99 red balloons

The wife and I adopted this strategy—leave the car at a parking area and get a taxicab to take us to within meters from an entrance to the Pilgrim Center, thence to the upper level, from which we could attend the Mass and the novena to the Sto. Niño. We knew that the area of the basilica would be chockablock with cars and people and the best way to get around was by foot.

Our strategy worked. We brought an umbrella on the first, a misty day. The weather did not worsen enough for us to use it, however. Nonetheless, umbrellas filled all levels of the center, which occupies the spacious yard in front of the Sto. Niño basilica. Technically, the umbrellas were parasols, being luminous and frail and held by women against the threat of the sun, shy that day. From where we stood, they seemed like multicolored round patterns on a coverlet.

There was a Mass and novena after every hour and a half. We chose the noontime on the off chance that it had the least crowd, only to find it just a little less packed than the evening, which at one rainy time not too many  years ago was so jammed that the wife and I managed to get only half a foot on the edge of the raised floor and half a body away from the weather.

The next day the sun blazed. So hot it was that did I have its invitation to Mayakovsky, I would refuse it, not wanting just then for us to be a pair. Because the wife and I had left the umbrella in the car and this the women did not want us to forget by opening their covers of blues and reds and yellows above their heads. Anyway, we found a shaded place above the altar, from which we followed the Mass and novena by ear, and descended the stairs and returned to the sun only when it was time for Communion.

The crowd would increase exponentially as the feast of the Sto. Niño approached. The people likely would number over a million on the day itself.  Why such an overflow of devotion? Perhaps only the Cebuano truly knows the answer, because the focus of all this, the 500-year-old image of the Christ Child, is so embedded into his faith, history and culture as to reside in the very pith and core of his being.

As for me, coming as it does after Christmas, the feast of the Sto. Niño, through whose shrine passes an endless flow of pilgrims, reminds me of the magi and their long pilgrimage, guided by a star, through interminable wastelands, unfamiliar territory and often suspicious if not downright hostile kingdoms, to lay their gifts before the infant Jesus and Mary, his mother.

As one would the picture of a loved one, I  reverence the figure of the Holy Child. Aside from being a representation of God who became human and visible, and a sacred object, it is a priceless work of art that has come to be identified with the story of Cebu, and of Christianity in the Philippines itself.

It is Jesus, the Son of God, not his image, that I worship. The image is but an aid of focus, a reminder of the bedrock Christian values of childlike trust and guilelessness, and above all of that central mystery of my faith, the Incarnation, God becoming man—to Kierkegaard, the Absolute Paradox.

After Communion, the wife and I inched our way towards the exit. However, we did not leave before the final blessing, or dismissal, from which, in the first place, came the word “missa” or mass (in Latin: Ite, missa est—Go, it is the dismissal). So perhaps I would not have a Mass without the dismissal?

All the while, however, while continuing my prayer of thanks after Communion, I glanced at a little girl standing on a white monoblock chair outside, gesticulating to her grandmother towards a cluster of balloons that was just then floating above the crowd. I waited to see if the old woman would scold her for interrupting her prayers. Happily, she did not. Instead, she hugged the little one. And I remembered Jesus’ words—Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”