Good Fridays

Last Friday was a good time to go back to the Good Fridays of my childhood.

I remember we would almost always start the day with flagellant-watching. The flagellants were men with covered faces who would repeatedly hit their bare backs with sharp objects, drawing blood in the process. We would stare mouths open and wince when someone poured vinegar over these men's open wounds. Last Friday I waited the whole morning to take pictures but not a single flagellant passed by our house. It was obviously passé in the town where I grew up.

Then there was Visita Iglesia. Seven churches to visit, usually Calaca, Lemery, Taal, Nasugbu, Lian, Calatagan and Tuy. If we didn't go church-hopping, we would more often than not spend the day in front of the boob tube for reruns of bible-based films and docus, most notable of which was Jesus of Nazareth. We were not allowed to turn on the radio. Oh and never forget the fasting! Or should I say abstinence? Lunch and dinner meant fish, crabs, shrimps or lobsters when available. But I was never into seafood even as a kid and making do with a cheese sandwich every meal was my annual little Lenten sacrifice.

The highlight of the day was the 6 o'clock procession led by the parish priest that went around the poblacion like a funeral parade of the dead Christ. This year it was attended by hordes of people, young and old alike, that appeared to be thinning as time went by. When I was quite small I used to go with my sister Pie, my aunt Nading, my cousin Ron and his dad Ninong Paeng. It was playtime for us kids as we made balls from melted wax coming from the candles that we held in our hands. I also never missed a procession as a teenager. It was the "in" thing to do on a Good Friday.

St. Peter, easily identifiable by the rooster by his side (though not seen in this photo), was always the first saint in the long procession. The saints were garbed in expensive-looking velvety garments with golden appliques and placed atop flower-decked carrozas brightened by generator-powered lights.

Next in line, without fail, was St. John the Evangelist.

I'm afraid I have no idea who this saint is. I never saw it before among the ranks of the other saints in this Lenten tradition.

Veronica of "Veronica wipes the face of Jesus", which incidentally, I heard from my mother, has been excluded from the new version of the Station of the Cross.

Mary Magdalene with perfume in hand, actually a very beautiful statue.

The Blessed Sacrament, also a new addition.

The Blessed Virgin Mary with a dagger piercing her heart, an image that I always found disturbing as a child.

The dead Christ in a glass coffin always came in last. Among the carrozas, it attracted the biggest crowd of followers. There were people who pushed the carroza in a somewhat frantic manner, determined to fulfill their panata, a promise made in exchange of a miracle. It was a bit reminiscent of the mad scramble for the Nazareno of Quiapo, only there was no madness here.

After the procession, we would always go to kalbaryos to take a look at the decors and the spectacle that was the pabasa. But there were no kalbaryos to visit last week, maybe for quite a number of Holy Weeks past already. No one must have been willing to shoulder the cost of setting up a place for pabasa during these hard times. Nor fill in the shoes of yesterday's mambabasa during these modern times. The only pabasa I witnessed lately was this scene I captured on video from last Friday's procession—the "grandma singers" as my 11 year-old nephew called them, probably the last of the mambabasas in our side of the world.

* Flagellation photo grabbed from Google.