Christ oftentimes lead to non-belief of the power of the “one true God.
” Indeed, how can somebody so powerful die under the circumstances narrated by the Bible and the movie? But there is one underlying word there: faith. That is the reason why we look at Christ’s “death” differently from non-Christians. We consider it symbolic and sacrificial.
The “death” was necessary because what follows is the Resurrection. Every Holy Friday always has Easter after it. For this year’s Holy Week, we changed our yearly ritual of joining the procession in Pardo to the procession held by the parish where barangay Inayawan belongs.
For the first time, my wife’s aunt transformed a multicab into a “karo” that joined the procession. That was a different experience that made our participation in it more meaningful. I know that some people did use the holiday to go to the beaches.
This has become a ritual for some. Still, I hope these people won’t forget what Holy Week is about. Incidentally, we allowed our son to go to the beach but he made it a point to go home before Easter.
I just hope that priests would find ways to inculcate in the faithful the essence of the Holy Week so they won’t set the ritual aside in favor of the beaches. It takes a good dose of faith to stick to one’s belief in favor of the relaxation offered by a vacation of a few days..
