Holy Week starts Sunday

The Lenten season has made some people note that the names of four past presidents are represented in the occasion. This coming Sunday, for instance, is Domingo de Ramos, Saturday will be Sabado de Gloria and people associate Erap with Ass Wednesday. We would like to add another president in the list – Corysma.

But the true concern of the people is whether it will be possible to have a Holy Week Truce with the New People’s Army, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and even the Abu Sayyaf. I think it will be safe to say that our military forces will not launch any major military operation during the Holy Week. Whether the insurgents will also do the same is another matter. As for the Abu Sayyafs, well, they are plain bandits who happen to be Muslims and they will not cease to launch any operation at any time that is to their advantage.

We have a custom during Holy Week of visiting several churches during Maundy Thursday. It would be good if people who observe this practice make it a point to visit different churches in different parts of the country every year. It is senseless to visit the same churches year after year.

Holy Week is, of course, the concluding week of Lent. It starts with Palm Sunday which is commemorated with the blessing of palms that most people hang permanently in their homes till the following Palm Sunday. It is also the ashes of those palms that will be blessed this Sunday that will be used to mark the foreheads of the faithful next Ash Wednesday.

Wednesday of the Holy Week is Spy Wednesday for it mark the day that Judas Iscariot bargained to become the spy of the Jewish Sanhedrin. The following day is Maunday Thursday, so-called from the first words of the antiphon for that day being Mandatorum novum do vobis, a new commandment I give unto you, which is said at the start of the ceremony of the washing of the feet. The word, they say, was incorrectly derived from maund, meaning a basket, because on that day before the great fast, it was an old church custom to bring food in maunds for the poor. It would certainly be good if that custom be revived for our neglected poor.

Good Friday, is the saddest day of the year; that is why, when people look very sad, he is said to be mukhang Viernes Santo. Holy Saturday is Sabado de Gloria. Easter is, of course, the Resurrection and there was a time when people actually believed that the sun danced on Easter Day. Sir John Suckling immortalized that belief with a poem:

But oh, she dances such a way

No sun upon an Easter day

Is half so fine a sight.

No one actually saw the sun dance, but people were afraid to disagree. Sir Thomas Browne was one of the few who dared write to say, "We shall not, I hope, disparage the Resurrection of our Redeemer, if we say the Sun doth not dance on Easter day."

Now, we may not even have peace during Holy Week. Let us pray for the best.