The first money I earned from work, if I can call it that, was thirty-five centavos, back in 1964 when I was in Grade Four at the Colegio del Santo Niño. I earned it from hauling candles on a wheelbarrow during the feast day of the Holy Child.
I was a Boy Scout then, and CSN Boy Scouts were required to render some work during the fiesta. I was just an “ultimo” so I had to do some physical stuff like hauling off candles. The Boy Scout officers, with arms akimbo, enjoyed the privilege of ordering us around all day.
The population of the Philippines had not exploded at the time, so while there was always a huge crowd of devotees at the fiesta, it was not of the crushing, suffocating kind that we see today.
There was a place to offer lighted candles in an inner courtyard of the church but it was obviously too small to accommodate all the candles lit during fiestas. So devotees tended to put their lighted candles just about anywhere within the church compound.
It was these candles that we went after and put out, lest they cause some fire. Sometimes we would ask for the still unlighted candles in the hands of devotees, assuring them that we will be the ones to light the candles for them at the back of the church.
For this back-breaking work, we got thirty-five centavos per day from the priests. If you think this was a paltry sum, consider the fact that the tuition fee at the time was thirty-five pesos per quarter. In the 1960s, the exchange rate was two pesos for every US dollar.
Anyway, I eventually got “promoted” from hauling off candles to manning the long lines that waited up to kiss the Holy Image of the Santo Niño. Part of a Boy Scout’s duty in this kind of assignment was to wipe the image after every kiss to prepare it for the next.
I enjoyed the new assignment so much better than the previous one. It was less physically demanding, and it allowed closer proximity to the Santo Niño. In this kind of assignment, I got to practically touch the Santo Niño once every five or so seconds.
Looking back, I do not know of anybody so blessed as to be able to touch the Santo Niño as frequently as I have. And to think that given the huge crowds that gather for the fiesta in these recent times, it takes a superhuman effort to even just get a glimpse of the Holy Child.
And this is the feeling I treat myself whenever it becomes physically impossible to draw near, or even just see Him from afar — I go back to the time of my innocence and console myself with the fact that the Santo Niño and I have shared many close up moments.
And I just cannot help it that whenever I recall those moments, the tears just start to well up in my eyes. Like anybody else who eventually grew up, I too lost my innocence and racked up my own share of sinning. But whenever the tears come in these moments, I know I am cleansed.
There is a spiritual cleansing when the tears come. I don’t know if you experienced the same thing, but whenever the Santo Niño passes by during fiesta processions, the tears just come unbidden. And afterward, you feel a lightness that can only be explained as being forgiven.
About 10 years ago, a group of CSN alumni managed to persuade the Augustinian fathers to allow a private viewing of the original image of the Santo Niño, the one that Magellan gave as a gift to Humabon and Juana, the same one Juan Camus saw in a village when Legazpi came later.
This year, a few nights before the fiesta, an even larger group of alumni was given the rare privilege again. And rightly so. For this was our Santo Niño. This was the Santo Niño that was always there as we grew up, and for whom youthful devotion shaped what we were to become.
There is one thing I will sorely miss, though — the beautiful songs in the “Perpetual Novena to Santo Niño,” especially the Latin ones. Having grown up with those songs, they became an indelible part of our lives. Sadly, they don’t sing them anymore today.
But I hum them occasionally, especially when things and circumstances make me recall the best years of my life, which were the years I spent at CSN. And when I do, I always remember the thirty-five centavos and how, over the years, the Santo Niño has given me so much more than that.