AQUI EN la Pampanga hay mucha piedad pero poca caridad.
It has been seventy-four years, this 2026, since that
lamentation over the “wealth in piety but poverty in charity” expressed by
Bishop Cesar Ma. Guerrero, the first to occupy the bishopric of San Fernando,
noting “the stark class differences between the rich and the poor, the strife
between the landlords and the tenants, and a deteriorating
socio-political-economic situation bordering on socialism.”
These were manifest
situations of the imperative of revolution in his See. And a revolution did
indeed obtain then in Pampanga, with the Huks already “at the very gates of
Manila.”
Marked as apostates
pursuing the establishment of a “godless” society, the Huks naturally had to be
stopped, and their ideology uprooted to “save the country and preserve Mother
Church.” A strategic policy of the Cold War placed the Church at the bulwark of
the war against communism.
In revolutionary praxis,
the Cruzada served the ends of a counter-revolution. The
conscientization of the oppressed masa that was the spark to
start the inevitable prairie fire, doused by the sprinkle of holy water, the
heart soothed by hymns and prayers, the soul seared with the promise of
redemption, of eternal bliss in the hereafter. So long as the hardest of toils,
the worst of privations, indeed, all injustices and oppression be borne as
Christ did with His cross.
Unrepentant communists
would readily see it as the affirmation of that Marxist dictum: “Religion is
the opium of the people.”
Images of the Virgen de
los Remedios and Santo Cristo del Perdon were taken all around the Pampanga
parish churches and capillas where they stayed for days, the
faithful seeking their intercession and intervention through nonstop prayers
and nightly processions.
A hymn to the virgin was
composed with peace as recurrent refrain: “…ica’ng minye tula ampon
capayapan / quing indu ning balen quequeng lalawigan / uling calimbun mu caring
sablang dalan / ding barrio at puruc caring cabalenan / agad menatili ing
catahimican…” (…you gave us joy and peace / to the mother of our
province / when taken in procession / in all the barrios in the towns / peace
descended upon them…) Forgive the poor translation.
The charity end of the
crusade – lamac – was institutionalized – all the barrio folk,
even the poorest of them, contributed some goods that would accompany the
images to their next destination and shared with the neediest there.
The Cruzada in
effect became an equalizing and unifying factor among the faithful, regardless
of their socio-economic situation. And relative peace did come to the province.
For a time.
Since then, without fail,
no matter the rains and high water, the Capampangan faithful flock to the
annual commemoration of the canonical coronation. (Covid-19 made the exception
in 2020, and limited attendance in 2021 though. And with the persistent flooding,
the rites restricted to the repository chapel of the image). In a ritual of
renewal of faith in their Lord of Pardon, of rededication to their Indu
ning Capaldanan (Mother of Remedies), in celebration of their Tula
ding Capampangan (Joy of the Capampangan).
Seventy-four years hence,
that “deteriorating socio-political-economic situation bordering on socialism”
may have been arrested – the communist insurgency virtually as dead as Marx and
Mao, Joema Sison too, if not deader.
“The stark class
differences between the rich and the poor, the strife between the landlords and
the tenants,” though still obtain. In various manifestations, in the farms and
factories, in the mills and in the malls – as much the wages of sin, as the sin
of capitalism – from workers’ exploitation to farmland-grabbing, from
contractualization to union-busting.
So, did the good Bishop
Guerrero’s Cruzada of peace through charity and prayers fail?
So, we do still come in
prayerful celebration every Sept. 8, in thanksgiving, in supplication.
O Virgen de los
Remedios / damdam ca qng quequeng aus / iligtas mu que’t icabus / qng sablang
tucsu at maroc / ibie mu ing quecang lunos / ‘panalangin mu que qng Dios. (O Virgin…/ hear our pleas / free and save us /
from all temptation and evil / grant us your compassion / pray to God for us).
The Cruzada can
only continue.
(Updated piece on
Pampanga’s patroness, the Virgen de los Remedios, first published in the now
long defunct Pampanga News, July 6-12, 2006)
.jfif)
