My Childhood Memories of Lent and Holy Week

Growing up as a child in a Catholic family, I have fond memories of the Lenten Season and Holy Week. Days of fasting and abstinence were strictly observed in our house in Malabon, having a very religious paternal grandmother, whose house was just a few meters away from ours.

On Ash Wednesday, which ushers the beginning of Lent, and a day of fasting and abstinence, we would have “pan de sal” with hot chocolate, made from the traditional tablea, for breakfast. The bread would sometimes go with “kesong puti”, (white cheese made from carabao or goat milk) which was vended by someone walking on the streets. For supper we would have a bowl of hot “lugaw” or porridge, courtesy of Akong, our Chinese neighbor who lives at the lumberyard of my grandmother’s relatives next door.

My grandmother was half Chinese—her father was Chinese and her mother was Filipina. We had our full meal during lunch time which usually consists of rice, oysters, or crabs, or shrimps or sea shells with condiments like “suka’t patis” (vinegar and fish sauce) with chopped onions, or chopped ginger. This is the same meal plan on Good Friday, also a day of fasting and abstinence.

Palm Sunday is a festive day, as we would enthusiastically attend mass with our palms on hand, elaborately fashioned out of young coconut fronds. Upon reaching home after the mass, we would put our blessed palms on our doors and windows, thinking it would protect us from lightning, earthquakes and other forms of natural calamities.

Malabon is an old town with several big parishes and many “visitas” or chapels. I know that it is Holy Week when the pious women would start chanting the “Pasyon” (the Passion of Christ) over loud speakers in chapels nearby. More than one “Pasyon” can be heard over the horizon, the voices of a group of old women from one chapel overlapping with those of other groups of women from another chapel. Occasionally, I would see a man dressed in long purple robe, his face covered with cloth and wearing a crown of thorns, carrying a large wooden cross on his shoulder. These penitents would sometimes walk several kilometres around town, going to a church or a chapel.

Good Friday is the height of penitential practices in Tanza, Malabon. Early in the morning, probably right after sunrise, a big number of half-naked men would assemble in an open field. With their faces covered with clothe and with vines or crown of thorns around their heads, they line up to have their backs cut by somebody holding a used “bakya” (wooden clogs) with several shaving blades embedded on it. As soon as blood start flowing from their wounded flesh, they start hitting their backs with a whip on whose tip is a bundle of wooden sticks, the length of three fourths of a pencil. By continuously hitting their back with this whip that they swing from side to side, it makes the blood flow unceasingly. This long line of penitents walking barefoot would end in a chapel about a kilometer away, amidst a throng of spectators on the roadside. When they had finished their public display of penitence, they would take a dip in the river, believing that the salty water of the river, though painful on their freshly wounded backs, would hasten its healing.

The “Salubong” (a re-enactment of the encounter of the risen Christ and his mother) is the culmination of the Easter triduum. We would join this procession which is often done at 4:00 in the morning of Easter Sunday.