Sunday-to-Sunday holyday

Tomorrow marks the start of our longest holyday – Holy Week. Actually it is more than a week for it starts on Palm Sunday and ends on Easter Sunday, a total of eight days. The so-called twelve days of Christmas is not a continuous holyday and it has been shortened since the Epiphany became a moveable feast. Anyway, tomorrow is Palm Sunday, a day now officially called Passiontide. It will always be called Palm Sunday by the folk because it is commemorated with the blessing of palm leaves that culminates in a procession. The liturgy recalls the triumphant entry of Christ into Jerusalem, but the Mass recalls the Passion of Christ. In short, it marks the start of the liturgical season of Passiontide.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has declared Holy Week into a long holiday. This is to give people an opportunity to commemorate Holy Week in their own respective towns and provinces. She has also declared a four-day Lenten truce with the rebel forces and some rebel forces have also announced that they, too, will observe a truce against the government forces. They are not fighting for a cause but just ransom money for innocent prisoners they are holding as hostages.

The bad news is that there are groups that want to turn Holy Week into a week of violence. The bombs found in many busy places around Metro Manila seem to be precisely timed for the Holy Week. As a result, the whole of Metro Manila has been placed on red alert against any criminal or terrorist attempts starting Maundy Thursday to Black Saturday. Some emphasis should be placed on churches. The Lenten season was always associated with fasting. We should not only fast from food, in this day and age it is more important for all to fast from violence.

As we said, Holy Week starts this coming Sunday and a bomb scare has gripped Metro Manila and Central Mindanao. It is quite obvious that those behind the planting of these bombs have obviously timed it with Holy Week. From police reports, the groups intention is more to scare the people rather than cause damage. Most of the bombs found lacked something that could make them explode. The best policy is to take extra precaution. Business is bad and this bomb scare will aggravate, not alleviate, the situation. But we should all avoid going to public and crowded places unless necessary.

This Holy Week, we should do more than just fast. We should go out of our way to live on less so that we can help the abandoned and the underprivileged. What better way of observing the Holy Week than helping the poor and when we say the poor, we should always start with the street children.

If there is just peace during this coming Holy Week, it would already be a great triumph. But if we would all make personal sacrifices to improve the lot of the poor sectors of our society, then, Holy Week would truly be meaningful.

We would like to add a word concerning government officials who give themselves the image of being the champions of the poor while doing nothing but enriching themselves while in office. Even when they are in court, they still like to believe that the "people" are behind them. They believe that the people, not the courts, will adjudicate their case. Obviously, they have not learned a great lesson from the Holy Week celebration. The people that hailed the triumphant entry of Christ in Jerusalem were the very ones who – only days later – cried, "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!"