A twist of faith
At first blush, the Cebu archdiocese’s collection of canned goods and water bottles for survivors of supertyphoon Yolanda gathered from participants of last Sunday’s religious procession capping the Year of Faith looked novel.
The relief drive, on hindsight, hewed closely to the Gospel’s basic call for the faithful to provide for the poor.
Indeed, calamities like the superstorm and the Oct. 15 earthquake are turning out to be signs prompting churches to get more involved in social concerns.
There has been no dearth of priests who are active in nation building, from activist Redemptorist Fr. Rudy Romano in the martial law era to Augustinian Fr. Tito Soquiño, who advocates ecological stewardship in this age of climate change.
Sunday’s procession, where people were asked to bring “one can more, one bottle more” for calamity victims, was refreshing. It involved clergy and lay persons who form the bulk of the Church.
The organic relationship between ritual and social action should spur more people to be good Samaritans.
The foot procession, which marked the feast of Christ the King, was also a countdown to the 51st International Eucharistic Congress in Cebu in 2016.
The prayer walk down Osmeña Boulevard to the Magellan’s Cross may very well herald a profound turn in the festive culture of Filipino Catholics, especially in the Visayas.
We refer to the thousands, especially young people, who equate fiesta with fun and self-indulgent revelry, rather than an occasion to reach out to the less fortunate.
We mean those people who have come to associate fiesta with heavy traffic, late night noise, money-making and getting wasted.
In many places, fiesta novenas have deteriorated into front acts for nine nights of drag shows or stage plays that entertain but are woefully out of step with the virtues of the saint being honored.
Chapel communities and parishes would be better off if every fiesta became an occasion to attend to the forgotten ones in society – beggars, street children, disaster survivors, prisoners, wayward youths and the poor.
What if Saint Francis of Assisi’s feast were devoted to planting mangroves and trees and Saint Thomas More’s feast were spent by lawyers giving free legal assistance?
What if the run-up to Saint Luke’s day became a privileged season for doctors to conduct medical missions and Saint Sebastian’s day were a time to run sports clinics?
Last Sunday’s procession-cum-relief drive was thankfully different.
If we have more of these meangingful twists added to tradition, they could spell a great transformation in the faith of people as lived in this part of Asia.
