The Feast of the Black Nazarene

Today, January 9, is a red-letter day for Quiapo as throngs of devotees converge in this small but well-known part of Manila to commemorate the Feast of the Black Nazarene. The procession and the accompanying feast, takes place every year on the second Tuesday in January. It is usually the single largest fiesta of the year in the Philippines. For more than 200 years, the Catholic Church has been placing the life-sized, black wooden statue of Christ in a gilded carriage and pulling it through the streets of Quiapo, with thousands of pilgrims following it on the chance that they will be able to get close enough to touch the statue and perhaps receive a miracle. People who touch the Nazarene are said to sometimes be healed of diseases.

The Black Nazarene is the patron saint of Quiapo. The life-size image of the Black Nazarene shows a "black" Jesus Christ carrying a cross. The statue, carved by an Aztec carpenter, was bought by a priest in Mexico in 1606. It was brought to Manila by a group of Augustinian Recollect friars aboard a ship. During the trip however, the ship caught fire, burning the image. Though the image was burnt, the people decided to preserve and honor it and, thus, came to be known as the Black Nazarene. Since then, miraculous things have been reported to happen to those who touch the image.

There is another version, however, as to how the Black Nazarene came to be. During one of our visits to Mexico decades ago, we visited a church in Mexico City that had a prominent figure of the crucified Christ. What caught our attention was that the image was black. So we inquired. This is what the parish priest told us: Originally, the image was not black. The previous parish priest always started his day by kissing the feet of the image of the crucifix. One day, a man approached the priest, asking for permission to marry his niece. Knowing that the man had a very bad reputation, the priest refused. The man got mad and, knowing of the priest’s practice of kissing the feet of the crucifix, placed the deadliest poison on the feet of the image of the crucified Christ. The next morning, as was his norm, the priest kissed the feet of the image. Nothing happened to him! But the image itself had turned black because it had absorbed the deadly poison.

The devotion to the Black Nazarene has been a time-honored tradition of Filipino Catholics. This practice can be traced back to the time of Jesus Christ. As stated in Mark 5:24-34 of the New International Version of the Bible: "So Jesus went with him. A large crowd followed and pressed around him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, "If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed." Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, "Who touched my clothes?" "You see the people crowding against you," his disciples answered, "and yet you can ask, "Who touched me?" But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering."

This year, thousands of pilgrims will once again flock to Quiapo to pay homage to the Black Nazarene with the hopes of receiving miracles. All participants in the procession wish that they will have the opportunity to touch the wooden statue. In the midst of all the excitement, the situation can sometimes become unruly. We hope that the organizers, local government officials and the Philippine National Police have made the appropriate preparations to prevent any untoward incident and ensure a peaceful and orderly observance of this occasion.