"He is Risen"
"He is Risen"
By Fr Damien McKenna SSC
The Spanish Friars, who brought the faith to the Philippines, understood the importance of visual aids. They have left us a lot of ceremonies whose visual effect can be stunning. Many of these ceremonies take place in Holy Week. On occasion the Filipino people can bring some of these ceremonies to the extreme, such as flogging themselves till they bleed, and even being nailed to a cross on Good Friday; but these happen in few places. One of the most beautiful and impressive ceremonies takes place around 4am on Easter Sunday, and is called Ang Pagsugat or the meeting - the Sorrowful Mother meets her Risen Son. For the Filipinos it seems perfectly obvious that the Risen Christ would have made one of the first visits after his Resurrection to His sorrowing mother. (The fact that none of the Gospels mentions such a meeting does not make it unlikely; it just means it was probably too obvious to need mentioning!)
I am not a morning person - I never go to bed before midnight - and unfortunately for me the Filipino people love activities at four in the morning! Before Christmas there is a Novena of Masses, followed by community singing and coffee at four am. On Good Friday, hundreds head off for a ten mile Stations of the Cross around the parish at four am. I ask them to leave quietly so as not to waken me!
 Up to 150 children dressed as angels, complete with wings, sing songs while two angels are lowered down and remove Our Lady’s veil and sometimes her whole head, complete with large tears on her cheeks. |
Well, at four am on Easter Sunday, the men gather at one end of the village with a special statue of the Risen Lord, and the women gather at the other end with a statue of the Sorrowful Mother draped in black. The women have already taken her on procession around the town on Friday night as she looks for her son. Both statues meet in a packed church plaza or community centre where, in my parish, anything up to 150 children dressed as angels, complete with wings, are lined up on top of a huge wooden structure that the parish carpenters have constructed during the week. The angels have been preparing for weeks under the guidance of angels of yesteryear to sing the songs that have been sung since the time of the Spanish Friars. |
| Both statues meet in the middle of the structure, the heavens open, pigeons fly out, and two angels are lowered down and remove Our Lady’s veil and sometimes her whole head, complete with large tears on her cheeks. It is replaced with a smiling head and white veil and all the angels throw down flower petals on the people who hold upturned umbrellas’s to catch them. |  The statues meet in a packed church plaza. |
These will be used later in the fishing nets or among the seeds that they plant. It is not unknown for farmers or fishermen to get angel members of their families to keep most of their petals for them.
|
Everyone then follows the statues inside the church where they are left for the whole of the Easter season at each side of the altar. Getting 150 angels, some of them only 2 years old, complete with wings, off the structure and into their special place near the altar always amazes me. The angels sing the Gloria while dancing before the statues. After Mass and photographs, the community hosts breakfast for them and then we start preparing for the next ceremony where the teenagers act out receiving the gifts of the spirit on Pentecost Sunday. |
Fr Damien McKenna has served in the Philippines for the past forty years.
[Far East Magazine]