332. Santo Stories: STA. VERONICA of SAN MATEO, RIZAL

San Mateo, Rizal has perhaps, one of the most organized Lenten processions in the region, with a little over 20 santos participating, a mix of the old and new. The oldest image is believed to be that of the STA. VERONICA, the woman who wiped Jesus’s face with a towel that cause His likeness to be imprinted on the cloth.

 

STA. VERONICA, Holy Tuesday, 2016

The processional image was originally owned by couple Victoriano (Maestro Bito) and Andrea Santos. The image, which had been carved in Pangil, Laguna in the 1800s, and which had participated in the early processions there, was brought to San Mateo in the 1930s, as Bito’s  wife hailed from there. Their STA. VERONICA has since been a regular participant in the annual Lenten rituals in the historic town.

 

STA. VERONICA, April 2019

When the Santos couple passed away, the image of STA. VERONICA was left in the care of their daughter, Mrs. Rosita Santos-Manahan. When, in her old age, she found it difficult to tend to the image, she passed it on to her only child, Tessa Jasminez-Manahan, who, with her family, has been caring for the antique image ever since.

 

IN PROCESSION, 2019

The processional image shows the santa with a roundish, almost glum face. The sudarium that she holds unfolded with both hands, and which bears the painted impressions of the 3 Holy Faces, has been periodically changed.

 

TESSA JAZMINES, current caretaker, in glasses

All other original accessories, are still intact and complete, from her jewel-encrusted corona and paragua, brass appliques, right down to her beautiful, silver paneled carroza. Preparing her has become both a family and a community affair, a responsibility that daughter Tessa has come to love and embrace.

 

STA. VERONICA, 2012

SOURCES:

Tessa Jazmines FP Page

Debosyon at Kasaysayan: Ang Mahal na Araw sa Bayan ng San Mateo, Parokya ng Nuestra Señora de Aranzazu. Souvenir program, 2001.

215, Santo Stories: STO. CRISTO OF PAKIL

 SANTO CRISTO DE PAKIL. The ancient image of the Crucified Christ in the church of Pakil, as it appeared in the 1950s.

 In the Franciscan-founded town of Pakil, Laguna, one can find an ancient, life-size crucifix venerated at the altar near the church’s entrance. The present church itself, dedicated to San Pedro de Alcantara, dates to 1732, a masterpiece in stone marked with florid ornamentation.

 The Santo Cristo de Pakil is an object of deep veneration among residents, but is also popular among the devotees of the Virgen de Turumba. The legs and feet of the Santo Cristo have all but darkened with age, and the habit of kissing the feet and the anointing of the santo’s extremities with perfume has persisted.

 The origins of the crucified Christ in Pakil is shrouded in mystery. It was said that an old man sought refuge in the town, begging the cura to find sanctuary in the church. The kind priest allowed him in, and the old man requested that he be given some carpentry tools so he could do some work for the church, in return for the hospitality.

 When the old man did not emerge from the room after some time, the door was forced open—and the priest found him gone. But inside the room was a splendidly carved image of Christ crucified, wonderfully wrought in wood and capturing the agony of the Lord in his passion.

 The image – known as Santo Cristo de Pakil—was enshrined in a retablo menor and is used every Holy Week for the Good Friday rites. As the arms are articulated, the figure of the Christ can be brought down from His Cross to be transformed into a Santo Entierro.

 In this form, the image is processioned on the streets of Pakil, followed by a band of violinists, musicians, singers and hundreds of devotees.

118. Holy Week Santos: SAN PEDRO

The first santo figure that heads the Holy Week processions in the Philippines is the image of San Pedro. His name in Greek means “rock”. Saint Peter or Simon Peter is one of the twelve apostles of Jesus, and acknowledged as the Prince of the Apostles and the first Pope.

The son of Jonah, San Pedro was born ca. 1 BC in the village of Bethsaida in the province of Galilee. His brother, San Andres (Andrew) was also an apostle.
 

Originally a fisherman, San Pedro was assigned a leadership role by Jesus and was with him during important events such as the Transfiguration. He was part of Jesus' inner circle, saw Jesus walked on water, denied Jesus, was restored by Jesus, and preached on the day of Pentecost.

He is said to have been put to death by crucifixion at the hand of Emperor Nero in Rome, possibly in 67 A.D.  Since he deemed himself unworthy to be crucified in the same way as Christ, the cross was positioned upside down.

San Pedro is portrayed in Philippine images as an oldish man having  a short, square beard with a tuft of white hair on his bald pate, curled at the center of his forehead. In antiquity, he was depicted with a full head of hair.

His primary attribute is a pair of keys, referring to Christ's words to Peter in Matthew 16:18-19, "I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven."  There is a gold key to open the heaven and a silver key to open the gates of hell. These are shown either being held by the saint in one hand or shown hanging from his waist.

San Pedro also often has a book, a reference to the two New Testament letters ascribed to him. When not holding his attributes, he is shown with clasped hands, in a prayerful pose.

San Pedro's triple denial of Jesus is one of the most common narrative images involving the saint and is symbolized by the presence of a rooster (“manok ni San Pedro”), which crowed thrice every time the fearful saint denied the Lord. The rooster is shown standing separately on a pillar, or placed by his feet.

In Bulacan—in the towns of Bocaue, Marilao, Sta. Maria and Meycauayan—a machete-holding San Pedro comes out during Holy Thursday processions, in reference to his protecting Christ from the guards who had come to arrest him in the garden of Gethsemane. The “tabak” he wields recalls the faithful apostle’s attempt to cut off the ear of Malcus. The next day, Friday, the hands are replaced with clasped hands.

His feet are bare or sandaled and his garb almost always consists of a long, sleeved tunic in green, matched with a deep yellow mantle draped over his shoulders.

87. MY ANNUAL HOLY WEEK SOJOURN

By Oscar A. Macanan Jr. 2bU! Correspondent
(This article was originally published on PDI)

It’s true that most of us look forward to Holy Week spent under the sun in a beach resort somewhere. But if I were given the option on how and where to spend my vacation, it would be always to recharge my spirituality by attending a traditional Filipino prusisyon, and, of course, to spend it with my family.

Unlike your regular urbanite who’s out for a good time on a religious weekend, this party person heads out to his mom’s hometown of Calumpit, located just a few kilometers from Bulacan’s capital of Malolos. Each visit to this quiet, rural town by the river brings out memories of pure nostalgia. In short, nothing but good memories that have left me with a happy and contented childhood to remember: delicious foods like garlic-laden pork longganisa; loud and spirited family get-togethers at my lola’s house; and of course, the traditional Good Friday procession that has been part of the town’s proud history.


The prusisyon is an annual event that brings together several karosa that display scenes from the Passion and Death of Christ. While majority of the townsfolk are reduced to mere observers during the event itself, our family has played the active role of preparing a karosa that will take part in the procession.

The tie that binds.
The whole can usually spends a good part of the weekend preparing for Prusisyon. The “Poon”, an antique statue showing Christ after He had been taken down from the Cross and prepared for burial, is removed from its wooden shrine. This priceless heirloom has been with my mom’s family for generations. An equally antique, glass-paned wooden shrine has served as the statue’s keeping place and the carriage’s main body.

It’s one of the few occasions that my lola’s home would come alive with so much activity. Every year, my cousins take out and sort the artificial flowers to be used for decorations. After a year of spending time stored in boxes, the flowers are cleaned and inspected for defects, then hanged in wires placed in the middle of the house’s great living area.

I would always help my dad placing the lamps that would light the carriage carrying the Poon. I would check out the electrical wiring that runs along the shrine’s crevices. After making sure everything is in order, my cousins and my tito would usually help place the other lights.

The family affair doesn’t end in the busy living room, though. The kitchen plays witness to the family’s chef extraordinaire (mom and all my titas), whipping up huge batches of homecooked cuisine that would put my self-respecting restaurant to shame.

I would always indulge myself in hefty servings of rellenong bangus, lapu-lapu and pancit that are on the table. If I’m lucky enough though, maybe my cousins have left me some puto, kutsinta or sapin-sapin. I would wash them down with fresh fruit juice for dessert. Sometimes, I would find out that there’s still room for a cup or two of refreshing halo-halo.

The Friday rush.
Spending overnight out of the city seems to nudge everyone to be up and awake for anther busy Good Friday. A hearty breakfast courtesy of the family’s culinary masters perks everyone up for the big day ahead. It’s about 6 a.m. right now, and everyone has until noon to finish the carriage in time for the afternoon procession.

Good Friday morning here starts like this every year. Every able-bodied male in the family and the surrounding neighborhood would come and help lift the carriage’s body in the living room, carefully moving it through the second-floor window, and then carry the thing on top of the carriage’s under belly which houses the wheels. Everyone, including some friends and neighbors, get into this proud moment of the classic bayanihan spirit we Filipinos are well known for.

From that moment on , the seemingly frantic activity of fixing up the karosa spills out from the living room and into the streets.

Most of the work involves cutting up bamboo into thin sticks. This would later be nailed and formed into the undercarriage to form a frame holding the multi-layered mantle that serves as its cover.

Most of my titos would use nails and industrial staples to arrange the flowers along the carriage’s narra body. The theme behind the decoration was formed the night before, after much brainstorming among the elders of the family. Plastic strings secure the bamboo.

After the elaborate flora has been placed around the carriage, metal wires would be used to hold the electrical tubing gripping the outer lamps. The lighting itself has been designed to be both decorative and practical: the bulbs are covered by black velvet shades that symbolize the tragedy that was Christ’s death. The golden lining that serves as the lampshade’s lone design, on the other hand, tells of Christ’s victory over death on Easter Sunday. Snack would be bought down at regular intervals for the hungry laborers. After all, it takes hundreds of flowers, more than a dozen technical lightings, and hearts of gold to make this year’s karo special.

A full moon night.
Later in the afternoon, the local townsfolk would head to Calumpit’s lone parish church. They would attend the 3 p.m. Mass. About that time, too, everyone will dress up for the procession.

At this time, every carriage that’s going to join the procession would be ready. Like our family ‘s karosa, they would be adorned with fresh flowers and lamps lighted by gasoline-fed electric generators.

The church bells are rung to signal the end of the Mass. That’s when 12 of the town’s men, symbolizing the Apostles, are given the task of pulling the carriage that contains Christ’s body. The procession itself would start from the parish grounds, with carriages from other household leaving at regular intervals.

Every carriage has its own act to follow, a piece of the story depicting Christ’s suffering and death. Familiar scenes like Jesus carrying the Cross on His way to Calvary, one of the wailing women of Jerusalem holding up the cloth bearing the image of the suffering Christ, and the Crucifixion animate the darkness of night.

The procession itself goes on without a hitch. Everybody in this town has come out wearing his or her Sunday best to join the procession. Those who have chosen to stay in their homes the whole town isn’t left out either. Houses that line the procession’s path are dotted with people holding up lighted candles. Laity unite with the religious in reciting the rosary. Men, women and children cling to each carriage’s side to help it move along.

Imposing sight
In streets where electrical lighting is impossible, the faithful on both sides of the path provide observers a wave of flowing, living fire with their candles—an imposing sight with the numerous balete trees in the background. And did I mention a full moon that’s made even brighter by the absence of glaring city lights?

Sad to say, the serenity of the whole thing breaks up just as when the procession nears the church again. Toward the end, a mob has started to form around the carriages containing the fresh flowers. People would push to gain position to reach and grab the flowers that adorn the carriages.

We would try to protect the carriage from the wave of humanity that tries to push the karo. Under a temporary blanket of protection given by local police acting as security, I would help my cousins remove lamps and light bulbs that may be damaged during the foray.

People hold on to the flowers as a souvenir of the procession. Local folks say the flowers hold healing powers and protect the owners from harm, like some kind of an amulet.

With the crowd thinning, everyone in the family helps carry the Poon to the church’s altar. It’s inside the church that Christ would spend the night. In here, devotees from near and far would come and pay their respects, if not relive sacred history.

E-mail to boynextdoor@gwapo.com

66. A PROCESSION OF MOVING SAINTS IN PAETE

By Carmen A. Navarro (originally published in The Chronicle Magazine, 29 June 1963, pp. 44)

Paete is a little town nestled at the foot of Sierra Madre ranges and locked by Laguna de Bay. It has no wide plains, not topographical greatness. Rather, it is a town by the road between highland and water. Its history is the unraveling of a way of life rendered starkly simple by a lack of physical grandeur. Crowded in by mountain and bay, Paeteños looked within themselves and found there, their greatness.

Thus, to know Paete, a town founded in 1580, fifty nine years after the historic date of the rediscovery of the Philippines in 1521, is to know a past that belongs to the present. For the accumulation of that deep human experience of a people steeped in self-awareness is tradition.

It is they who have kept the heritage of a unique custom of a “living saints” procession every Holy Thursday for the last two hundred fifty years by passing it to their younger kin with an unwritten will that the observance shall be without dichotomy between ceremony and belief.

In the past, Eugenio Quesada, a Paeteño who has written his memoirs in the form of a narrative of the town says:

“Holy Thursday was the biggest day of the week, for on this day, the procession was the largest because the ‘pasion’ or carrying of the cross in the different stages was shown and not only that, the meeting of Jesus and his mother Virgin Mary was re-enacted”.

During this re-enactment, the author notes that the town people who actually cried as though in pain, may have projected their own grief and the tediousness of their own lives in one packed moment of religious compassion.

American and German tourists who visited the town during the celebration remarked that it is perhaps the near realism of the drama that moves the spectators to such an experience. The tender scene of a sorrowful mother who breaks loose from the hold of tough soldiers to embrace her son, faithfully issued by vocal animation from living persons and movements through an intricate mechanism gives semblance of the real. The mechanism found within the statues is as old as the celebration, two hundred fifty years ago.

The second meeting place takes place in the upper portion of the town, in the Ilaya, almost in front of the small church called Ermita. It is the re-enactment of St. Veronica who meets Jesus with a piece of cloth on which our Lord imprints his face. St. Veronica in turn shows the printed face to the Virgin Mary, heightening her grief. The procession goes through all of Paete’s little streets, the menfolk bowed, the women in black, and the children sobered, singing in lamentable tones: “Populo meus quid feci Tibi” (O my people, what have I done to thee?).

A period of mourning marked by both interior and exterior silence trictly observed at the penalty of being called a Jew begins when the procession finally winds up in church for the tenebrae.

To the Paeteños, Holy Thursday celebration is not a ceremony but an element of their identity, just as woodcarving and lanzones tending are.

Woodcarving is the lifeblood of Paeteño culture which started in pre-Spanish times when the first group of Malay inhabitants happened to have a penchant for chiseling figures with a ‘apet’. In 1882, that penchant reached a golden age when Mariano Madriñan received a diploma and a medal of honor from King Alfonso XII of Spain for his Mater Dolorosa, a work of art exhibited at the International Exposition held in Amsterdam, Holland and Paete’s woodcraft found its wayin European palaces of kings and doors of Cathedrals. After a period besieged by idleness and oblivion, Paete woodcarvers in 1960 enjoyed a renaissance when the late Pope John XXIII commissioned them to make the statue of San Martin de Porres for the canonization rites. The Renaissance ay be completed when the Php75,000 worth of Paete woodcarving will be exhibited in the 1964 New York World Fair.

Paete’s economic framework remains inimical to contemporary economic schemes. Peculiar to her modest geography, her people who have remained oddly faithful to social justice. Land which was parceled among their grandfathers remains in the hands of their descendants, with the same size, the same fruits, never coveting, never wanting, year after year, generation after generation.

Like tradition, Paete merely stays.