Visiting my roots and a religious ritual

For Holy Week, I will visit my hometown of Paete which to me, as a child, was "going abroad" although it was a mere three-hour ride from Manila. This was the time when my grandparents would come and fetch me to spend a few days in Laguna where all my immediate forebears came from. For every Paeteño at the time, it was de riguer to be there on Ash Wednesday when all the villagers crowd the little bridge joining the two parts of the town – sa ibaba at sa itaas. On that bridge, the santos wooden statues carried on human shoulders representing Jesus carrying the Cross meets Veronica who wipes his face. Up to this day, there are many scholars especially after the revelations from the Nag Hammadi,who think this event did not happen as portrayed and thus Jesus might have been holy and charismatic but he never said he was the son of God.

Nevertheless the stations of the Cross, as a ritual was a thrilling experience for me as a child. It was the time I left home to be with my much loved grandparents, simple folk living in the provinces. In hindsight, the communal feeling of belonging to the town was what brought the townsfolk milling around the bridge. Today I seriously doubt that those who came then ever questioned the religious symbols evoked on that bridge. They came for other reasons. Not to be there was to invite resentment. Paete townsfolk reenact the spectacle year after year without questioning the validity of venerating wooden statues they carry on their shoulders. It was simply a way of life that each Holy Week they would use the ritual to be in touch with a tradition and in the process among themselves. Many years, books and travel to faraway places have changed my perspective from that innocent wonder of a child who shared the same feeling of belonging.

I am writing this ahead of my visit and I am filled with mixed feelings – sad, that what was once a reassuring ritual of belonging to the town was forever gone, at least as far as I was concerned, but happy that I can now be detached from a tradition that otherwise gave little opportunity for the townsfolk to be more adventurous. Many who feel bound to the little town have gone ahead to other climes for other reasons. Today Paeteños are everywhere in the world, some of them becoming prosperous doctors of medicine in prestigious hospitals in the US. There is a big association of Paeteños in the West Coast which publishes a bulletin to keep in touch with each other. But I know, and they know, that it will never be the same again in the days when they heeded ringing church bells to call for Mass at the crack of dawn. Gone also are the water lilies at the foot of the crystal clear water of a brook just in front of my grandmother’s house. I could go on and on about the things I will miss. But it would be unfair to those who have found a life there although I am told that its populace are migrants from other towns, most of them strangers to me.

As an adult and a travelled Manileña, I have been exposed to other schools of thought, some of whom think Christianity has had a less than edifying reasons for being. I do not wish to dwell on these in a short column for Holy Week. But there are books and books sprouting about with evidence for another interpretation of Christianity. I think that this other way of thinking should be open to all who have a real thirst for knowledge. Filipinos have lived too long under the shadow of superstition and fear by Spanish friars who came both to Christianize and to colonize. One such knowledge that ought to be open to Filipinos, in general, are interpretations of the documents found in the Nag Hammadi caves which point to a different interpretation of the life of Jesus as embodied by the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.

In their book, The Meaning of Dead Sea Scrolls, James Vanderkam and Peter Flint write on findings that give new significance and understanding of the Bible, Judaism, Jesus and Christianity. They began their work in 2000, and set out to write a new comprehensive and up-to-date information to introduce the scrolls. Their aim was to put the scrolls and the Qumran community (from which the ancient documents sprang) in their Jewish context and to explore their relevance for studying Jesus and the writings of the New Testament. They were careful not to make any interpretations that would contradict traditional teachings. All they are prepared to say is that the Dead Sea Scrolls give a better understanding of Jesus and the Gospels. But even their most detached interpretation can be controversial. They emphasize there is no direct relationship between Jesus and the scrolls and none of these ancient documents was written by or for Christians.

What the documents do reveal is the way of life and way of thinking in a Jewish community happening at about the same time as the writing of the earliest new testament. It throws light on aspects of the world of first Christians. As far as my trip to Paete is concerned, I have to reorient my understanding of the town’s tradition and how it is affected by the relevance of the Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls. As the authors put it so carefully what has emerged from their studies of the scrolls does not include a suffering or dying messiah, despite "the valiant attempts of several scholars to find evidence for this". They are open to the possibility that the Calvary and Death of Jesus has its origins in Jesus himself and in the early church’s understanding of his life and mission.

Those who want to be in the loop for finding out contemporary research on these events will find books at A Different Bookstore (at the back of Rustan’s in Ayala) which has kept abreast of the scholarship that has accumulated on this topic. Other authors have sensationalized findings in the scrolls while some have found delight on the growing literature with a fictional rendition of some of these new approaches to Catholicism. One such book that has become a bestseller is Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. He cleverly interweaves fact with fiction and came up with a popular thriller. The word Calvary comes from the Latin word ‘calvaria’ or skull’ which is Aramaic for Golgotha. It is a hill outside ancient Jerusalem where the crucifixion of Jesus is believed to have taken place. Catholics around the world will re-enact representations of Christ’s sufferings on his way to be executed when they perform the Stations of the Cross. The Via Dolorosa (Latin for "Way of Sorrow") is the name given to the approach to Calvary. Whatever these findings will lead to, suffice it to say that Paete and the ritual of being there when Veronica wipes the face of Jesus, at least for one Paeteña, will never be the same again. By writing this article, I hope Filipinos like their national heroes will be willing to depart from tradition when it becomes necessary.

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