Lost in traslacíon

Blood, moans, sweat, and garbage: these assault the senses during the primeval spectacle that happens every January 9, when maroon-clad Catholic devotees flock in droves to the image of Nuestro Padre Jesus Nazareno, or Jesus the Black Nazarene, and participate in the procession from the Quirino Grandstand all the way to the image’s home, the Minor Basilica in Quiapo.

The popular religiosity surrounding this procession, or the Traslacíon, is befuddling for Catholic Lasallians unfamiliar with the devotion. It is for many members of the non-devotee population an expression of crude religion that leaves citizens injured and hurt from the stampede, an inconsiderate hindrance to the flow of regular traffic, and an ecological nightmare that produces piles of litter and trash left by the crowd of at least eight million ‘fanatics’.

For many of the devotees from all walks of life, from entrepreneurs to seamen to mandarasal to folk healers from the nayon, this grisly expression of faith is what actually defines their religion. Being a part of the noble crew pulling the carroza and bringing the image of the burnt Christ back to its home in Quiapo is, after all, no mean feat that just any Catholic can brag about. It is passion, not only yours, but Christ’s, as well. You, as a Catholic, have a panata, or a sworn oath to do this service for He, just this once, good for the year.

I myself do not entirely ‘get’ this logic.

Perhaps it is because folk devotion is not taught like Christian Life Education lessons from an elementary Catholic school, or a catechism session at the local parish. Indeed, folk devotion is more experiential than it is theoretical. Theologians say that such folk devotion is a lower level of faith expression, retaining elements of folk Catholicism that need to be purified with correct teaching and doctrinal understanding. Indeed, popular religiosity runs contrary to the Thomist principle of the harmony of faith and reason. Pope Benedict XVI has himself said, “Certainly, popular piety tends towards the irrational, and can at times be somewhat superficial.”

The immensity of the devotion of followers is, however, amazing by itself in its sheer rawness and blazoning sincerity. Practitioners of popular piety have in my experience expressed such terrific gestures of devotion in the willingness to believe that they have attained an experience of the Sacred. The entire Traslacíon is what theologians call the “pilgrimage experience” that forms the very foundation of popular piety, where “pilgrims” (namamanata) separate themselves from whatever their state may be in the material world, and enter the liminal state of consciousness, the state where they get a “touch of heaven”.

These moments of liminality occur on “pilgrimage sites” where miracles are believed to occur, whether on actual sites or where religious relics and artifacts rest. Exiting the liminal state results in what theologians call “aggregation” or “liberation”, where the pilgrim is “liberated” either by physical healing from illness or an ‘internal’ transformation in spirit and personality. In the case of the Nazareno, it is the 400 year-old burnt carving that “grants” miracles, and exiting has resulted in convinced testimonies of healing and miraculous upturns in the lives of devotees

Given this, the spiritual encounter with the Sacred is what keeps people coming, year after year, a personal, visual experience, the closest one can get to Christ, a living-out of the Passion, a “concrete” manifestation of the sacrifice that each Christian must go through, to be able to touch the statue and see a Living Christ whose sorrowful eyes and agony under the weight of the Cross relate with the personal sufferings of the Filipino in their own Via Crucis at home, at work, and as a member of a disjointed, hurting society, the citizen of a suffering country.

The event is cathartic in some sense, as followers go home feeling that they have paid their due to their Lord and master. Perhaps. It would be easy to misjudge the motivations of the folk devotion behind the Traslacíon if discussed between non-devotees. As Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle has said, “Only a devotee can best understand a devotee.”

But the attitude behind it, that one single mystical experience of pilgrimage would be enough is a dynamic that points to a deeper, darker reality in the Philippine psyche, one that we might call the “one-time big-time” or ningas kugon mentality. Do devotees start becoming more charitable in their actual work, and emulate the Nazarene’s fortitude in suffering the buffets and spitting of the world? Or do they return home proud at their feat of tugging the anda and braving the savage, traffic inducing, and litterbug crowd, and leave it at that?

As I see it, pilgrimage experiences do not necessarily involve disrupting Manila traffic and hurting hundreds in mini-stampedes. I am not dismissing the faith behind the devotion, but it conditions Filipinos to a ritualism that is scarcely sustained nor lived out in daily life.

The smaller sufferings and daily traslacíon, such as the insult of a neighbor lovingly unreturned, or an enraged outburst tempered to a calm suggestion, or the supernatural focus with which we pay attention to the quality our work and ignore the slightest distractions, constitute for me sacrifices which, when extrapolated to the context of 365 days ever year, aggregate to a Christian challenge far more insurmountable than that of the carroza’s hazards.

The January 9 procession stirs the faithful to fulfill their pact, or panata, with God. I might seem to misjudge the Traslacíon’s candor because I am personally not a devotee, but I am one with the namamanata in seeking better lives and a better future, struggling 365 days a year without end. Like the Nazarene, Christians fall, but always rise to bear the Cross onward. But not just for a fateful day once a year, a day of blood, moans, sweat and garbage. It is quite longer, an exhausting, demanding procession; one that goes on and on, every day and every moment, until our consummation to ash.