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Sunday, January 08, 2006
A boy for every man
By Sareeta Cuartero
The Sto. Niño is a powerful icon for devotees, especially when you learn that it is the image of a child, what artists and artisans conjure as the child Jesus.
He has a face so soft and lips so sweetly smiling that Mona Lisa smile. Yet behind that benign appearance, this boy, as Catholic devotees attest, can answer every man’s needs.
The icon comes in as many forms as there are needs of man. His most popular garment color is red, as thus, in this state he could be said to be the child deity of general needs. The Sto. Niño de Cebu, the province’s oldest icon, wears this familiar cape encrusted with precious stones.
When he is garbed in green, he becomes the icon for businessmen who call on him as their Sto. de la Suerte (luck or fortune).
Turning the tides of fortune is not his only function, as far as those who worship him say.
There is a Sto. Niño de Praga, which is based on the original Sto. Niño de Prague made of ivory and wood; a Sleeping Sto. Niño; a Sto. Niño Sumasayaw (an icon said to have a penchant for dancing) and a Sto. Nino Lagalag (an icon that loves to step down from its pedestal to wander into amorseko fields and play to his heart’s content, carefree and joyful).
Perhaps even then he fills a certain need in his people when he acts this way.
And why not. He even represents man in many walks of life and loves to dress the part: as the carpenter boy with a toolbox, and as a police officer, like the one that former Senator Robert Barbers dressed up as a man in uniform.
The Sto. Niño was once condsidered the leader of the military force during the colonial period. In Cebu: More Than an Island, Kaagi: The History of Cebu by Resil B. Mojares, the Sto. Nino was “called Capitan General and honored with a 21-gun salute when taken out from the church for a procession.”
His devotees still salute to him and honor him in their hearts as their champion whatever color or shape he comes.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (January 8, 2006 issue)
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