A Not So Holy Holy Week

When I was still unable to reach the faucet in our kitchen, when everything seems so big and mysterious, I remember a time in every year where I was forbidden to watch the television nor play loud music. It is the time of the year where everything seems to stand still in time and a blanket of sorrow covers the land... Well, that was then. Just a pigment of an old memory doomed to be lost forever. I remember Holy Week as "holy" back then. Everywhere we go, I see old folks gathered around a replica of the Virgin Mary or Jesus Christ chanting a very long prayer over a monotonous tone,"pabasa"as we Filipino call it. There were no children in the streets playing, everyone was either inside their homes or went to visit their provinces. But what is the Holy Week really? According to the wikipedia,

Holy Week is the Christian week from Palm Sunday through Holy Saturday. Each of the days of Holy Week has its own traditions of services in the West. Believers are encouraged to follow in their prayers with readings from the Gospel the account of each of the actions from the time of the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to the crucifixion and death of Jesus on Good Friday and the resurrection on Easter Sunday. While each day has special mass celebrations in the Western churches, the week's most elaborate services are on Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter. In the Reformation, emphasis was taken away from the Passion and placed upon the resurrection of Jesus, but contemporary Protestant Churches, as well as the Roman Catholic Church, hold the three days between Good Friday and Easter to be the holiest days of the calendar.

There you have it. It is supposed to be the holiest days of the calendar! Even holier than Christmas or my birthday :) But what do people do now during these seasons? The "pabasa" becomes rap or ballads, people are heading to the beaches if not to higher grounds. There are people who do go to the grottos and churches and pray there. But most of them are just there to socialize. For them, it's a little time away from work, a time to be with friends and have fun. Hmmm... We even have our special entry in the wikipedia regarding Holy Week!

Philippines

In this largely Roman Catholic nation, Holy Week, known as Simana [Semana] Santa, is treated as one of the most important religious festivals of the entire year. At Mass on Palm Sunday, Catholics carry "palaspas" or palm leaves to be blessed by the priest. [read on]

I am not a holy man, nor am I a good follower of the Catholic Church. In fact, I only hear mass during Christmas, weddings, and my birthday. But I also don't wreck havoc to the meaning of Holy Week. My motto for the week, If you can't do it the way its supposed to be, then don't do it at all. Of course if someone had invited me to go to Boracay, this would had been an entirely different post :)