Holy Week is Life 101

This week is the most solemn week in the Christian calendar, when Christians recall the passion and death of Jesus Christ and celebrate their redemption from sin.

Holy Week makes me think about what is essential in life because it makes me think about death, as it makes me think about life and life ever after. In just one week is distilled so many realities in life — triumph, betrayal, suffering, and glory.

Holy Week is so unlike the Christmas season, which, like most birthdays, is a festive holiday, the season of Jingle Bells, Santa Claus and Christmas trees sheltering an array of presents. That is why when we’ve hit the jackpot, or get a windfall, we say, “It’s Christmas!” No matter what time of the year.

But when we’re in the dumps, it’s Holy week that comes to mind. “Mukhang Biyernes Santo ka,” is what they say when you wear a long face. And when a traitor pretends to be nice to you, people say, “Halik ni Hudas ‘yan!”

They forget that Good Friday is just a part of Holy Week, and that it leads to the most joyous occasion in the Christian calendar — Easter Sunday. I was taught in Religion class that if Christ hadn’t died for us, and hadn’t risen from the dead, we would not have been redeemed and would have no heaven to look forward to. Christmas would have been incomplete without Easter.

Our life on earth is like Holy Week, albeit not in the scale of a Cecil B. Demile (or a Mel Gibson, for that matter) production. Just like Christ’s experience during Holy Week, we experience Hossanahs, the staunch loyalty of close friends, the betrayal of those we trust, the unflinching love of family who will stand by the foot of our crosses. We suffer pain and humiliation, we see our loved ones die, and we experience death on earth — virtual death, real death. We have our own Calvary. But we’ve had just as many Easter Sundays as we exult in many resurrections — of our self-esteem, our relationships, our careers, our fortunes, our very outlook towards life.

Holy Week is really Life 101. We just really have to believe that after every Good Friday, is an Easter Sunday.

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The other day, my friend Mons broke to me the sad news about her 42-year-old brother-in-law Dave, who died while playing soccer. He was said to have just complained of tiredness, and asked for a timeout during which he collapsed. His teammates thought he was just playacting.

The 29-year-old son of an acquaintance Letlet never woke up from his sleep. They say it was due to pancreatitis. He was an only child. A colleague of Consuls Fortune and Helen just passed out one day during a function at the PICC. Just minutes before, she was exchanging pleasantries with friends in the toilet and complimenting them on their attire. Then she just lost consciousness.

We live on borrowed time, and so every moment that we breathe, gaze into the eyes of a loved one, dig into a calorific halo-halo or strawberry cheesecake, feel the summer breeze on our face or the raindrops on our head, is a celebration. It is a celebration of our senses, of our ability to feel emotion, of our capacity to appreciate things and love people.

Allure assistant editor Büm Tenorio often asks his subjects in an interview, “What is the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning?” Me, I usually glance at the clock on the wall across my bed to check the time, then I gaze at the bougainvillea on the flower box outside my window and then listen to the chirping of the birds. Then I close my eyes and thank God for another new day.

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Last Sunday, the first cousins of my mother Sonia, 71, had a reunion in the house of my sister Valerie. Her oldest surviving cousin Lily, who is nearing 90, is usually the most sentimental. She asks even the children (the fourth generation) never to forget each other. She tells the in-laws to please approach her just in case they see her in a mall and she doesn’t see them. My other aunt Norma is just as sentimental. She knows that it is their generation that is close to each other, and that her grandchildren and my mom’s grandchildren may cross paths but not know each other. Like branches of the same tree, we drift further and further away from the original tree as we grow and seek new corners of the sky. My aunt probably wants the branches to intertwine, not disentangle, as time goes by.

My aunt Cely is the most composed during reunions. She is 80, but is still sprightly and the life of the party with her infectious laughter and unfathomable well of stories. I asked her the secret of her zest, and she told me, “Acceptance.”

“I accept the good as well as the bad about life and let my faith take over when I have a hard time,” she said.

She embraces God’s will with joy. She gets by the rocky roads of life not with a cane but with laughter. She reminds me of my high school batch’s graduation motto, “In His will is our peace.”

At the start of the party I was five seats away from Auntie Cely. By the party’s end, I had glued myself to the seat beside her.

“I like catching her nuggets of wisdom,” I told my other cousins.

“Nuggets?” my cousin Elaine raised an eyebrow. “They’re bullions, not nuggets!”

* * *

I’ve had my own crosses, but they were always bearable. Someone always chopped off the heavy part. God has given my family the sweetest gift — the gift of time —with my Dad, who is battling cancer but is holding on remarkably well to the amazement of his doctors.

It is not that we will never have Good Fridays in our lives. But as sure as the sun shines in the morning, Easter Sunday will always come after three days and two dark nights, and in a burst of glory yet. At the end of every Calvary will be a Resurrection — even here on earth.

On Easter Sunday, go on your own Easter egg hunt. You will unearth more treasures that you had ever thought. Bullions, not just nuggets.

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