Saturday, March 23, 2013
“Beheading Longinus in the ‘Heart of the Philippines’: Spirituality, Theatre, Community, and Politics in Marinduque’s Moriones Festival"
By William Peterson
Monash University
At no time in the year is the power of the Church more interwoven into the daily lives of Catholic Filipinos than in that week between Palm Sunday and Easter. Activities, events, and rituals range from all-night readings of the passion of Christ in metered verse before make-shift altars in urban and rural barrios, to the staging of vast biblical pageants extending back to creation. This inquiry will focus on activities in and around the provincial capital of Boac on the island of Marinduque during “Holy Week,” when the lines between secular and religious activities, as well as political power and religious authority are repeatedly breached. Few sites reflect the complex ways in which apparently contradictory and competing political, economic, and religious interests play themselves out in ways that are at once playful and serious, secular and deeply religious. This paper will attempt to map out some of these complex relationships and propose a range of possible readings, relying on my own ethnographic research conducted during Holy Week, 2005, as well as the theoretical frameworks of Filipino scholars.
On some tourist maps of the Philippines, the heart-shaped island of Marinduque, 172 kilometers southeast of Manila, is obscured beneath an icon of a giant, stylized mask of a Roman centurion known locally as a “morion.” Situated in what the provincial government’s website calls the “very heart of the Philippine archipelago” for its proximity to the center of this far-flung complex of islands, the giant morion mask conflates the island with a single aspect of a complex and varied range of events that play out during Holy Week. Morions are ubiquitous not only in the iconography of the island,
but also on the streets during Holy Week where local men don variously centurion-themed costumes and hide their faces beneath massive carved or paper-mache masks with vaguely Caucasian features bearing expressions ranging from the stern to the seductive. Their continued importance in Marinduque is evidenced in the way in which the entire week’s events are packaged for purposes of both tourism and local consumption; banners featuring fierce-looking morions, morion plaster statues, key chains, refrigerator magnets and roadside effigies remind tourists and locals alike that Holy Week has been subsumed into an overarching “Moriones Festival” by the provincial government.
The tradition of having men dressed as Roman centurions and donning masks reputedly dates back to the 1870s, when Father Dionisio Santiago, the local parish priest in the town of Mogog, started the practice in order to provide a focal point for Lenten activities (Asuncion 2004, 29). Until the 1970s, the highlight of morion activities was the pugutan, in which the Roman soldier Longinus was chased through the streets of town by morions and townspeople in the hours before noon on Easter Sunday, followed by his capture and mock beheading. According to apocryphal sources, Longinus was the soldier who pierced Christ’s side with his lance, and whose blindness in one eye was cured by the blood that flowed from Christ’s wound and into his eye. Longinus is said to have been the first Roman convert to Christianity, proselytizing to all who would listen before he incurred the wrath of Pilate and was executed.
Today, Longinus’ mock-decapitation, the most important feature of the tradition in Boac, no longer takes place on Easter Sunday following the morning mass, but rather in the context of a Saturday-night passion play or sinakulo. This shift places his death chronologically before the risen Christ appears, a somewhat jarring occurrence inasmuch
As the other events associated with the passion of Christ are played out in a sequence timed to replicate their actual occurrence in historical time. This move was spearheaded by the current Provincial Governor, Carmencita Reyes, who as one of Imelda Marcos’ original inner circle of so-called “Blue Ladies” during the Marcos era, is known for her strong personality and desire to shape the island’s traditions in ways that she feels best serves the island’s long-term strategic, economic, and cultural interests. Integrating a mock-execution into the final evening sinakulo may have enhanced its dramatic effectiveness, but it has also contributed to the radical transformation of a folk tradition by knocking it off its moorings.
In its Boac incarnation, men enacting morions were traditionally drawn from the poor barrios located outside of the town proper, and their choice to enact morions was in response to a panata (vow) to purge their sins. As one informant observes, morions “become renewed individuals at the end of the whole week of the panata” (Mandia 2005). A week of constant outdoor activity while wearing sometimes cumbersome costumes consisting of multiple layers and heavy masks fitting completely over the head can be a source of extreme discomfort, especially in the heat of dry season that corresponds with Easter, presumably providing penitents with greater empathy with the sufferings of Christ. One’s identity as a morion was traditionally to be kept secret even from one’s closest family members, a practice that has eroded over the last twenty years. Some morions took on this panata for a period of seven years, after which point they were eligible to play Longinus, with this elite group self-selecting the individual who would take on this honor.
Today, some morions sport nicely ripped breast plates and impressive capes, while others wear robes created in fabrics with patterns that range from the psychedelic to the more restrained. Still others create elaborate, traditional garments out of indigenous materials such as dried nito, incorporating shells and other natural materials into their costumes. Props such as chains and manacles, shields, and swords are all generally home-made and are sometimes constructed from the simplest and most modest of materials. The most famous and remarkable feature of the Morions’ costume is not his garments, footwear, or leggings, but rather the mask the covers his entire head. Masks are uniformly different and etched into each are expressions ranging from the traditional mask designed to elicit fear, to those marked by the conventionally handsome features one might find on male models in print and television advertising.
The derivation of the term morion or moryon, as well as its plural form moriones, is subject to varying explanations. According to Nicanor Tiongson, the word comes from the Spanish “moriones,” meaning helmets, and in its original meaning was linked to a “playlet enacted on the streets about the capture and beheading of Longinus” (1994, 94). Incorporating Roman centurions into the dramatic portion of Holy Week events is not a new practice, nor one unique to Marinduque. Multiple sources cited in Danilo Mandia’s 2002 thesis suggest that morions appeared in the sinakulo tradition sometime in the mid-18th Century (70-72). Mandia argues that the term morion may refer specifically to the “high-crested helmets” worn by Spanish soldiers which may have been named after the Spanish Governor General Domingo Moriones (2002, 67). Yet another explanation is that the term is derived from “moros” which generally refers to Muslims from the south
But which sometimes also takes on the connotation of “pirates” or “bandits” in the north, linking morions with something to be feared Morions feature prominently in the three-night sinakulo, which incorporates the passion of Christ and extends back to Creation, effectively dramatizing the entire history of salvation. Boac’s sinakulo is very much the project of the provincial government of Marinduque, under the direction of the Governor’s Office, who provides the funds to produce the event which is offered free to the public. The sinakulo is staged over three evenings beginning on Holy Wednesday in the Boac Morion Park, the permanent home to the event. One of the peculiarities of Boac’s sinakulo is that the entire soundtrack, all of which is delivered in Tagalog, is pre-recorded. The current version was recorded after the 1986 EDSA Revolution by radio drama actors at the behest of Carmencita Reyes, then representative of Marinduque in the House of Representatives, who developed the script with Celso Carunungan and Aura Mijares, both of whom were well-known writers (Lilles 2005, Mandia 2002, 2005). The disembodied voices in the sinakulo were created by actors, some of whom are now presumably dead, and delivered by living actors in a style that is gestural, highly dramatic, and at times ponderous, very much in the tradition of the great Hollywood epic films of the past. Music drawn largely from the film The Ten Commandments underscores the action of the play and heightens moments of dramatic tension, much as it did in the original Hollywood movie.
The actor playing Longinus, the lead morion, assumes a prominent role in the crucifixion scene on Good Friday when his sight it restored, and also on the final night of the sinakulo on Black Saturday when he exhorts his compatriots to accept Christ’s mercy, leading to his inevitable confrontation with Pontius Pilate and his equally inevitable beheading, an the staging of which provides the dramatic highlight of all three nights. Of course the star of the sinakulo is clearly the actor playing Christ, enacted for the last six years by Allen Madrigal, who hails from Marinduque but lives in Manila where he designs furniture. Madrigal enacts Christ in response to a vow, and though he was initially hesitant to undertake a role he was drafted into by Provincial Governor Reyes, he has grown more comfortable with the demands of playing Christ over time (Lilles 2005, Madrigal 2005). Madrigal manages to capture Christ’s quiet intensity and sense of resignation to his fate in a way that is profound and moving. Not surprisingly, Madrigal comes close to the romanticized image of Christ as slender, smooth-bodied, light-skinned, and good-looking.
Friday’s events formally kick off in the early afternoon, when the audience gathers around the temple stage to witness Pilate condemning Christ and the two criminals, followed by the public scourging and humiliation of all three in the streets of Boac and their eventual crucifixion. After Christ is condemned, the action moves from the raised stage through the area where outdoor scenes are staged, and out onto the streets of town. Moving with them are the marions, who summarily beat Christ and the other prisoners—meant to represent the criminals Gestas and Dimas—with rope whips. The beating does not approach the level of intense blood-letting found in other parts of the country, most notably in San Fernando in the Pampanga region north of Manila, though welts are raised on the skin and abrasions and cuts result in some blood loss. While blood-letting is kept to a minimum, given the mid-day heat and the fact that the penitents are all carrying crosses, there is no doubt that this ordeal exacts an extreme physical toll on participants.
When asked about his motivation for undertaking the role of Christ year after year, Madrigal’s response is very much consistent with the larger impulse motivating the morions. His suffering as Christ, he feels, “is sacrifice,” and is done so that others realize that’s how “Jesus experienced these things” (2005). The need for an experiential connection with the sufferings of Christ is a recurrent and dominant theme in the Tagalog relationship to Christ. This desire to connect personally with the sufferings of Christ is in many ways an expansion of the Catholic belief that “the sacraments of the Christian dispensation are not mere signs; they do not merely signify Divine grace, but in virtue of their Divine institution, they cause that grace in the souls of men” (Catholic Encyclopedia, “Sacraments,” 2005). Filipino Folk Catholicism as practiced in Tagalog-speaking regions would appear to extend this direct link between action and divine grace into the ritual activities connected with Holy Week, notably to those who undertake the vows and penitential practices of the morion, as well as those who take on the sufferings of Christ in the streets of town on Good Friday. That the morion practice of the panata was largely identified with the barrio-dwelling poor for most of its history suggests that this identification with the sufferings of Christ may well have a basis in class, and an appeal that speaks directly to the poor.
On the other hand, poverty alone does not go far enough to explain the rapid acceptance of the Catholic faith in Tagalog-speaking regions of the Philippines, and the need for an experiential relation with the sufferings of Christ. Beltran Benigno argues that the Filipino experience of being Catholic “is characterized by a thaumaturgical thrust—the desire of the people to experience the extraordinary effects of the supernatural in their lives,” in contrast to the less folk-centered and more Western practice of Christianity that “is oriented toward the cognitive dimension of the faith” (1987, 6). He asserts that though “the idea of corporal mortification as a penance for sins was foreign to ancient Filipinos” (115) it fed into the Filipino cultural construct of damay, or compassion. Filipino sociologist F. Landa Jocano in turn places damay in its broader context, noting that it is one of three components of selfhood known collectively as damá, which deals with how Filipinos organize the way they feel about the world; along with kahulugán (the meaning attached to events, people and objects) and habág (sympathy for people in need), damay is “is to show in actual practice the act of compassion” (2001, 106). Thus in the universe of expressing one’s feelings as a Filipino, he argues, mere emotion attached to people or objects or the extension of feelings through sympathy is not enough; required to complete the circuit of a feeling person is the willingness to undertake compassionate acts in support of one’s fellow man.
When faced with the sufferings and sacrifice of Christ, the deepest act of compassion for the dead Christ is to suffer as he did, taking on a lesser form of pain, but inviting a one-to-one identification nevertheless. The scale of Christ’s sacrifice requires an appropriately meaningful, experiential, and active response, and it is no accident that the Philippines is famous around the world for the number of devout Christians who flagellate themselves and offer up their bodies for actual crucifixion. Vicente Rafael suggests that one of the factors that may explain massive and rapid conversions in the Tagalog-speaking regions was the sense of eternal indebtedness to Christ, a debt that cannot be paid fully, aligning it with the cultural concept of utang na loób, generally translated as “debt of gratitude,” but with the additional sense that such a debt, if to ones’ parents for instance, can never be paid. He observes: “To say that ‘Christ died for you’ is to say that you are perpetually indebted to God insofar as you have become a recipient of a gift so enormous as to defy equal return,” adding that “such a gift can never be fully repaid” (1998, 96). Thus the scale of the debt owed to Christ, combined with the culturally-driven tendency to engage in active acts of compassion, may account for the pervasiveness of Holy Week activities that involve a panata which actively takes on some form of suffering.
After a week of activities, events, and rituals, many of which enact some form of panata, the promise of the resurrection would almost seem to be an afterthought. Such is the case until Sunday morning at least, when the tenor and tone of the previous days activities shifts radically. Shortly after 4:00 on Easter Sunday those living in the center of town are awakened by a chorus of children from the streets below, heralding the arrival of a angel who literally lifts the veil of mourning from an effigy of Mother Mary in a ceremony known as the salubong. Immediately after this ritual street performance concludes, a marching band begins playing as the crowd files behind the karos (or wagons) upon which sit the effigies of saints that ordinarily reside in the town’s church. As penitents make their final ascent toward the 200-year-old church on the hill, the bells in the church tower start clanging frantically, drowning out the marching band and demanding that everyone in the valley resurrect themselves.
At the top of the hill in front of the church, the karos are parked in set positions, while those who marched behind them through the streets of town filter into the church, filling up every pew. It is no accident, notes the priest in his homily, that the resurrected Christ first revealed himself to women, and to his mother, as women are the backbone of our world. In a country with a female President and where women hold many key positions of power, this message does not fall on deaf ears. Communion follows shortly after the sermon and the mass ends shortly after 6:00 am, just as light has broken. As I walk out into the new day, it strikes me that in a country where there sometimes seems to be so little that works well and where beauty and tranquility, especially in the urban areas, is so hard to find, there is no substitute for the comfort of participating in an ancient ritual done with great care and love. The power of ritual is certainly manifested on Easter Sunday and suddenly I understand what motivates people to engage in the same repeated actions years after year; every Sunday morning procession will end at the church, while every sunrise service will release one into the dawn of a new day and the promise of renewal. The occasional wackiness of the morions and their sometimes wildly extravagant costumes, the tackiness of the voiceovers, the swelling Hollywood music, and the sometimes tortured acting in the sinakulo, all seem to be a necessary part of the whole experience as Holy Week contains something for everyone: part circus, part show, part spectacle, part street theatre, its foundation and reason for being is where it all ends, here in the churchyard on Easter Sunday.
Works Cited
Asuncio, Dindo L. 2004.
Marinduque: The Heart of the Philippines. Provincial Government of Marinduque.
Benigno, Beltran P. S.V.D. 1987.
The Christology of the Inarticulate: An Inquiry into the Filipino Understanding of Jesus the Christ. Manila: Divine Word Publications.
Catholic Encyclopedia New Advent Website. 2005
“Sacraments” Entry. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13295a.htm
Jocano, F. Landa. 2001
Filipino Worldview: Ethnography of Local Knowledge. Diliman, Quezon City: PUNLAD Research House, Inc.
Lilles, Joven M. 2005.
Personal Interview. Boac, Marinduque, 25 March.
Madrigal, Allen. 2005.
Personal Interview. Manila, 16 April.
Mandia, Danilo Ledesma. 2002.
“Moryon: Panata sa Likod ng Maskara.” M.A. Thesis, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City.
_____. 2005.
Personal Interview. Quezon City, Philippines, 19 March.
Rafael, Vincente. 1998, Second Printing 2000.
Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society under Early Spanish Rule. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.
Tiongson, Nicanor. 1994.
Cultural Center of the Philippines Encyclopedia of Philippine Art, Volume VII, Philippine Theatre. Manila: Cultural Center of the Philippines.
http://www.yorku.ca/ycar/CCSEAS%20Papers/Moriones%20Festival%20Paper.CASA%20Conference.05.10.pdf
Monash University
At no time in the year is the power of the Church more interwoven into the daily lives of Catholic Filipinos than in that week between Palm Sunday and Easter. Activities, events, and rituals range from all-night readings of the passion of Christ in metered verse before make-shift altars in urban and rural barrios, to the staging of vast biblical pageants extending back to creation. This inquiry will focus on activities in and around the provincial capital of Boac on the island of Marinduque during “Holy Week,” when the lines between secular and religious activities, as well as political power and religious authority are repeatedly breached. Few sites reflect the complex ways in which apparently contradictory and competing political, economic, and religious interests play themselves out in ways that are at once playful and serious, secular and deeply religious. This paper will attempt to map out some of these complex relationships and propose a range of possible readings, relying on my own ethnographic research conducted during Holy Week, 2005, as well as the theoretical frameworks of Filipino scholars.
On some tourist maps of the Philippines, the heart-shaped island of Marinduque, 172 kilometers southeast of Manila, is obscured beneath an icon of a giant, stylized mask of a Roman centurion known locally as a “morion.” Situated in what the provincial government’s website calls the “very heart of the Philippine archipelago” for its proximity to the center of this far-flung complex of islands, the giant morion mask conflates the island with a single aspect of a complex and varied range of events that play out during Holy Week. Morions are ubiquitous not only in the iconography of the island,
but also on the streets during Holy Week where local men don variously centurion-themed costumes and hide their faces beneath massive carved or paper-mache masks with vaguely Caucasian features bearing expressions ranging from the stern to the seductive. Their continued importance in Marinduque is evidenced in the way in which the entire week’s events are packaged for purposes of both tourism and local consumption; banners featuring fierce-looking morions, morion plaster statues, key chains, refrigerator magnets and roadside effigies remind tourists and locals alike that Holy Week has been subsumed into an overarching “Moriones Festival” by the provincial government.
The tradition of having men dressed as Roman centurions and donning masks reputedly dates back to the 1870s, when Father Dionisio Santiago, the local parish priest in the town of Mogog, started the practice in order to provide a focal point for Lenten activities (Asuncion 2004, 29). Until the 1970s, the highlight of morion activities was the pugutan, in which the Roman soldier Longinus was chased through the streets of town by morions and townspeople in the hours before noon on Easter Sunday, followed by his capture and mock beheading. According to apocryphal sources, Longinus was the soldier who pierced Christ’s side with his lance, and whose blindness in one eye was cured by the blood that flowed from Christ’s wound and into his eye. Longinus is said to have been the first Roman convert to Christianity, proselytizing to all who would listen before he incurred the wrath of Pilate and was executed.
Today, Longinus’ mock-decapitation, the most important feature of the tradition in Boac, no longer takes place on Easter Sunday following the morning mass, but rather in the context of a Saturday-night passion play or sinakulo. This shift places his death chronologically before the risen Christ appears, a somewhat jarring occurrence inasmuch
As the other events associated with the passion of Christ are played out in a sequence timed to replicate their actual occurrence in historical time. This move was spearheaded by the current Provincial Governor, Carmencita Reyes, who as one of Imelda Marcos’ original inner circle of so-called “Blue Ladies” during the Marcos era, is known for her strong personality and desire to shape the island’s traditions in ways that she feels best serves the island’s long-term strategic, economic, and cultural interests. Integrating a mock-execution into the final evening sinakulo may have enhanced its dramatic effectiveness, but it has also contributed to the radical transformation of a folk tradition by knocking it off its moorings.
In its Boac incarnation, men enacting morions were traditionally drawn from the poor barrios located outside of the town proper, and their choice to enact morions was in response to a panata (vow) to purge their sins. As one informant observes, morions “become renewed individuals at the end of the whole week of the panata” (Mandia 2005). A week of constant outdoor activity while wearing sometimes cumbersome costumes consisting of multiple layers and heavy masks fitting completely over the head can be a source of extreme discomfort, especially in the heat of dry season that corresponds with Easter, presumably providing penitents with greater empathy with the sufferings of Christ. One’s identity as a morion was traditionally to be kept secret even from one’s closest family members, a practice that has eroded over the last twenty years. Some morions took on this panata for a period of seven years, after which point they were eligible to play Longinus, with this elite group self-selecting the individual who would take on this honor.
Today, some morions sport nicely ripped breast plates and impressive capes, while others wear robes created in fabrics with patterns that range from the psychedelic to the more restrained. Still others create elaborate, traditional garments out of indigenous materials such as dried nito, incorporating shells and other natural materials into their costumes. Props such as chains and manacles, shields, and swords are all generally home-made and are sometimes constructed from the simplest and most modest of materials. The most famous and remarkable feature of the Morions’ costume is not his garments, footwear, or leggings, but rather the mask the covers his entire head. Masks are uniformly different and etched into each are expressions ranging from the traditional mask designed to elicit fear, to those marked by the conventionally handsome features one might find on male models in print and television advertising.
The derivation of the term morion or moryon, as well as its plural form moriones, is subject to varying explanations. According to Nicanor Tiongson, the word comes from the Spanish “moriones,” meaning helmets, and in its original meaning was linked to a “playlet enacted on the streets about the capture and beheading of Longinus” (1994, 94). Incorporating Roman centurions into the dramatic portion of Holy Week events is not a new practice, nor one unique to Marinduque. Multiple sources cited in Danilo Mandia’s 2002 thesis suggest that morions appeared in the sinakulo tradition sometime in the mid-18th Century (70-72). Mandia argues that the term morion may refer specifically to the “high-crested helmets” worn by Spanish soldiers which may have been named after the Spanish Governor General Domingo Moriones (2002, 67). Yet another explanation is that the term is derived from “moros” which generally refers to Muslims from the south
But which sometimes also takes on the connotation of “pirates” or “bandits” in the north, linking morions with something to be feared Morions feature prominently in the three-night sinakulo, which incorporates the passion of Christ and extends back to Creation, effectively dramatizing the entire history of salvation. Boac’s sinakulo is very much the project of the provincial government of Marinduque, under the direction of the Governor’s Office, who provides the funds to produce the event which is offered free to the public. The sinakulo is staged over three evenings beginning on Holy Wednesday in the Boac Morion Park, the permanent home to the event. One of the peculiarities of Boac’s sinakulo is that the entire soundtrack, all of which is delivered in Tagalog, is pre-recorded. The current version was recorded after the 1986 EDSA Revolution by radio drama actors at the behest of Carmencita Reyes, then representative of Marinduque in the House of Representatives, who developed the script with Celso Carunungan and Aura Mijares, both of whom were well-known writers (Lilles 2005, Mandia 2002, 2005). The disembodied voices in the sinakulo were created by actors, some of whom are now presumably dead, and delivered by living actors in a style that is gestural, highly dramatic, and at times ponderous, very much in the tradition of the great Hollywood epic films of the past. Music drawn largely from the film The Ten Commandments underscores the action of the play and heightens moments of dramatic tension, much as it did in the original Hollywood movie.
The actor playing Longinus, the lead morion, assumes a prominent role in the crucifixion scene on Good Friday when his sight it restored, and also on the final night of the sinakulo on Black Saturday when he exhorts his compatriots to accept Christ’s mercy, leading to his inevitable confrontation with Pontius Pilate and his equally inevitable beheading, an the staging of which provides the dramatic highlight of all three nights. Of course the star of the sinakulo is clearly the actor playing Christ, enacted for the last six years by Allen Madrigal, who hails from Marinduque but lives in Manila where he designs furniture. Madrigal enacts Christ in response to a vow, and though he was initially hesitant to undertake a role he was drafted into by Provincial Governor Reyes, he has grown more comfortable with the demands of playing Christ over time (Lilles 2005, Madrigal 2005). Madrigal manages to capture Christ’s quiet intensity and sense of resignation to his fate in a way that is profound and moving. Not surprisingly, Madrigal comes close to the romanticized image of Christ as slender, smooth-bodied, light-skinned, and good-looking.
Friday’s events formally kick off in the early afternoon, when the audience gathers around the temple stage to witness Pilate condemning Christ and the two criminals, followed by the public scourging and humiliation of all three in the streets of Boac and their eventual crucifixion. After Christ is condemned, the action moves from the raised stage through the area where outdoor scenes are staged, and out onto the streets of town. Moving with them are the marions, who summarily beat Christ and the other prisoners—meant to represent the criminals Gestas and Dimas—with rope whips. The beating does not approach the level of intense blood-letting found in other parts of the country, most notably in San Fernando in the Pampanga region north of Manila, though welts are raised on the skin and abrasions and cuts result in some blood loss. While blood-letting is kept to a minimum, given the mid-day heat and the fact that the penitents are all carrying crosses, there is no doubt that this ordeal exacts an extreme physical toll on participants.
When asked about his motivation for undertaking the role of Christ year after year, Madrigal’s response is very much consistent with the larger impulse motivating the morions. His suffering as Christ, he feels, “is sacrifice,” and is done so that others realize that’s how “Jesus experienced these things” (2005). The need for an experiential connection with the sufferings of Christ is a recurrent and dominant theme in the Tagalog relationship to Christ. This desire to connect personally with the sufferings of Christ is in many ways an expansion of the Catholic belief that “the sacraments of the Christian dispensation are not mere signs; they do not merely signify Divine grace, but in virtue of their Divine institution, they cause that grace in the souls of men” (Catholic Encyclopedia, “Sacraments,” 2005). Filipino Folk Catholicism as practiced in Tagalog-speaking regions would appear to extend this direct link between action and divine grace into the ritual activities connected with Holy Week, notably to those who undertake the vows and penitential practices of the morion, as well as those who take on the sufferings of Christ in the streets of town on Good Friday. That the morion practice of the panata was largely identified with the barrio-dwelling poor for most of its history suggests that this identification with the sufferings of Christ may well have a basis in class, and an appeal that speaks directly to the poor.
On the other hand, poverty alone does not go far enough to explain the rapid acceptance of the Catholic faith in Tagalog-speaking regions of the Philippines, and the need for an experiential relation with the sufferings of Christ. Beltran Benigno argues that the Filipino experience of being Catholic “is characterized by a thaumaturgical thrust—the desire of the people to experience the extraordinary effects of the supernatural in their lives,” in contrast to the less folk-centered and more Western practice of Christianity that “is oriented toward the cognitive dimension of the faith” (1987, 6). He asserts that though “the idea of corporal mortification as a penance for sins was foreign to ancient Filipinos” (115) it fed into the Filipino cultural construct of damay, or compassion. Filipino sociologist F. Landa Jocano in turn places damay in its broader context, noting that it is one of three components of selfhood known collectively as damá, which deals with how Filipinos organize the way they feel about the world; along with kahulugán (the meaning attached to events, people and objects) and habág (sympathy for people in need), damay is “is to show in actual practice the act of compassion” (2001, 106). Thus in the universe of expressing one’s feelings as a Filipino, he argues, mere emotion attached to people or objects or the extension of feelings through sympathy is not enough; required to complete the circuit of a feeling person is the willingness to undertake compassionate acts in support of one’s fellow man.
When faced with the sufferings and sacrifice of Christ, the deepest act of compassion for the dead Christ is to suffer as he did, taking on a lesser form of pain, but inviting a one-to-one identification nevertheless. The scale of Christ’s sacrifice requires an appropriately meaningful, experiential, and active response, and it is no accident that the Philippines is famous around the world for the number of devout Christians who flagellate themselves and offer up their bodies for actual crucifixion. Vicente Rafael suggests that one of the factors that may explain massive and rapid conversions in the Tagalog-speaking regions was the sense of eternal indebtedness to Christ, a debt that cannot be paid fully, aligning it with the cultural concept of utang na loób, generally translated as “debt of gratitude,” but with the additional sense that such a debt, if to ones’ parents for instance, can never be paid. He observes: “To say that ‘Christ died for you’ is to say that you are perpetually indebted to God insofar as you have become a recipient of a gift so enormous as to defy equal return,” adding that “such a gift can never be fully repaid” (1998, 96). Thus the scale of the debt owed to Christ, combined with the culturally-driven tendency to engage in active acts of compassion, may account for the pervasiveness of Holy Week activities that involve a panata which actively takes on some form of suffering.
After a week of activities, events, and rituals, many of which enact some form of panata, the promise of the resurrection would almost seem to be an afterthought. Such is the case until Sunday morning at least, when the tenor and tone of the previous days activities shifts radically. Shortly after 4:00 on Easter Sunday those living in the center of town are awakened by a chorus of children from the streets below, heralding the arrival of a angel who literally lifts the veil of mourning from an effigy of Mother Mary in a ceremony known as the salubong. Immediately after this ritual street performance concludes, a marching band begins playing as the crowd files behind the karos (or wagons) upon which sit the effigies of saints that ordinarily reside in the town’s church. As penitents make their final ascent toward the 200-year-old church on the hill, the bells in the church tower start clanging frantically, drowning out the marching band and demanding that everyone in the valley resurrect themselves.
At the top of the hill in front of the church, the karos are parked in set positions, while those who marched behind them through the streets of town filter into the church, filling up every pew. It is no accident, notes the priest in his homily, that the resurrected Christ first revealed himself to women, and to his mother, as women are the backbone of our world. In a country with a female President and where women hold many key positions of power, this message does not fall on deaf ears. Communion follows shortly after the sermon and the mass ends shortly after 6:00 am, just as light has broken. As I walk out into the new day, it strikes me that in a country where there sometimes seems to be so little that works well and where beauty and tranquility, especially in the urban areas, is so hard to find, there is no substitute for the comfort of participating in an ancient ritual done with great care and love. The power of ritual is certainly manifested on Easter Sunday and suddenly I understand what motivates people to engage in the same repeated actions years after year; every Sunday morning procession will end at the church, while every sunrise service will release one into the dawn of a new day and the promise of renewal. The occasional wackiness of the morions and their sometimes wildly extravagant costumes, the tackiness of the voiceovers, the swelling Hollywood music, and the sometimes tortured acting in the sinakulo, all seem to be a necessary part of the whole experience as Holy Week contains something for everyone: part circus, part show, part spectacle, part street theatre, its foundation and reason for being is where it all ends, here in the churchyard on Easter Sunday.
Works Cited
Asuncio, Dindo L. 2004.
Marinduque: The Heart of the Philippines. Provincial Government of Marinduque.
Benigno, Beltran P. S.V.D. 1987.
The Christology of the Inarticulate: An Inquiry into the Filipino Understanding of Jesus the Christ. Manila: Divine Word Publications.
Catholic Encyclopedia New Advent Website. 2005
“Sacraments” Entry. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13295a.htm
Jocano, F. Landa. 2001
Filipino Worldview: Ethnography of Local Knowledge. Diliman, Quezon City: PUNLAD Research House, Inc.
Lilles, Joven M. 2005.
Personal Interview. Boac, Marinduque, 25 March.
Madrigal, Allen. 2005.
Personal Interview. Manila, 16 April.
Mandia, Danilo Ledesma. 2002.
“Moryon: Panata sa Likod ng Maskara.” M.A. Thesis, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City.
_____. 2005.
Personal Interview. Quezon City, Philippines, 19 March.
Rafael, Vincente. 1998, Second Printing 2000.
Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society under Early Spanish Rule. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.
Tiongson, Nicanor. 1994.
Cultural Center of the Philippines Encyclopedia of Philippine Art, Volume VII, Philippine Theatre. Manila: Cultural Center of the Philippines.
http://www.yorku.ca/ycar/CCSEAS%20Papers/Moriones%20Festival%20Paper.CASA%20Conference.05.10.pdf
Marinduque's Moryons
 |
| the Palm Sunday Parade with Centurione Org. Inc |
Manila Bulletin – Thu, Apr 5, 2012MANILA, Philippines - In 1960, when the Marinduque Moryon Festival was one-and-a-half century old, this Lenten practice underwent a transformation. From a highly individualistic, personal pursuit, it became part of a team effort, an attempt by municipal and tourism authorities to regulate and put a semblance of order in an otherwise, disparate, dispersed, unfettered display of cultural and religious observance.
Part of the reason is to cater to tourists. The other is an honest-to-goodness desire by scholars and educators to revive an otherwise dying, highly localized ethnic tradition. The old moryon practices, seen by native residents as spontaneous, unrehearsed Lenten jollity, have turned into a ritualized display of religious fervor.
History will judge whether the transformation was a positive spin that allows us to enjoy this unique Lenten tradition, or we have simply lost and will never regain the old comical, amusing, unrehearsed way Marinduqueños view their Lenten rites.
Before he became a National Artist, Alejandro "Anding" Roces, already a famous short story writer, essayist, dramatist and raconteur, was invited in 1960 as guest speaker in Gasan, one of four in Marinduque's six towns where the moryon tradition has been observed.
Roces was intrigued by what he saw. He said there's nowhere else in the Philippines that this Lenten tradition is observed.
The moryon is practiced by colorfully adorned masked men and children, carrying a wooden sword or spear, sometimes a pair of wooden musical instrument called kalutang. The moryons go prancing around town, scaring toddlers and talking in stylized, falsetto voices.
During subsequent visits to Marinduque for the next three or four succeeding years to observe the moryonan, Roces would bring along artists, painters, writers, journalists, and members of the media. This eventually exposed the moryon to the world's attention.
Most notable among Roces' entourage were his brother, painter and writer Alfredo Roces, painters Malang, Botong Francisco, and Gene Cabrera, cartoonist Nonoy Marcelo, and a horde of Manila photojournalists. He also brought to Marinduque Celso Carunungan, an award-winning writer, novelist and scriptwriter, who was requested to write a script for the re-enactment of the Longinos chase and his subsequent beheading.
To put a semblance of order in an otherwise widely arrayed moryonan, the town elders have decided that henceforth, all participants must wear a prescribed costume, nothing outlandish that is not supposedly part of the tradition. Prizes were also offered to the most original, colorful, unique, moryon attire.
Subsequently, Roces and other writers called the affair morion and its plural moriones, a reference to the medieval armor worn by Roman centurions.
And this is what Roces saw of the original way the moryonan has been practiced.
At the start of Holy Monday, ending on Easter Sunday, men and children don masks carved of softwood dapdap, paper mache, carton boxes, big clay jars, or any material that would suffice to conceal the wearer and make fools of themselves. They go prancing and cavorting on the noonday heat, and reveling in the once-a-year affair for nothing else better than hilarious buffoonery.
Palm Sunday Celebration
Palm Sunday commemorates the triumphal entrance of Christ into
Jerusalem (Matthew 21:1-9), when palm branches were placed in His path,
before His arrest on Holy Thursday and His Crucifixion on Good Friday. It thus marks the beginning of Holy Week, the final week of Lent, and the week in which Christians celebrate the mystery of their salvation through Christ's Death and His Resurrection on Easter Sunday.
Quick Facts:
- Date: The Sunday before Easter Sunday; see When Is Palm Sunday? for the date this year.
- Type of Feast: Solemnity
- Readings: Luke 19:28-40 (at the procession with palms); Isaiah 50:4-7; Psalm 22:8-9, 17-18, 19-20, 23-24; Philemon 2:6-11; Luke 22:14—23:56 (long form) or Luke 23:1-49 (full text here)
- Other Names for the Feast: Passion Sunday, Sunday of the Passion, Yew Sunday, Branch Sunday, Entry of the Lord Into Jerusalem
History of Palm Sunday:
Beginning in
the fourth century in Jerusalem, Palm Sunday was marked by a procession
of the faithful carrying palm branches, representing the Jews who
celebrated Christ's entrance into Jerusalem. In the early centuries, the
procession began on the Mount of the Ascension and proceeded to the
Church of the Holy Cross.
As the practice spread throughout the Christian world by the ninth century, the procession would begin in each church with the blessing of palms, proceed outside the church, and then return to the church for the reading of the Passion according to the Gospel of Matthew. The faithful would continue to hold the palms during the reading of the Passion. In this way, they would recall that many of the same people who greeted Christ with shouts of joy on Palm Sunday would call for His Death on Good Friday-a powerful reminder of our own weakness and the sinfulness that causes us to reject Christ.
In different parts of the Christian world, particularly where palms were historically hard to obtain, branches of other bushes and trees were used, including olive, box elder, spruce, and various willows. Perhaps best known is the Slavic custom of using pussy willows, which are among the earliest of plants to bud out in the spring.
The faithful have traditionally decorated their houses with the palms from Palm Sunday, and, in many countries, a custom developed of weaving the palms into crosses that were placed on home altars or other places of prayer. Since the palms have been blessed, they should not simply be discarded; rather, the faithful return them to their local parish in the weeks before Lent, to be burned and used as the ashes for Ash Wednesday.
As the practice spread throughout the Christian world by the ninth century, the procession would begin in each church with the blessing of palms, proceed outside the church, and then return to the church for the reading of the Passion according to the Gospel of Matthew. The faithful would continue to hold the palms during the reading of the Passion. In this way, they would recall that many of the same people who greeted Christ with shouts of joy on Palm Sunday would call for His Death on Good Friday-a powerful reminder of our own weakness and the sinfulness that causes us to reject Christ.
In different parts of the Christian world, particularly where palms were historically hard to obtain, branches of other bushes and trees were used, including olive, box elder, spruce, and various willows. Perhaps best known is the Slavic custom of using pussy willows, which are among the earliest of plants to bud out in the spring.
The faithful have traditionally decorated their houses with the palms from Palm Sunday, and, in many countries, a custom developed of weaving the palms into crosses that were placed on home altars or other places of prayer. Since the palms have been blessed, they should not simply be discarded; rather, the faithful return them to their local parish in the weeks before Lent, to be burned and used as the ashes for Ash Wednesday.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Filipinos 'third happiest' in Asia, says report
By Kim Arveen Patria | Yahoo! Southeast Asia Newsroom – Wed, Mar 20, 2013http://ph.news.yahoo.com/filipinos--third-happiest--in-asia--says-report-071542489.html
Thanks to happiness inside the home, Filipinos emerged as the third happiest people in Asia in 2013, a new report showed.
The Philippines was named the third happiest among five countries in Asia assessed for innovations firm Eden Strategy Institute's Happiness Index.
The country scored 90 points in the Happiness Index, which the Eden said is based on more than 200 million social media accounts in the five countries covered by the study.
Singapore was deemed the happiest country in Asia with a Happiness Index score of 518 points, followed by Malaysia, 245 points.
Ranked lower than the Philippines was India with 29 points and Indonesia, 11 points.
"In the Philippines, happiness comes from a sense of large, extended families," Eden said.
It added that predominantly Catholic Pinoys "have a predisposition to look for the best in everyone".
"They are taught from young to support the underdog, find joy in hard work, and smile at hardships," Eden said further.
The report was released in time for the United Nations-declared International Day of Happiness, Mar. 20.
"Policymakers are questioning the sustainability of pursuing economic growth, in the light of global social, environmental, and governance challenges," Eden said.
It also noted how several countries have initiated efforts to measure "gross national happiness" versus gross domestic product as a quality of life indicator.
The Philippines' National Statistical Coordination Board has recently included its own Happiness Index in its statistical data.
Bar exam passing rate lowest in decade; Ateneo graduate tops 2013 passers
By Kim Arveen Patria | Yahoo! Southeast Asia Newsroom – Wed, Mar 20, 2013
The passing rate in the Bar Examinations dipped below 20 percent for the first time in a decade, showing a double-digit drop from the previous year.
Only 946 aspiring lawyers out of the total 5,343 who took the four-Sunday exam last October hurdled the test, the Supreme Court on Wednesday said.
The 2012 passing rate of 17.76 percent is significantly lower than the 31.95 percent recorded a year ago.
It is also the first time that the passing rate hit lower than 20 percent since 2002, when 19.68 percent of examinees passed.
Ignatius Michael Ingles, a graduate of Ateneo de Manila University's Law School, topped the 2012 Bar exams with a score of 85.64 percent. He was followed by fellow Ateneo Law graduate Catherine Beatrice King Kay (84.72 percent) and University of the Philippines College of Law graduate April Carmela Lacson (84.48 percent).
The list of Bar exam topnotchers was dominated by Ateneo, which had six in the top 10, and UP, which had four.
A graduate from Legazpi City's Aquinas University, however, was also among the best performers in what is widely considered the country's most difficult licensure examinations.
Rounding out the top 10 were:
Xavier Jesus Romualdo, Ateneo (84.10 percent)
Maria Graciela Base, UP (83.99 percent)
Jose Maria Angel Machuca, Ateneo (83.99 percent)
Patrick Henry Salazar, UP (83.71 percent)
Ralph Karlo Barcelona, Aquinas (83.43 percent)
Marvyn Llamas, Ateneo (83.29 percent)
Carlo Martin Li, Ateneo (83.27 percent)
Francis Paolo Tiopianco, UP (83.25 percent)
The Supreme Court administers the Bar exams once a year as part of its constitutional mandate to promulgate rules governing the admission to the practice of law.
Successful Bar candidates are scheduled to take oath on April 24, 2013, at 2 p.m.
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Antonio Uy for Governor
https://www.facebook.com/doctonton.uy/info
SIMPLE lng un kung gusto nyo ng pagbabago bakit kayo boboto dun sa bibilhin ung karapatan nyong bomoto,,,maraming nagsasabi walang makinarya si VICE GOV para manalo,,,oo kulang sa sa makinarya lalo na sa pera pero kung marinduqueno kang ang hangad mo ay pagbabago,,ang dapat botong magpapababago sa lalawigan mo ipagpapalit mo ba sa panibagong tatlong taong puro pagtitiis lang?
VOTE:
DOC. TONTON UY
FOR GOVERNOR
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)