My dear people of God in the Archdiocese of Manila,
The Holy Week for us Filipino Catholics is the most spiritually charged time of the year. It is a special time marked by many traditional religious activities. Due to the corona virus, our Holy Week this year will be doubly special. But can we have a Holy Week without palms, without the neighborhood singing of the Pasyon, without the Senakulo, the Chrism Mass, the Washing of the Feet, the Visita Iglesia, the Way of the Cross? Without the Good Friday Veneration of the Cross, the procession of the Santo Entierro, the solemn Easter Vigil Mass, the much awaited Salubong? Stripped of all these, is there still a Holy Week?
Our Christian faith in the Philippines has been wrapped in many traditional practices. These practices are the external manifestations of our faith. This is a great help for many to experience the faith in concrete ways, but there is also the danger that we identify our religion only with these practices. Indeed, if we are not careful, the external practices can hide the deep meaning of our Christian faith.
Due to the virus, we are challenged this year to live this most holy week without the traditional external trappings. There is still the Holy Week but we celebrate it differently, and hopefully, more deeply.
We open the Holy Week with the Palm Sunday. The palms, and any leafy branch for that matter, is a symbol of welcome to the Lord. We recognize him entering and taking possession of his city but in a lowly manner, riding not on a war horse but on a lowly beast of labor, a donkey. Now without palm branches in our hands, we can still welcome the Lord and ask him to enter our homes and our lives by our prayers and fidelity to his commands.
Palm Sunday is also known as Passion Sunday because of the proclamation of the Passion of the Lord, that is, his suffering and death. This Sunday we can take time to read the Passion Narrative and reflect over it. He underwent his passion, that is his suffering, because of his passion, that is, his love for us. From the narration of his suffering let us meditate on such a tremendous love that is ready to take our punishment. “He was being wounded for our rebellions, crushed because of our guilt.” (Is. 53:5)
We will not be able to sing the Pasyon nor watch the senakulo. These are reflections on the life of the Lord Jesus. A good way to do this now is to read the Gospels from end to end. We may be familiar with many sayings and stories in the life of Jesus, but often we know them by bits and pieces, as separate episodes.
So it would be refreshing, and revealing, to take time – and we have the time – to read the gospels from end to end, and so follow the flow of the life of Jesus as narrated by the different Evangelists. It would be rewarding to read all the four gospels during this week.
The Chrism Mass celebration, during which the sacred oils to be used for holy anointing at Baptism, Confirmation, and Ordination and the oil of the sick are blessed, will be transferred at a later date when the quarantine is lifted.
The essence of the Last Supper Mass on Holy Thursday evening is the institution of both the Sacraments of the Holy Eucharist and the Holy Priesthood. This will be celebrated in the Cathedral and in the Parish churches but without the people. The Gospel of John presents the washing of feet instead of the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper. The washing of the feet is an act of lowly service.
As in the Eucharist, we receive the same command of the Lord to do likewise. “If I, then, the Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you must wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you” (Jn. 13:14-15). We can very well do this in our homes by the service that we give to one another.
We may not be able to venerate the cross in our churches but we can give a special prominence to our crucifix in our home on Good Friday. Let us put it in a special place in the home, light a candle beside it and decorate it. At three o’clock on Friday afternoon the whole family can venerate the cross together by bowing before it.
Let us spend Good Friday in prayer and fasting. It would be good to turn off our electronic gadgets the whole day except to participate in the Veneration of the Cross at 3 o’clock or to listen to the Siete Palabras. Let it be a day of prayer and silence. As fasting will cleanse our bodies, silence will cleanse our souls.
We continue in the spirit of silence and prayer on Holy Saturday. We meditate on the descent of Jesus to the realm of the dead to announce salvation to all the just people who came before him. We then join the Easter Vigil celebration online on that Saturday evening. May this celebration lead us to the passing over from darkness to light, from chaos to the Word, from sin and death to life. It will be a wonderful experience if the whole family can have some form of celebration that Easter night with extra food, stories and games. Let us experience together the joy that Jesus is indeed risen.
This extraordinary situation of the quarantine affords us an extraordinary way of celebrating the most holy week of the year. There are other forms of family celebrations that the Archdiocesan Commission on the Liturgy suggests to us. These too can help us deepen our faith as a family. Holy Week is not taken from us. We just celebrate it in a different, and hopefully, in another meaningful way.
Yours sincerely in Christ,
+ BRODERICK PABILLO
Apostolic Administrator of Manila
4 April 2020
