WHILE the gore and spectacle of live crucifixions reenacted on Black Friday holds out a sensational attraction, other rites observed during Holy Week provide a counterpoint that is more conducive to reflection and discernment.
New water and fire
Holy Saturday, also called Sábado de Gloria, is not completely the Black Saturday its name paints it to be.
While many commercial activities resume on this day, ending a two-day drought that leaves city-based denizens parched for malls closed during Holy Thursday and Good Friday, churches remain closed, altars draped in purple or black, activities ceased after the Crucifixion at 3 p.m. on Good Friday.
But when dusk falls, the mourning lifts as parishioners, bringing candles and bottles of water, begin arriving for a ceremony known locally as the bendita sa bag-ong tubig ug bag-ong kalayo (blessing of water and fire).
At 10 p.m., the Paschal Vigil culminates with the blessing of the new fire, the holy water and the Paschal candle. As the flame of the Paschal candle is passed from candle to candle, from individual to individual, the darkened church returns to flickering life. Choir and congregation then sing “Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!” to usher Easter.
In his book, “Awakening,” Fr. Thomas Keating associates the triple “Alleluia” as a “burst of joy” introducing the Easter season: “a spontaneous joy at the thought of Christ’s triumph over death; a peaceful sense of gratitude to God for his goodness; or a sense of how much he loves you, or how much you love him.”
The church’s movement from the darkness of Good Friday to the restoration of light during the Easter vigil fulfils the cyclical promise of the salvation history of Christians, writes Keating.
After the Israelites’ passage through the Red Sea, every Christian finds renewal in embracing the baptism promised by Easter: the new water to wash away guilt, the new fire of the risen Christ to banish the darkness of sin, the eternal life promised by the Christ’s resurrection. “Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!”
Anomaly of faith
Many Christians stay in church after the midnight culmination of the Easter vigil to await the 3 a.m. sugat or salubong. The traditional ritual of the meeting of the resurrected Christ with his followers is attended by the crowd-pleasing sight of angels, actually children dressed up with wings and halos and lowered by hydraulics from a star-spangled heaven.
This triumphant spectacle is a far cry from the confusion and disappointment surrounding the discovery of the empty tomb at dawn on Easter Sunday.
It was the women who discovered that the body of the Christ was not to be found in the tomb where it was placed by Joseph of Arimathea. The women reported that they had a vision of angels who said that “He is risen.”
Instead of interpreting the women’s account as a confirmation of His promise to rise from the dead, two disciples were beset by disappointment. Abandoning Jerusalem, they were on their way to Emmaus when they met Jesus.
They failed to recognize him. One of the disciples named Cleopas even reproached the Christ when He asked what worried the disciples: “Are you the only resident of Jerusalem who does not know the things that went on there these past few days?”
According to Keating, the blindness of worldly preoccupations, passions and beliefs prevents Christians from seeing the God not just among them but within them. Like the disciples whose hopes were in shreds, we hear what we want to hear and see what we want to see—all within the limits of our senses, not faith.
Like the male disciples, we doubt the women who, believes Fr. Aloysius Cartagenas of the Seminario Mayor de San Carlos, “were the first harbingers of hope (that) God still moves stones to free us from darkness, from death.”
For not relying on sight but faith in discerning the meaning of the empty tomb, the women show “dignity.” Cartagenas writes: “If Jesus purposely chose women to be the first to see and touch the body of one who has conquered sin and death, isn’t it ridiculous for a church to prohibit women from holding the body of Christ in distributing communion? Isn’t it as ridiculous not to allow girls as altar servers in the eucharistic celebration? If women were the first witnesses of an Easter faith and hope, isn’t it for a church to persist in the notion that women have a subsidiary role to an all-male leadership?”
