In church emptied by COVID-19, faith that God’s just around offers consolation
Sunday is not the same at the Santuario de San Antonio church as its pews lay empty following Church leaders’ decision to cancel all Mass and religious services that bring people together to heed a Luzon-wide quarantine for COVID-19. (Photo by TONY BERGONIA / INQUIRER.net)
MANILA, Philippines — The darkness inside the Santuario de San Antonio parish church near two of the country’s enclaves for the rich was pierced by sunlight being filtered by stained glass, casting gleeful shadows of blue, green and red on rows of empty pews.
Lights have been turned off except for those that frame the tabernacle, the church’s most sacred object, emitting a warm, orange glow.
Typical Sundays would have seen the church teeming with people in their designer outfits, wearing expensive perfume that filled the air inside the Santuario with the fragrance of a thousand flowers squeezed into pulp and scattered onto the church’s nearly spotless floors.
Not this Sunday, though. It was March 22, nearly a week after President Rodrigo Duterte ordered a community quarantine in Metro Manila expanded to the rest of Luzon.
The church stood empty, the parking area in front of it bare. No BMWs, Benzes, Audis, Porsches, Range Rovers, SUVs, Lexuses. Nothing blocked the orange lines that marked parking spaces. The church facade was bathed in sunlight, but inside it was unusually dark, an illustration of what pall of gloom meant.
A lone guard, who wants only his first name, Julius, to be mentioned, sat near the church doors, quietly turning the empty pages of a logbook on which he usually jots down license plates and makes of vehicles parked in front of the church. There was nothing to write on the logbook on this Sunday.
A couple walked through the gates near where Julius sat and asked: “Why is it so dark?”
“There’s no more church,” came Julius’ answer. He didn’t mean the physical church, but Church services. The couple nodded to say they understood and walked away quietly, holding each other’s hands.
An elderly man walking with the aid of a cane was dropped off the front of the church by an SUV. Seeing the darkness inside the church, he gestured toward Julius asking without uttering a word what happened.
Julius shook his head, using circular gestures of his hand to say, again, that there were no more Church services.
The man in cane got back into his SUV which circled into the parking lot of a small commercial area steps away from the church that was now being filled with cars and people headed only to either the drug store or the mini supermarket in the area.
A Benz pulled up at the church facade and the passenger at the back, a woman wearing sunglasses and a surgical mask, rolled down the window to ask: “No Mass?”
Again, Julius didn’t have to say anything. With the wave of his hand, he gave his previous reply: There’s no more church or what it really meant — there are no Church services, at least the way we knew it.
The Blessed Sacrament is exposed and emits a warm, steady orange glow at the Santuario de San Antonio church. PHOTO BY TONY BERGONIA
The woman rolled up the window and the Benz took her to the parking area of the commercial strip a stone’s throw away from the church.
An elderly woman sat at the last pew near the church doors. She knelt in silent prayer. Beside her were cloth and plastic bags packed with what looked like her belongings.
“She’s homeless,” said Julius.
On a normal Sunday, she would just be sitting outside the church entrance, waiting for alms. On this Sunday, Julius said she would let her stay until he closes the church doors around 7 p.m.
“I pity her,” Julius said. “I don’t even know where she’s going from here.”
Just a Sunday ago, Julius had been standing at the church driveway, opening doors of SUVs and luxury sedans to help the elderly, churchgoers in wheelchairs or what he deemed to be VIPs step out of their vehicles safely.
Just a Sunday ago, he was guiding Benzes, Audis, Range Rovers, BMWs, Porsches into the orange lines that demarcated parking slots.
Just a Sunday ago, Julius could barely finish drinking water from his insulated bottle to call the attention of drivers who park their bosses’ cars where parking wasn’t allowed.
Just a Sunday ago, he would be hunkered down on his logbook jotting incidents as minor as a Benz that parked in front of the church blocking the entry footpath or as major as two luxury cars accidentally hitting each other’s bumpers, setting off gasps and wide-eyed, surprised reactions from drivers who know that each bumper could cost upwards of P50,000.
When Duterte’s first quarantine order came, Julius recalled a wedding was scheduled before the noon Mass the next day. It would have been canceled as other Church services had been if not for the insistence of the wedding couple. The wedding proceeded but without the fanfare that commonly marked weddings at Santuario.
“There were only eight people at the wedding, including the couple,” Julius said.
The Sunday after Duterte expanded the quarantine to all of Luzon, Julius said he knew nothing would be the same again at the church, at least during the duration of the quarantine.
An image of Our Lady of Lourdes stands just near the entrance to the baptismal section of the Santuario de San Antonio which used to be teeming with devotees touching its feet and praying in front of it. PHOTO BY TONY BERGONIA
This Sunday, March 22, Julius just stood near the driveway, staring into the darkness that blanketed the church inside and taking shelter from the 38-degree-Celsius noontime heat in the shadows of the church’s driveway.
Church services in Metro Manila were among the forms of gatherings that had to be removed from the equation in the campaign to contain novel coronavirus disease 2019 or COVID-19.
“In this time of intense quarantine due to the spread of COVID-19, almost everything and everyone is affected,” said a letter to dioceses and churches by Davao Archbishop Romulo G. Valles, president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP).
“Our social, economic and religious life are painfully hit by the ‘social distancing’ that is a necessity in this time of pandemic to stem the transmission of the virus,” the letter read.
That the expanded community quarantine came during Lent, perhaps the Church’s most solemn period, gave the word penitence a deeper meaning for the Church leadership.
In his column for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Fr. Gerry Orbos wrote that, for the first time in his life as a priest, “I had no entry in my appointment book.”
“Indeed, everything has been canceled except the love of God, and our appointment with Him,” he wrote.
In his letter, Valle sought to give emphasis to the importance of the Church’s Lenten traditions though conceding that these would be celebrated differently in a time of quarantine.
“The greatest mysteries of the redemption are celebrated yearly by the Church beginning with the evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday until Vespers of Easter Sunday,” Valle’s letter said.
This yearly observation of the Lord’s suffering and resurrection, Valle said in his letter, “is the apex and heart of the whole liturgical year.”
“All our parishes take time to prepare for these great celebrations,” said Valle’s letter.
“The celebrations will be simpler this year because of the absence of our faithful,” the letter continued.
“But we will make every effort to keep the dignity and solemnity of our celebrations,” it said.
The Church hierarchy has since advised the faithful to turn to television or the internet in lieu of Sunday or daily Mass in churches.
Many parishes had resorted to this technology, live streaming Mass with only the priest and sacristans present at and near the altar.
“It is beneficial for the people to follow the live streaming of the celebrations,” said Valle’s letter.
“Every diocese is encouraged to live-stream their celebrations. The online celebrations should also aim at generating an affinity of the faithful to the local Church,” it said.
The most popular phrase of the times, social distancing, has inserted itself into Church lingo.
“We enjoin all to keep the prescribed social distancing, hygiene protocols and sanitation of our spaces for the liturgy,” said Valle’s letter.
One of the biggest Church events which would still be celebrated, but not in the way we knew it, is Palm Sunday, which commemorates Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and the welcome that he got from people who laid palm branches on his path.
It was the Sunday preceding Jesus’ agony, suffering and death which are commemorated on Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Black Saturday.
Still in accordance with the expanded quarantine, Valle said the Church proposed that the faithful should watch the celebration on TV and hold their palms while the blessing was being recited by the priest.
“In this case, those who follow the celebration on TV, there is no need for Holy Water to bless the palm branches,” Valle said in his letter.
To stay in touch with the faithful, the letter said after Palm Sunday Mass, the priest could go around the streets of a parish at a set time to bless palms without sprinkling Holy Water held by the faithful in front of their homes.
“The blessing with Holy Water might cause a commotion,” it said. The priest’s arrival would be announced so the faithful could wait in front of their homes.
“All of these must be done with only two to three ministers accompanying the priest,” Valle’s letter said. “This is to avoid gathering of people,” it added.
Another tradition of the Church during Holy Week is in danger of being disposed of in a quarantine environment — The Washing of the Feet, which commemorates Jesus’ display of humility by washing the feet of his apostles just hours before he was crucified.
This tradition, said Valle’s letter, could be “omitted or simplified” by reducing the number of persons whose feet would be washed.
On Good Friday, the day Jesus’ death on the cross is commemorated, Valle said instead of the faithful lining up in Church to kiss the image of the dead Christ priests could go out and carry a crucifix in a vehicle and go around the streets of the parish to bless the faithful who would be lighting candles in front of their homes and kneeling.
When Easter Sunday comes, priests can also go around the parish carrying the Blessed Sacrament, or Host blessed by the priest during Mass, with the faithful waiting at home watching from their windows or doors and carrying images of the Blessed Virgin for the traditional “salubong” or the reunion of Jesus with Mary.
In a separate letter signed by 10 bishops, the Church said it was heeding the quarantine because it was for the common good.
“Let us heed the signs of our times and respond to them appropriately,” the letter said.
“There will be no celebration of the Holy Mass with a large congregation within this period,” the letter added.
At the Santuario where churchgoers from Forbes Park and Dasmariñas Village in Makati City used to attend Mass daily and on Sundays, the sound of birds chirping echo through the dark rows of pews that are empty save for the last one near the door where the homeless woman knelt in silent prayer.
The tabernacle emits a warm, steady orange glow that looked as sad as the face of the homeless woman praying on her knees silently, probably the first Sunday she spent inside the church and not outside waiting, but not begging, for kindness.
A section in the church where the faithful would light candles in front of images of saints to pray for miracles was locked. Inside, candles sat in their receptacles unlighted, their wicks visible in the shadows these cast on the candles’ glass casings.
Near the tabernacle stood an empty crucifix, just wood with no dead or suffering Jesus on it. In a glass case just a few steps from the empty crucifix lay an image of a dead Christ wearing a maroon robe which, just one Sunday ago, people were kissing or praying in front of for deliverance, a miracle or forgiveness. It just lay there on this Sunday untouched, undisturbed.
Outside the church doors, Julius, the guard, tried to strike up a conversation, but it would be better if he would do the talking alone.
“You know it’s sad to see this church like this,” he said.
“My only consolation and maybe of others, too, is to know that God is not just here,” he continued, gesturing a hand toward the direction of the darkness inside Santuario. “God is everywhere, isn’t he?”
/atm
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