Retreat, recharge

“Saan ka mag-ho-Holy Week?” a friend asked me the other day, and the linguistics-scientist part of my brain lit up, noting that the literal translation of that phrase would be “Where will you be Holy Week-ing?” A looser translation will mean not just “where” but “what will you be Holy Week-ing?”

“Dito lang sa Maynila,” I replied, and in a split second I was analyzing myself: Now why did I say “Just here in Manila”?

And indeed, my friend looked at me almost pitifully, wondering why I wasn’t leaving Manila.

“Uwi ako,” he said, and I was almost startled, knowing him to be a thoroughly urban guy, born, bred and branded in Metro Manila. And here he was, saying he was going home, which turned out to be his paternal grandmother’s hometown in Pampanga.

Jokingly, I asked, “Magpapalatigo ka ba?” (Are you going to get whipped?—a reference to the flagellants.) He laughed and replied, “Magpapapako” (he was going to get “nailed,” meaning get crucified).

Then, almost in a contrite tone for joking about religious observances, he said he was going home, simply, for a vacation.

Solemnity

Time was when “Holy Week-ing” had a pretty much standardized meaning for people. Whether you stayed in the city or went to rural areas, this was supposed to be a sequence of days where each day would become more solemn than the other to commemorate Christ’s passion, reaching a peak on Good Friday when he’s crucified, and maintained through Black Saturday. Easter Sunday would break the sadness with early-morning rituals.

If you stayed in the city, there wouldn’t be much to do except for religious observances: Visita Iglesia (visiting churches) on Maundy Thursday, for example. TV and radio stations would attempt some semblance of religiosity, with programs where they’d invite preachers, or TV stations running old Hollywood versions of Bible stories (remember “The Ten Commandments”?) and, rather incongruously, gladiator movies.

Good Friday, of course, was totally silent as TV and radio stations would go off the air, through Black Saturday. Easter provided welcome relief from all the gloom.

Given the somber meaning of the Holy Week, people who went home to the provinces were the ones who got pitying looks. I remember friends groaning, “Mapapanis na naman ang laway ko” (My saliva’s going to turn stale—to mean days of mortification, no talking, no laughing, no bathing).

The key to all these observances was the word “holy” or the Spanish “santa.”  (Note how we say “Semana Santa.”  I have yet to hear people using “Banal na Linggo.”)  In rural areas, traditional healers go off to sacred mountains (for example, Mount Banahaw) to gather herbs and other materials to make healing concoctions. (On the more sinister side, sorcerers also gather materials to use for the local equivalents of witches’ brews and spells.) The idea is that Christ’s passion and death imbue the world with sacred power that can be used by humans.

We now take the words for granted, but I realized many years ago that foreigners were sometimes perplexed by our use of the term.  There was something almost inappropriate in using the term “Holy Week,” considering that other faiths outside Christianity have their own holy days and seasons—for example, an entire month, the Ramadan, for Muslims.

Even in countries with predominantly Christian populations, the Holy Week is a regular workweek, without any holidays. My friends in Europe and the United States could relate to Good Friday and Easter, but these were regular workdays, and the other sacralized days (Holy Monday, Holy Tuesday, Holy Wednesday and Maundy what?) had become obscured in time.

These days I just refer to the Easter holidays when meeting with foreign colleagues, often ending up being invited to fly out to do a lecture or workshop with them because that would be my only free time. Conversely, I would warn them that we couldn’t plan any activities in the Philippines during that week.

Unless my foreign friends wanted to come for a vacation, but I still warn them not to come in that week because the beaches would be full of people, and highways, bus stations and airports would be chaotic… in a way, the best places to do penance.

Penitensya. These days it’s something other people do for Holy Week-ing. “They” do penance, “we” have fun.

It’s something the young plan for way ahead, booking cheap flights and hotel rooms months ahead. I’ve seen smarter students even learning to avoid the local tourist crunch by going off with friends to do the Angkor Wat in Cambodia, or Borobudur in Indonesia, again having booked discounted tickets and rooms much earlier.

Bringing back the holy

Even for someone not quite religious, I do wonder if we should not be bringing back some of the “holy” of the Holy Week, not in terms of the extreme observances like flagellation, but of retreats and recollections. Oops, I’m suddenly thinking now of rich Filipinos signing up for Holy Week retreats… in, where else but the “Holy Land.”

I’m thinking of more modest activities, and in fact I’m glad I’m “stuck” in Manila because the metropolis actually becomes more quiet, more restful, more “holy” in these days.

All faiths have their forms of retreats, marked by prayer, meditation, fasting. They are times when we switch off our left “rational” brain and go for a “here and now” right brain.  By shutting out the world, we’re able to take stock of our lives.

It doesn’t have to be all praying. Retreating means making quiet time, which can be easier during the Holy Week. I’m imagining it’ll still be busy for me, given that all the kids will be home, but I know there will be more occasions to be able to retreat. I’ve found that kind of refuge early in the morning, or late in the afternoon, just walking with one of the kids.

Zen practitioners organize sesshin as a loose equivalent of a Christian retreat, the term meaning “touching or connecting with the heart.” It’s not surprising that in these periods of reconnecting with the heart, we gain new insights into ourselves, and into humanity. We are inspired to be “holy” in the sense of being good, simply because we feel goodness.

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E-mail: mtan@inquirer.com.ph