Parroting Chinese lies

“WE LEAVE the Filipino caregiver to the jurisdiction of Taiwanese authorities because deportation is really a decision to be made by Taiwanese authorities, which forms part of China.”

So Duterte loudspeaker Harry Roque dismissed Tuesday the deportation issues initiated by a factotum of the Department of Labor and Employment against Taiwan-based Filipina worker Elanel Ordidor for criticizing the President's handling of the coronavirus crisis on social media.

Making sure that there was not the slightest slip in his tongue on a patently political faux pas and geographical wrong, Roque even more emphatically reiterated: “We leave that wholly to the decision of Taiwan and China. Taiwan is part of China.”

Ah, the arrogance of infallibility of the medieval papacy the spox arrogated unto himself there: Roque locuta est. Causa finita est. Roque has spoken, cause and case closed. Wrong. Absolutely, wrong.t

On Wednesday, Taiwan rained down on Roque’s parade of arrogant sycophancy.

“My country expresses strong dissatisfaction and high regret over Philippine government officials wrongly accusing Taiwan as part of China.”

Terse and trenchant was an unofficial English translation of Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Joanne Ou's official statement.

"Taiwan, the Republic of China, is a sovereign and independent country and has never been a part of China. The People's Republic of China has never ruled Taiwan...and only the elected Taiwan government can represent the 23 million people of Taiwan internationally," Ou said.
Thereafter, proceeding to school Roque, and by extension the one he blabbers for, in international diplomacy: "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has instructed our representative office in the Philippines to immediately negotiate with the Philippines to express their protests. We solemnly call on the government officials of the Philippines to face up to the facts and stop misrepresenting Taiwan as a part of China."

In effect, shaming this regime by stressing that foreign workers in Taiwan "are protected by relevant laws and regulations, including freedom of speech," and  they will not be deported if they did not violate Taiwanese laws and regulations.But what is that to Roque? Or for that matter to Duterte and his minions?

For sure, having long promoted himself as a public intellectual and schooled in international law – putatively, at least, having served as prosecuting lawyer in the murder trial of US serviceman Lance Cpl. Joseph Scott Pemberton, accused in the killing of transgender Jennifer Laude in 2015 – Roque cannot even feign the least ignorance in Communist China having neither de jure nor de facto sovereignty over democratic Taiwan, no matter the former’s insistent illusion of the latter being its mere province.

So, what gives with Roque?

Nothing more than strictly toeing, aye, toadying the Sinophiliac line blazed so zealously by his Malacanang principal – China, above all else!

The Filipino nation – but for the 16 million useful idiots, as Lenin would have put it – have been seeing that in Duterte since Day One. And only a few days back, in the AFP chief of staff using his official position asking favors from the Chinese embassy, in the Defense Secretary trivializing an international incident of a Chinese warship training its radar gun on a Philippine Navy ship as just “testing our reaction.” Not the least in the consideration of reviving POGO operations amid the lockdown, even as Filipino businesses are kept closed under pain of penalty.

Parrot Chinese lies, truth be damned, the Philippines be doomed.

Roque is but a recycled pawn in the grand scheme of the Duterte-Chinese hegemony, to use the hackneyed activist line.

Speaking of lines, can’t help now but be reminded of a famous quotation from the very icon of world revolutions but infamously perverted here to suit the times: What do the danger and sacrifices of the Filipino nation matter, when the interest of China, when the love for Xi Jin Ping, is at stake?  

Seniors, unite!

THE PROPOSED mandatory quarantine (house arrest) of all senior citizens is unfair and unconstitutional! It is [an] arbitrary and discriminatory application of law, limiting our human and civil rights.

Confronting the most critical issue of the day facing the greatest generation cannot get any keener than this – the preamble of a veritable seniors’ manifesto titled Protection Not Isolation Do Not Shackle The Healthy Seniors and taglined YAFUIBANAG that is now trending in the net.

Yes, the intent of government to protect the elderly – high risk as they are – from being infected by the deadly coronavirus is truly admirable, but is rather sweeping in its generalization where it should be target specific.    

While we appreciate the concern for our safety against the dreaded Covid-19, the proposed mandate that senior citizens (60 years old and up) be restricted to stay home is ill-conceived and ill-planned, devoid of proper and in-depth economic and demographic analyses. The assumption on health vulnerability by the DOH is not based on conclusive study and research, and at best a cautionary assumption. Many young people got infected.

A fallacy of generalization – of seeing a whole forest in but one tree – is never an accurate, not the least rational, appreciation of any given situation. An epic fail, as in the syllogism: Duterte is sick. Duterte is old. Therefore, all old people are sick.

Indeed, why should I at 66 be assumed to be highly vulnerable health-wise? Before the ECQ, I walked the aisles and scaled the stairs of SM Clark or SM Pampanga at least 70 minutes weekdays, and half-jogged our subdivision oval double the time on weekends.

At 62, I did my second trek of Mount Pinatubo. Only last year, I climbed the over 400 steep steps to the Chureito Pagoda to have a glimpse of Mount Fuji in the heat of summer, and later in balmy November, the steep hill up Cihou Fort in Kaohsiung. Walked up Mount Takao in Tokyo too, three years back. Not all guys half my age have had similar, or more difficult, climbing adventures, surely.

As surely, there are men and women there much older than me with even greater physical power.        

Many senior citizens, especially those in the 60-65 years age group are still gainfully employed and are supporting their families and even grandchildren and some of them need to continue to work. Many of them are more healthy than the over-socializing and vice-filled younger workers.

Again, this strikes at my very core. I welcomed my senior year as editorial consultant at Punto! soon taking over as editor of its print and, later, online editions.

On the side, I still chase after news stories as I did in my 20s and 30s – with as much enthusiasm, and undissipated energy. This, on top of unofficial consultancies with friends, both in business and public service.

All these sources of my employment, thankfully, have no established age of retirement. I shall go on until I write 30.

Yes, the kids are all settled with families of their own. No, I have not ceased providing support for them, as needed. To the grandkids, as grandparental largesse.

Looking beyond me, I have a friend, two years older than me, who dedicated his life to the care of his parents, both nonagenarians, and to teen-aged nieces he adopted. His is no isolated case as a whole genus of his kind has been given its own nomenclature – the sandwich generation.

Many are also not qualified to receive social amelioration benefits. While many are also living independently from their younger children some of whom maybe staying abroad or in other communities.

Ay, me again. No SSS. No GSIS. Like most provincial journalists, our only security system comes from the benevolence of benefactors and friends. So we just have to keep pounding the beat, if not our computer keys.

The object of policies should be ensuring protection and ease of living and mobility not restriction and isolation.

Indeed. Has the proponent of this virtual house arrest for senior citizens even considered the chaos its implementation will entail, given the requisite clause of equal application to all?

In the running of government – how many officials, starting from Duterte, will have to cease from performing their mandate?

In the religious life – how many bishops, priests, pastors, ministers, imams will have to stop their ministries?

In business – what will be left of the corporate world without the CEOs, presidents, CFOs, COOs, and all those other acronyms?

In utilities, in labor, in services, in all other industries?

Now, don’t give me the crap of proffering the usual exception-to-every-rule cow dung. This rule – home arrest for seniors – will be so buried in exceptions and exemptions that not even a word of it will survive.    

I call on all fellow senior citizens, especially the gainfully employed and the physically fit to unite and seek a review of the proposed mandatory quarantine during the so-called general community quarantine and selective lifting of ECQ. Let us call for more precision in policy formulation.

Reporting for duty. This senior is ready to rock – and roll, Sir.

No fortuity in 40

FROM A simple matter of fortuity turning into some grand design of the divine, a number – naturally the numerologists, primarily the religious – among us beheld in the declaration of the enhanced community quarantine over all Luzon last March.

Quarantine – in its essential meaning of “a period of 40 days” – falling well within the 40-day Lenten season, instantly raising anything and everything epochally fortyish in Holy Writ and extrapolating these to the current of present events. Notwithstanding that the ECQ was framed in 30, rather than 40, days. Thus:

God putting Noah and his immediate family in the quarantine of the Ark as He flooded the earth with rain for 40 days and 40 nights.

Moses living 40 years in Egypt and 40 years in the desert before Yahweh chose him to lead His people out of slavery in Egypt.

Moses, again, up Mount Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights to receive the Commandments.

Out of Egypt, the Israelites punished by wandering in the wilderness for 40 years as a purification for their sins, the “unfaithful” old generation passing on so that a new generation would rightfully possess the Promised Land.

Jonah, for 40 days, warning Nineveh of its impending destruction because of sin.

Jesus fasting in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights and tempted by the devil before commencing His ministry.

And, 40 days too marked the time Jesus stayed with His disciples from the day of His Resurrection to His glorious Ascension.

A period of isolation – quarantine defined there too – of testing, trial, and tribulation the number 40 has come to embody in scripture. Invariably leading to some salvific culmination.

So, it was written. Thus, the faithful pinned their hopes and directed their prayers to some kind of deliverance at the end of their ECQ sufferance.

Alas, it was not to be. No salvation, not even relief – a week before the scheduled end of the quarantine, but an extension of it for another fortnight in the high-risk areas, including Central Luzon, where the Covid-19 cases spiked.

So, why did it not come to pass as the faithful prayed and hoped for?

Cry now should we, collectively: “Eli, Eli lama sabachthani”?

Oh, ye men of little faith. As the Lord so lamented.

Isaiah 55:8 qualifying, thus: “’My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,’ says the LORD. ‘And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine’.”

“In His time, In His time, He makes all things beautiful in His time.” As the hymn reminds everyone.

So right are we in seeing some divine design out of the enhanced community quarantine.  

So wrong are we in impacting it purely with our human understanding.

Thereby imperiling us to – God forbid! – commit blasphemy.

I am not a theologian, not by the longest shot. Nor do I have the least conceit in exegeses. But to covet, indeed, to exact some magical, if divine, solution – in the context of the biblical experience – after 40 days of this Covid-19-imposed  quarantine, aye, even after the extension and beyond – is not that, in some way, boxing His Omnipotence, His Omniscience, His Omnipresence, in the finity of material time and space?  

Of which mortal man cannot. As immortal God is beyond limits. Or, He is not.

Man can only propose, as the proverb posited. The dispositive end is God’s.   

Take it from Job 22:21-22: “Submit to God and be at peace with him; in this way prosperity will come to you.  Accept instruction from his mouth and lay up his words in your heart.”

Submission to God. At no other time than in quarantine is this most…imperative was top-of-mind, but then the act of utmost surrender to the Almighty comes from one’s own volition, undemanded, unforced.  

Of letting go, and letting God. With a prayer.  

“And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

So, with that reflection capped by Philippians 4:7, I start the 45^th day of my home quarantine.

Scapegoating the poor

SOCIAL DISTANCING fomented class divide. So, I remember postulating here at the start of the enhanced community quarantine.    

Top-of-mind then was that the upper and middle classes could well afford to stay put at home having the ways and means not only to live out the ECQ, but even to revel in it. Which, to the lower classes is simply unaffordable, caught as they are in the daily grind of existence.

In some rare display of wisdom, this government proposed – and did dispose too – to bridge the divide, even if temporarily, with its social amelioration program (SAP) of cash assistance principally to the poor.

Instantly instigating a middle-class backlash: We suffer from the ECQ too, why should the “poor” get all the help?

Damningly disdaining: From our blood, sweat and tears, the government draws the taxes it now feeds to social parasites.

The SAP there seemingly sapping, instead of uplifting, whatever remained of inter-class goodwill. Verily, tristia de alterius bonitate – grief for another’s fortune – Cain’s bitterness over God’s favoring his brother Abel’s sacrifice leading to the first fratricide, as Augustine reflected in his City of God.

The set bias against the “indolent poor” progressively calcifying at every social media upload of 4P-beneficiaries caught gambling away their P6,500 cash aid within an hour of receipt, as happened in Cabanatuan City; of one tambay in Metro Manila promptly taking his to the neighborhood pusher for some sachets of shabu; of others splurging theirs in alcohol, sabong, or some other vices elsewhere.

As there can be no justification for behavior so patently wrong, so too can these individual aberrations be visited upon the whole class whence they sprang. But then, predilection – against the poor in this wise – can only be pertinacious, or it is not.

Not dissimilar are the eyes of prejudice that sparkled in perverse glee at the Tondo shantytown razed to the ground by conflagration, seen as some chastisement for the poor residents’ utter disregard of the ECQ commandments.

Sheer schadenfreude – finding pleasure in the misfortune of another – characteristic bourgeois snobbery there, finding (ir)rationalization, impacting (un)justification in that elitist thesis: Poverty is their choice.   

Compelling me to raise this response anew, proper in time to the issue at hand despite its publication over 14 years ago in the now defunct Pampanga News, issue of March 23-29, 2006. Aptly titled too:

The masa antithesis

Hindi mangmang ang masang mahihirap. Sila’y pinagkaitan lamang ng tamang pagkakataon upang ganap na umusbong ang kanilang katalinuhan, ng akmang kaganapan upang malinang ang kanilang karunungan – pagkakataong pinigil ng hagkis ng kahirapan; kaganapang sinupil ng hataw ng pang-aapi’t pagsasamantala ng mga naghahari-hariang uri.
That “the incompetence of the masses is almost universal throughout the domains of political life…” is a fundamental fallacy in the bourgeois postulates on the people, as contrasted to the competently propertied People…
The masa response: There is no inherent mass incompetence among the people: there is mass oppression, exploitation, and deprivation that caused incompetence.
Premium to the existence of class exploitative societies is the oppression of the people. Of the highest priority is the reduction of the people to their basic animal instincts, the deprivation of their natural rights as human beings, in order to best serve – in the bourgeois interest – their principal purpose as nothing more than tools of production.
Sa kaisipang elitista, ang masa ay kawan ng baka’t kalabaw na isinisingkaw sa mga bukirin, sa mga planta’t pabrika upang mabigyan tugon ang lahat ng mga pangangailangan, upang masustentuhan ang lahat ng luho at kapritso ng uring peti-burgis.

Tunay ka, kasama: Tamad na burgis na ayaw gumawa, sa pawis ng masa ay nagpapasasa.
Deprivation damns the people to incompetence, dispossessing them of the necessary knowledge and skills to rise above the lot pre-ordained for them by the ruling class.
Born poor. Live poor. Die poor. An animal existence. To the elite, that is the
masa destiny. A vicious cycle with neither definitive end nor fixed beginning.
Of that, it is not.
Incompetence, as we have stated, is reared upon deprivation which in turn is rooted in exploitation which spawns from oppression. To make possible the
elimination of incompetence among the people then, exploitation need to be uprooted.
Ang pagkapantay-pantay ng mga mamamayan ang sandigan ng isang demokratikong estado. Ang mga kalakarang piyudal, pagbubusabos sa mga anak-pawis, paniniil sa mga anak-dalita ay walang puwang dito.
So government exists for the purpose of preserving the status quo. This does not cover though the preservation of the system of class exploitation.
Ang pagtaas sa antas ng pamumuhay ng mga mamamayan ay hindi lamang pangunahin kundi sagradong gampanin ng pamahalaan. Lakip nito ang pagbibigay puwang sa pinakamaliit at pinaka-aba mang mamamayan ng bahagi sa mga gawain at pagkilos na tuwirang tumitimo sa kanilang buhay. Anumang kaganapang taliwas dito ay isang kabalintunaan sa demokratikong estado.
The bourgeois thesis of governance as a monopoly of the propertied class has been – rightfully – long consigned to the dustbin of history.
There is though an emerging new elitism. This, the masa should fight with a determined populism.
NO, THIS is not romanticizing poverty. Much less beatifying it – the Beatitude spoke of poverty in spirit – of it being free from things of this world, as requisite to possession of a place in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Yes, this is politicizing poverty in all its sordid reality of human deprivation.

Virus vivifies virtue

“…Megsuweldu na kami…malati mu, pero I would like to share a part of my salary…not a big amount pero bisa ku makasaup maski malati mu…”

It never fails for tears to well up, the eyes coming over messages such as this one in the web, evoking the supernatural grace of the Widow’s Mites in Luke 21:1-4, to wit:

“And He looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury, and He saw also a certain poor widow putting in two mites. So He said, “Truly I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all; for all these out of their abundance have put in offerings for God, but she out of her poverty put in all the livelihood that she had.”

What little they have, they still choose to share with those with even lesser or have none at all. It could only be agape – unconditional love, seeking no reciprocity, love at its purest. Indeed, St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta: “It's not how much we give but how much love we put into giving.”

Wonder now how much love was put in those measly individual packs of a lonesome boiled banana paired with a solitary hardboiled egg “from Senators Manny & Cynthia Villar, Congw. Camille Villar.”

Of course, subscribe we do to Corinthians 9:7: “Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” Still, God forgive, can’t help to see nothing there but some cheap cheer.  

Out of the abundance in being Forbes 2019’s top Filipino billionaire: isang itlog, isang saging! Now, could there lurk some unfathomable message? As in that so great a philosophical truth that it found revelation only in, of all milieu, some forgettable Mark Lapid starrer: “Sa lahat ng puno, tandaan ninyo: saging lang ang may puso.”

At least, it cannot be said that the Villars politicized their relief package. For all its worth – whether in love or in price – it surely will not win a single vote even in a barangay poll.

Cry politics – and fake news too – so did Sen. Bong Go over posts on social media which showed boxes of donated medical goods bearing his name.

The boxes were labeled “400 pieces surgical mask” and addressed to a hospital in Bacoor City, Cavite. The label also had the words: “From Senator Bong Go thru Lucio Tan Group of Companies and PMFTC, Inc.”

"Gusto [nilang] siraan kami and they want to distract us para alam niyo... Ayaw nila tumulong po kami, by spreading fake news,” rued Go.

Coming to the senator’s instant succor, the LT Group, Inc. clarified: “Due to numerous requests for assistance we have received, we have asked the guidance from the Office of Senator Bong Go … in identifying beneficiaries which in this instance, are the medical front-liners in Cavite…It is unfortunate that some quarters are misconstruing Sen. Go’s advice due to labels on the packaging which the Senator has no knowledge of.”

Unfortunately, whatever misconstruing obtaining from their donation, the LT Group failed to straighten out – the apparent reversal of roles: “from” Go – construed as whence the donation came; “thru” Lucio Tan Group – indicative of the channel by which the donation was delivered.  

At least, it cannot be (mis)construed that the novato senator is not in the thick of the fight against the pandemic. Unlike many of his peers that merited an acrid call-out from Manila’s Yor-me Isko No-more: "Mga senador, 24 lang kayo, mga sekretaryo, mga pulitikong katulad ko. Ngayon niyo pakita, ngayon natin ipakita, ipakita niyo ang pagmamahal niyo sa Pilipino."

Instantly drawing a retort in the social media of hospital posted pictures of donations of personal protective equipment and test kits to St. Luke’s and to Batangas health workers, captioned: “Yes, pero tahimik lang para mas bukal sa loob at walang agenda o motibo,” and bearing the benign likeness of Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson.

Matthew 6:3-4 coming to pass there: “But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

Indeed, amid the Covid-19 pandemic is a profusion of charity not simply recorded but celebrated in social media. So celebrated that it gave rise to questions as to their real intent, to doubts as to their true nature. Hence, where meanings lie – in at least two meanings of the word – motives are magnified.  

Generally so, in the case of government officials engaged in relief-giving, the coming election their overbearing motivation so obvious in their names and faces emblazoned in the relief bags.

Why, even Gapan City Mayor Emeng Pascual's extraordinary conduct – way above par of the LGUs’ usual 5 kilos of rice, 3 tins of sardines, and 2 cup noodles – in giving relief to his constituents – from sacks of rice and live chickens to a choice of cooked viands per household – was not spared of being tagged as “relief in aid of re-election.” 

Covered as it was in mainstream media, and duly posted in the social media.

Thus, Matthew anew, at 6:2: “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.”

But what about the spontaneous, genuine response to the call of Christian charity, so manifest now in both individual actions and collective movements to help, aye, to ease the burden of the embattled frontliners as well as to care for the last and the least, if not the lost, at society’s fringes, they who are most vulnerable to the coronavirus?   

What motives to append, what agenda to pin then to such actions?

Of fashion designers turning from haute couture to the sewing of face masks and PPEs. Of chefs and restaurateurs dishing out their culinary delights for the frontliners. Of families making the home kitchen a community canteen. Of carwash/detailers crafting face shields. Of business firms channeling more than their CSR budgets to this singular effort of fighting Covid-19. Of salarymen and women veritably tithing to donate to organizations birthed precisely to help those in need, be they health workers or the most marginalized in this time of the pandemic. 

Of Lugud Balen or Pamisaupan Kapampangan, indeed.     

Of all things to see, I witness here the supreme irony of the virus vivifying virtue.  

Virtue is its own reward, so trite such truth to have become a truism. So why the need to sound the trumpets, aye, to click the cameras and upload at its every manifestation?

Accountability for one – donor intent upheld; transparency for another – the donations, the collections going where they are most needed. Virtue ethics defined here.   

Hence, virtue need be praised – neither for its own sake nor for the glorification of its possessor – but for the edification of others. Praying that the others be themselves infused, aye, in keeping with the times, inoculated with virtue.     

(Facebook photos. Credit to the owners)

Holy Week goes on, traditional rituals on hold

NO, THE observance of the Holy Week has not been cancelled. The Holy Masses and liturgical ceremonies will go on, albeit within the confines of churches, absent the congregation. But not without their attendance, if only via livestream or through Facebook.

For the Catholic faithful, especially in Pampanga, it will be the first time that the Semana Santa will not be what they were born and bred in. Here’s a piece -- Maleldo: Passion and pageantry – of how it was – at least in my hometown of Sto. Tomas – written a few years back.

Maleldo. A contraction of mal a aldo ­– directly translating to a highly-valued, hence, holy day – has evolved to be the one word comprising the Holy Week and all its rituals. Maleldo is intertwined with kaleldo – summer, the season when it is observed.

The etymology of Maleldo is easy enough to explain. The rituals and practices exclusive to the town of Sto. Tomas are a different thing.

In the absence of written history, the oral tradition – kuwento ni lola – is the only source of information on the rituals of maleldo.

From the Canlas sisters – Apung Mameng (1898-1976) who remained unmarried, Apung Rita vda de Zapata (1901-1980), Apung Bibang vda de Manese (1903-1978) – came the information written here, passed on to them by their mother Demetria.

“Ding apu (grandmother) nang ima mi mig-sagala nala kanu king maleldu,” the sisters were wont to say to their inquisitive grandchildren at the time.    

The Holy Week starts with Viernes Dolores, later moved to Sabado Dolores. The change came in the late ‘60s or early ‘70s – somewhere at the tail end of the Cursillo Movement -- to “circumvent” the rigid abstinence of no-meat-on-the-Fridays-of-Lent.

A triumvirate of women handles the activities: the Hermana Mayora, the Mayordoma and the Secretaria. The three fetch the image of the Mater Dolorosa from the house of the camadera in Barangay San Bartolome and head the procession to the church on Viernes Dolores.

Sabado Dolores

The day starts with a morning Mass followed by a breakfast – courtesy of the Secretaria -- for the Mass-goers on the church grounds.

At lunchtime, presided by the Hermana, the saladoras – a group comprising of previous hermanas, mayordomas, secretarias, as well as descendants of those who served as such but have long gone – gather to choose the successors to the three oficiales.

Choice per position is through bola-suerte. Two jars are used: one contains rolled pieces of paper on which are written the names of the candidates; the other, rolled papers commensurate to the number of candidates – all blank but for one with the word suerte. The name of the candidate drawn from the first jar that matches the suerte from the second jar becomes the hermana, mayordoma, or the secretaria.

In the evening, the image of the Mater Dolorosa is venerated in a procession around town with the hermana and her court, escorted by their husbands, preceding the caro.

The procession marks the debut appearance of the estabats – twelve young lasses that make a choir, accompanied by a manggirigi – a violinist – as they sing hymns to the Blessed Virgin.

Estabats

The estabats are so-called after the opening lines of their Latin hymn “Stabat Mater Dolorosa…” roughly translated to “the Sorrowful Mother was standing…”

Supervision of the Holy Week celebrations shifts from the hermana to a Holy Week Executive Committee after the Sabado Dolores. The committee chair is selected each year and is given the freehand to choose his officers and members.

Domingo de Ramos -- Palm Sunday -- comes with the traditional blessing of…well, palm and olive branches in a barrio chapel – alternately in San Bartolome and San Vicente – followed by a procession to the parish church with the parish priest taking the role of Christ on the way to Jerusalem accompanied by twelve men acting and dressed in the role of the 12 Apostles.

At the four corners of the churchyard or the street fronting the church stand kubu-kubuan where choir members sing hosanna and shower the priest with petals and confetti. The celebration ends with a Mass.

Lunes Santo and Martes Santo were quiet days. Until the cenaculo or reading of the Passion was moved to Martes Santo and Miercoles Santo.

Originally, the cenaculo was held on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. In the ‘70s, it was moved to Holy Wednesday and Maundy Thursday, to give full contemplation on the suffering and death of Christ on Good Friday. Sometime later it was further moved to where it is now being celebrated.

Traditionally, the cenaculo is an affair of the youth. A president from each gender gets elected to chair the festivity which comprises of the reading of the Passion and the serving of -- variably, depending on the collections – ice cream and barquillos or kalame. Of late, the word cenaculo has given way to the Tagalog pabasa. A more appropriate term, so the purists hold, given that a cenaculo goes beyond mere reading of the Passion to include a play or a drama of the Passion.

The second procession of the week takes place in the evening of Miercoles Santo. Here, images of saints who had had participation in the days prior to the death of Christ are put on decorated caros with St. Peter, bearer of the keys to heaven and his ubiquitous rooster at the lead followed by St. John the Evangelist, St. Thomas, St. Bartholomew, St. Andrew, St. Philip, St. James, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Veronica, St. Martha. Second to the last is the image of the Nazareno, Jesus carrying the cross, followed by the apostoles.  The image of the Mater Dolorosa is at the rear, preceded by the estabats and followed by the brass band.

Camaderas

In between the caros are the cofradias and church organizations and the camaderas, the owners or caretakers of the images.      

Maundy Thursday marks the observance of the washing of the feet of the apostles and the Last Supper. The parish priest is assisted by the Holy Week Committee chair and officers at the foot-washing rites.

After the ceremonies, the parish priest and the apostoles take their own supper at the parish rectory and partake of the cordero, a dish of beef covered with potatoes shaped like a lamb.

Rites and ceremonies for Good Friday start shortly after noon with the Las Siete Palabras, homilies and meditation on the final seven utterances of Christ at Calvary, which end at 3:00 in the afternoon, traditionally believed to have been the hour of Christ’s death.

Tanggal, a dramatization in song and verse of Christ’s body being taken down from the cross, used to follow the Las Siete Palabras. The last staging of tanggal was held in 1979.

Taking centerstage in the Good Friday procession is the Santo Entierro. It has become a tradition for the faithful to pluck out all the flowers decked in the caro as soon as it enters the church after the procession. Some claim miraculous attributes to the flowers.

At the procession, the estabats sing mournful hymns and dirges in reflection of the pain and anguish suffered by the Mater Dolorosa over the death of her son.

Sabado de Gloria is highlighted by the evening Mass with the blessing of the fire and water as well as the renewal of the baptismal vows.

Domingo de Pascua – Easter Sunday – marks the climax of the Holy Week celebrations in more ways than spiritual, folk art, aesthetics, socials melding into it.

Pusu-puso

Before 6:00 in the morning, the faithful gather at the churchyard for the Salubong, the first meeting between the Risen Christ and the Blessed Mother.

Under a pusu-puso, a veiled image of the Virgin Mary faces – behind a curtain – the image of the Risen Christ. The ­pusu-puso opens gradually, raining in petals and confetti on the images. At its final opening, comes out a young girl dressed as an angel in a kalo, an improvised swing, singing “Regina Laetare, Alleluia” as she is lowered down to take the veil off the Blessed Mother. At this, the curtain parts, the brass band plays and the faithful applaud to mark the start of the procession.

At the head of the procession are the ciriales, bearer of the ceremonial cross and candles in the person of three ladies in their fineries with their escorts in barong. They are followed by the banderada, the bearer of the Vatican flag.

Sometime in the ‘80s, mini-sagalas were introduced. These are little girls dressed as angels to accompany the incensario, the bearer of the incenser and the incense boat, and the angel who took the veil off the Blessed Mother.

Next come the estabats, singing glorious hymns and raining petals on the Atlung Maria at designated stops along the processional route.

The Atlung Maria symbolize the Virgin Mother, Mary Magdalene and Mary Cleofas. By tradition, the center – the spot of the Virgin – is reserved for the most beautiful of the three sagalas. It is therefore a most coveted spot. Sagalas for the Atlung Maria are exclusive to ladies born and bred in Sto. Tomas or those whose ancestry can be traced to the town. In the social milieu, no lady from Sto. Tomas is truly beautiful unless she has been one of the Atlung Maria.

With the Atlung Maria is the Ciru Pascual, the bearer of the Paschal Candle, always a local bachelor and one whose bloodline comes from the town.

The images of the Risen Christ and the Blessed Mother bring the rear of the procession which ends with a High Mass.

Blasting Judas

After the Mass, the faithful congregate anew at the churchyard for the burning – exploding is more apt here – of an effigy of Judas Iscariot.

Atop a scaffolding, Judas is ignited by pyrotechnic ravens and then twists, turns upside down, rotates and starts exploding from the legs up the arms, the body and lastly, the head with the loudest bang.

Lost in some vengeful glee among the faithful is the meaning behind the burning of Judas: That spiritually renewed with the fire and water of Sabado de Gloria, restored in grace with the Risen Christ, the faithful should cast away all vestiges of sin, of spiritual shortcomings with Judas and burn them away. This is no less a form of a holocaust offered to God. The very essence of the celebration of the Holy Week.

Mayhaps, it is with that thought that in 2010, the Judas effigy made way for an unnamed human form marked with the seven deadly sins. Still complete with the blasting though. In the following years, the human form was totally discarded in favour of a papier-mache globe likewise marked with the seven deadly sins, which blasting symbolize the liberation from worldly sins and the salvation of mankind. Indeed, a more apt metaphor obtaining there than in the seeming scapegoating with the Judas effigy. Two years after, Judas was back though

 

Sabuaga

In 2010 too, the loud bang of the seven deadly sins ceased to be the closing act of the annual Holy Week celebrations in Sto. Tomas. To the old rites was added the Sabuaga Festival.  

Sabuaga comes from the combination of sabuag (scatter) and sampaga (flowers) – the sagalas’ showering of petals on the image of the Virgin Mary in “veneration of her keeping the faith and oneness with her Son in His sufferings, thus her rewards in His joyful resurrection.”

Petals and confetti literally rain on the processional route around Poblacion, starting 2 p.m. of Easter Sunday as revelers join groups coming from the town’s seven barangays in street dancing.

At the town plaza where the revelry culminates, the groups in their most exotic costumes reflective of the product of the barangays they represent will each do its own interpretative dance presentation, on the theme sabuag sampaga, naturally. Judges coming from the arts, culture and tourism sector will proclaim the winners.

A trade and industry component to the festival is provided by the town’s one-barangay-one-product exhibit around the town plaza, with each barangay displaying its produce, notably the pottery and ceramics of Sto. Niño, and the caskets of San Vicente.

Sto. Tomas is known as the casket capital of Central Luzon, if not of the whole country, having at one time supplied funeral parlors throughout the whole archipelago and even nearby Asian countries.

In effect, Sabuaga serves as a one-stop showcase of the spirituality, culture, and industry of the people of Sto. Tomas.  

Sabuaga serves too as a fitting climax to the Holy Week celebration in Pampanga, being the last major event of the season.