Musings on holy weeks past

Black Saturday, 23 April 2011


As a child living in a rural area during the early 80s, I have witnessed and even partook on some of the old customs practiced by people in a Catholic country like the Philippines when the Holy Week arrived.

Before transferring to the housing compound in an aquaculture research facility where my parents worked, our family stayed in the center of a small town in a small municipality populated by die-hard Catholics and a small congregation of Seventh Day Adventists. It was a town where everyone knew each other, and was predominantly composed of old folks well over the age of 50. In our neighborhood alone there were a total of more than five people my parents addressed as either 'Tay' or 'Lola', titles of respect for elders.

Our elderly landlady was an Adventist who owned an impressive gallery of illustrated children's biblical books I enjoyed browsing and reenacting to everyone's amusement (Especially the David and Goliath duel. I tried fashioning a makeshift slingshot that ended up shooting a large rock straight into the Adventist church's glass window next door). At least in these books, a clear demarcation of good and evil existed and illustrated clearly enough for a 5 or 6 year old to understand, simply by looking.

Sitting on the wall of the Adventist Church, early 80s

Somehow all that Biblical reference balanced whatever fears I had about the reality of supernatural evil that I also found in great abundance in my father's equally vast comic book collection (I was five. Imagination runs rampant at that age.) that featured creatures you won't find in any issues of Kerygma or Bible Weekly anytime soon. Jesus Christ was up there with Knight Rider, Luke Skywalker, and The Incredible Hulk as the defender of truth, justice and the safety of your very soul before being relegated regrettably, many many years after, more as an expression of exasperation.

That knowledge somehow made me one of the most devout Catholics during that time, complete with prayers before meals as well as bedtime. And when Holy Week arrived, I also observed the proper protocols. That meant no boisterous noise from activities like outdoor playing, loud music/TV, and abstinence on eating meat. I even opted for not actually taking a bath on good Friday but my mother, an academician that leaned towards liberal thinking forbade it. All these activities because the elderly told me that Christ is dead at this time: and that the forces of darkness are at full power because of this.

Talk about absent security. I spent the next few years always armed to the teeth with a crucifix, wooden stake, cloves of garlic and salt during Good Friday and Black Saturday. A little dose of paranoia never hurt anyone. 

All of that information I had gathered from either our house maid, my father's stories on what his terror of a grandmother forced upon him and his siblings during the Lenten season, and the people on the streets I asked as to why several people were being paraded on the road torturing themselves by flailing their backs with a nasty barbed object that produced tiny rivulets of blood every time it hit bare flesh. 

It was a surreal experience. Shirtless men with covered faces and bloody backs; I think it was the face covers that actually did it: a hood totally covering the entire face and makeshift crowns made out of assorted leaves and branches that were no doubt inspired by Christ's thorn-version he wore all the way to Golgotha.

Flagellants in the Philippines, uncredited photo

And it was always a big deal. People were actually lining up along the road, waiting for the penitents to pass by, and some of them were actually carrying huge crosses where they'll be crucified, no doubt. God knows what kind of sins these people were so desperate of purging from their system that they believed they needed to resort to extreme acts like this. But who am I to question a Judeo-Christian tradition that existed thousands of years, anyway. To each his own method of appeasing the soul. 


Now that I'm an elderly cranky old man I am highly dubious of these people's motivations in doing what they do. Somehow I suspect it's not too far off from some Christian fundamentalists' suck up stance toward salvation ("Do you love God?! I have accepted Christ! I am saved! I am loved! Hello Julia!"). Yeah, nice try in accepting the savior only to smirk at hell-bound sinners who does not share your sentiments. Nice display of tolerance and compassion.


The brutal penitents, in the meantime, are probably shady characters with too much religious conditioning on the brutal God of the Old Testament that demanded equal suffering to crimes committed against his fellow man. Not that everyone who does that is actually some homicidal maniac or a thieving pederast but one has to wonder about the motivation behind such agonizing self-mutilation. 


One thing about them though, is that they actually put a lot of conviction to the term 'penance'. Not a lot of people with that kind of intense single-minded determination nowadays.

Next episode

In light of the recent brouhaha surrounding everyone's favorite media punching bag, I came to realize how big a chunk Willie Revillame takes up in Philippine culture. Landing the headline of a major newspaper means you’re, well, somewhat of a big deal anyway.

I can empathize with the blind adulation and near canonization of the guy by the hordes of disciples/acolytes ready to act as human shields should anyone threaten the safety of their so-called savior. If one knows anything about Pinoy society, especially those living within the spectrum of the urban poor section of the metropolis, is that most people are willing to sell their allegiance for peanuts and the smallest gestures of goodwill; or for even the tiniest acknowledgements of their existence. Especially when it comes from a media personality extolling the virtues of championing the cause of the 'lowly' poverty stricken denizens of the country. And a millionaire to boot. It's not like these folks have time for actually doubting the motives of the guy; maybe they did at first, but when you live in a desperate existence and somebody showed up with a Robin Hood promise of helping -- just the word 'tulong' (help) is enough: nevermind if it's tulungan kita mag-saing o tulungan kita sa pera.

I believe the whole 'cult of Willie' is composed of people who want to stick a big middle finger to others they view as belonging to a higher social class than they are. I have no empirical evidence to support this--merely observations of the guy's TV programs and his countless YouTube defenders whenever some unsavory comment is thrown toward one of his videos.

No one mentions class war but it has always been there. It was present in the EDSA 3 riot and it's present in the jeers of the crowd last night when Revillame enumerated the scores of celebrities who lambasted him in Twitter. That most of them, like Leah Salonga and Jim Paredes were not exactly 'Masa' material, only exacerbated the situation. It's the classic indirect diss: by dissing the object of everyone's affection, means they are also dissing his supporters. At worst, the message was: The guy's obviously an asshole. Only an idiot would like him. That they were on Twitter bashing him---no doubt in 'inglis'---sealed the deal. 

Tribalism, as my psychiatrist uncle once pointed out, figures a great deal in Pinoy society. And I agree. It’s not that his followers are cretins who do not know how big a creep the guy really is. It's just that they probably don’t care. He's one of them. And he's practically family. The kind who smacks his wife around only to be told by his folks that he's just exercising his authority as the king of the abode because his wife is probably a nagging b*** who needed to be reminded of the order of things. And that 'nagkakasayahan na nga kami dito, bat nyo kami pakekelaman?' Revillame's circle is no fraternity/sorority, but in many respects, the loyalty his people accord him can rival any Greek, Latin or any other secret society in terms of how protective of him they really are. Him to them, and them to him. It may all be phoniness on his part, but if hearing what they want to hear is the way, then Willie is the man.

The guy is not unlike ERAP, in that he always underscores the MASA card and debilitating poverty as fodder for the very people who experience this plight. His antics were never geared toward the academe, middle class nor his peers in showbusiness.You have got to admire the guy for playing the MASA card so brilliantly. Never has appeals to emotion over intellect been in full display on national TV. That he can conjure equal intensities of disgust and admiration from people is a feat in itself; and the networks cashing in on the abomination they have created.

Shutting him down will no doubt create a short term solution for getting rid of the kind of television Revillame promotes. But what it really means for the thousands---millions---of Revillame admirers is another blow coming from the pompous rich academic know-it-alls who has nothing better to do but bully the 'little people' so loved and protected by Revillame. Another persecution from the hoity-toity upper classes, this time in a bigger scale.

It's only a matter of time when another TV network hungry for ratings comes along and a guy willing to cash in on the desperation of the poor decides to don the sheep costume and dance and preen to Dr Dre's 'Next Episode'.

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