“There are many altars in life—family, community, country—where one can offer the same devotion”
THERE is something about Semana Santa in the Philippines that no other season can quite replicate.
The air itself seems to slow down. Streets fall silent. Radios soften. And in many homes, time pauses—not out of habit, but out of reverence.
For many Filipinos, Semana Santa is a tradition passed down like heirloom faith—carefully preserved, deeply personal, and quietly powerful.
For me, it is something more intimate. It is memory.
I was raised by devout Catholic parents who believed that faith was not only taught—it was lived.
Lent was not a season of convenience; it was a season of discipline. We fasted. We prayed. We reflected.
The television was turned off, replaced by the solemn cadence of the pabasa, the chanting of the Passion of Christ that echoed through our home and community.
As a young boy, I was very much part of the Lenten rituals being an altar boy myself.
I felt them in the silence of Good Friday, in the jampacked church and in the sight of elders kneeling longer than comfort allowed. Faith, in those early years, was not explained—it was experienced.
It was perhaps inevitable that such an upbringing would shape a calling.
In time, I entered the minor seminary at Mary Help of Christians in the idyllic town of Binmaley, Pangasinan carrying with me the hopes of my parents and the quiet conviction that I was meant to serve God as a priest.
Seminary life was a world apart—structured, contemplative, and deeply spiritual.
It was there where faith became more than ritual. It became a dialogue—between man and God, between doubt and belief, between calling and choice.
After high school, I pursued by vocation at the Christ the King Mission Seminary in Quezon City for two years in college under the Societas Verbi Divini (SVD).
But life, as it often does, revealed another path. The vocation I once believed would define me took a different form. I eventually chose to leave the seminary, not out of loss of faith, but out of a deeper understanding of it.
I became a student activist at the University of the Philippine in Diliman, Quezon City.
I came to realize that serving God is not confined to the priesthood alone.
There are many altars in life—family, community, country—where one can offer the same devotion.
And so I married my wife Tess at a tender age of 20 on the day of my UP graduation rites in April 1985 . I built a life beyond the cloistered walls of the seminary.
Yet, in many ways, the seminary never left me.The discipline. The sense of purpose. The quiet search for meaning. These remained—and continue to shape how I see the world.
Once again, Semana Santa brings all of this back.
It reminds me that faith is not a straight road. It is a journey marked by turns, pauses, and sometimes, unexpected destinations.
It is not diminished by change; it is deepened by it.
Today, as Filipinos once again observe Holy Week—through Visita Iglesia, through solemn processions, through moments of silence—I am reminded that what matters most is not how perfectly we follow tradition, but how sincerely we live its meaning.
In a world that moves too fast, Semana Santa invites us to slow down.
In a time that often celebrates noise, it calls us to silence. And in a life full of choices, it reminds us that every path—if taken with faith—can lead us closer to God.
I did not become the priest I once imagined I would be.
But perhaps, in the quiet ways we serve, in the lives we touch, and in the values we carry forward, we become something just as meaningful to include joining the press, writing and publishing books and in recent years planting trees with fellow advocates.
And then there is the experience of being away.
Here in California, Semana Santa arrives differently.
The days move as they normally do. Traffic hums in highways. Offices remain open.
The sacred does not announce itself in the same collective way.
There are churches, of course—beautiful, solemn, and welcoming—but the sense of a nation pausing together in prayer is not as deeply felt.
Away from home, faith becomes more intentional. It is no longer carried by the rhythm of community—it must be chosen, protected, and nurtured personally.
There is less spectacle, but perhaps more solitude. Less tradition surrounding you, but more reflection within you.
It is a quieter Semana Santa, to say the least.
And yet, in that quiet, there is also grace.
Because distance has a way of deepening appreciation.
You begin to miss the sounds, the rituals, the simple act of seeing others believe alongside you. You realize that what you once took for granted—the nationwide pause, the shared reverence—was, in fact, a rare and beautiful inheritance.
Today, whether one is in the Philippines or in California, the meaning of Semana Santa remains unchanged.
It reminds me that faith is not a straight road. It is a journey marked by turns, pauses, and sometimes, unexpected destinations. It is not diminished by change; it is deepened by it.
This Semana Santa, whether in the bustling streets of home or the quieter corners of a foreign land, may we find time to remember where we came from, reflect on where we are, and renew our faith in where we are meant to go.
Because in the end, faith is not only about the road we planned to take.
It is about the grace we find in the journey we are given.
(The writer, president/chief executive officer of Media Touchstone Ventures, Inc. and president/executive director of the Million Trees Foundation Inc., a non-government outfit advocating tree-planting and environmental protection, is the official biographer of President Fidel V. Ramos.)
