MANY of the nearly 90 percent Catholic Filipinos have started making a spiritual pilgrimage of prayer through the Way of the Cross, culminating next March 29 on Maundy Thursday.
At the Sacred Heart of Parish in Cainta, Rizal 20 kms east of Manila, Maria Rosa and her family have begun a series of solemn meditations in front of 14 sculptures on the sides of the church.
In Paoay, Ilocos Norte, Ceferina and her cousins have also started the Lenten ritual in front of the Stations of the Cross at the UN Heritage-listed St. Augustine Church; the same solemnity displayed by cousins Coleen Recede and Niña Rosal in the 1st municipal income class municipality in the province of Cebu.
At the Our Lady of the Assumption in coastal Santa Maria, Ilocos Sur, Margie, although she works in Manila, has returned for the annual Via Crucis at the hilltop church overlooking the usually calm Luzon Bay.
Sixteen-year-old Christle, who just finished high school, and her close family friends do the Lenten ritual themselves at the Saint James Cathedral in the capital town of Bangued, nestled by the meandering Abra River that empties into Luzon Bay.
Rico, in his 30s, has a different experience in his coastal hometown of Macalelon in Quezon, where many of the barangays construct “kubol” or small makeshift churches which house the 14 Stations of the Cross along the town’s streets.
Rico, who works in Quezon City as a computer administrator, talks of indigenous materials like bamboo, nipa, coconut, talahib grass, log, wood, among others which make the “kubols” where devotees gather all day and into the small hours of the night to recite the traditional “Pabasa ng Pasyon” or the Passion of Christ.
Religion sources say the Stations of the Cross—also called the Via Dolorosa or Way of Sorrows, or simply, The Way—is a series of artistic representations which are often sculptural, depicting Christ Carrying the Cross to his crucifixion before he died.The sources say majority of Roman Catholic churches now contain such a series, typically placed at intervals along the side walls of the nave.
In most churches these are small plaques with reliefs or paintings, like those at the Santuario del Santo Cristo in San Juan City in Metro Manila, or those at the Our Lady of Loreto Church in Sampaloc and the Our Lady of Montserrat, both in Manila.
According to some theologians, the tradition as chapel devotion began with St. Francis of Assisi and extended throughout the Roman Catholic Church in the medieval period.
Even some Aglipayans in Ilocos Norte and Tarlac, notably in Pinili in the former and Moncada in the latter, go through the Via Crucis ritual, including chanting the Passion of Christ from sunrise to way past sunset, the fever pitch reaching during the last two weeks before Good Friday.
Church sources say the Stations of the Cross originated in pilgrimages to Jerusalem. According to them, a desire to reproduce the holy places in other lands seems to have manifested itself at quite an early date.
At the monastery of Santo Stefano at Bologna, a group of connected chapels was constructed as early as the 5th century by St. Petronius, Bishop of Bologna, intended to represent the more important shrines of Jerusalem.
This monastery became known as “Hierusalem,” according to some religious documents.
Some theologians believe these may perhaps be regarded as the germ from which the Stations afterwards developed, though it is tolerably certain that nothing that we have before about the 15th century can strictly be called a Way of the Cross in the modern sense.
According to Catholic Church sources, the earliest use of the word “stations,” as applied to the accustomed halting-places in the Via Sacra in Jerusalem, is in the narrative of English pilgrim William Wey, who visited the Holy Land in the mid-15th century, and described pilgrims following the footsteps of Christ to the cross.
In 1521, a book called Geystlich Strass was printed with illustrations of the stations in the Holy Land, according to sources.
According to some religious documents, during the 15th and 16th centuries the Franciscans began to build outdoor shrines in Europe to duplicate their counterparts in the Holy Land.
The number of stations varied between seven and 30; seven being common.
These were usually placed, often in small buildings, along the approach to a church, as in a set of 1490 by Adam Kraft, leading to the Johanneskirche in Nuremberg.
In the Philippines, which received the Cross in 1521, the Catholic faithful follow the standard set from the 17th to 20th centuries which has consisted of 14 pictures or sculptures depicting the following scenes: 1. Jesus is condemned to death; 2. Jesus carries His cross; 3. Jesus falls the first time; 4. Jesus meets His mother; 5. Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus to carry the cross; 6. Veronica wipes the face of Jesus; 7. Jesus falls the second time; 8. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem; 9. Jesus falls the third time; 10.Jesus is stripped of his garments; 11.Crucifixion: Jesus is nailed to the cross; 12. Jesus dies on the cross; 13. Jesus is taken down from the cross (Deposition or Lamentation); and 14. Jesus is laid to the tomb.
While not traditionally part of the Stations, some Catholic Church sources say the Resurrection of Jesus is at times included as a 15th station.
Some have asked what spiritual significance is there that one must go through the Way of the Cross.
Sources say the object of the Stations is to help the faithful “make a spiritual pilgrimage of prayer, through meditating upon the chief scenes of Christ’s sufferings and death.”
Catholic priests say this has become one of the most popular devotions for Roman Catholics, and is often performed in a spirit of reparation for the sufferings and insults that Jesus endured during His Passion.
In his encyclical letter, Miserentissimus Redepmtor, on reparations, Pope Pius XI called Acts of Reparation to Jesus Christ a duty for Catholics and referred to them as “some sort of compensation to be rendered for the injury” with respect to the sufferings of Jesus.
Pope John Paul II referred to Acts of Reparation as the “unceasing effort to stand beside the endless crosses on which the Son of God continues to be crucified.”
In the Philippines, the temperature during Lent rising to what some describe as “oppressively hot and humid,” the lines making the spiritual pilgrimage are lengthening despite.
HBC, group leader of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Elderly Ministry in Brookside, Cainta, Rizal, is a member of the Propagation of the Faith of San Beda College.