Mary's Month of May

The month of May is a very special month in our family. It is the birthday month of five of my siblings.

May 9, 11, 12, 14 and 23. One niece also celebrates hers on the 12th. The Fiesta of our town in Nueva Ecija also falls on May 12th, so does the Fiesta in Santa Ana, Manila (Feast of St. Anne), where I spent my childhood years.

May is the merriest month in the Philippines. That's because it is summertime; so most town fiestas occur on this month. The annual Santa Cruzan is also held on this month, which is a Catholic tradition of commemorating the journey to find the crucifix of Jesus by King Constantine and her mother, Queen Helena.

According to historical accounts, Constantine, the emperor of Rome some thousand years ago, dreamt that he should go to the battle field to fight in the name of the Holy Cross. He conquered his enemy and that victory led to his conversion to Christianity. He became the first Christian emperor in history. His mother, Queen Helena, was inspired by all these experiences and in the year 326 A.D., she went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to seek the Holy Cross, the wooden cross on which Christ was supposed to have been nailed. She successfully found the Holy Cross, complete with its inscription `INRI` on its top.

Thus, the religious Santa Cruzan procession is a re-enactment of the finding of the Holy Cross by Reyna Elena.

Of course, May is the month of the Blessed Virgin Mary. So, in Catholic churches worldwide, there would be a twelve-day novena and floral offerings to Mother Mary, and which would culminate in the Flores de Mayo in the Philippines, the official May procession held by Philippine catholic parishes.

Corollary to this Catholic tradition is the neighbourhood procession called Lutrina. Originally, the Lutrina was meant to be festivities and rituals related to the the planting season which occurs in May.

The alay originally came from the very ancient past when young girls, always the symbol of purity and renewal, went to the sacred caves to offer garlands of flowers to the anito or the spirits of the forefathers. Then, it was reconfigured into the Christian tradition, and alay became the offering of the young for the Holy Virgin, then the offerings were replaced by flowers.

The lutrina, or the prayers were originally uttered by farmers as they walked through barren fields, were pleadings for the first rain. These days, the 12-day lutrina would culminate into the Santa Cruzan, where neighbourhood beauties - young girls and dalagitas - become sagalas. The last of the sagalas is always the Emperatris or Reyna Elena with her little constantino.

Nowadays, in many small nooks of Santa Ana and Mandaluyong, countless lutrinas are being held in May. But when I was growing up in one particular Santa Ana neighbourhood, there was only one lutrina, and it was started by my Lola. It was always started on May 14th, the birthday of one of my sisters. So, all my sisters and cousins, at one time or another, became "sagalas" in this Santa Cruzan and also in theFlores de Mayo.
This is also the reason, why we townsfolk of Punta and Mandaluyong, could eloquently sing the "Dios te Salve Maria."

Here in Toronto, the Filipino Catholic Mission (previously called the Filipino Chaplaincy) celebrates its own Santa Cruzan. At the old chaplaincy, we used to participate in the procession, where young Filipino- Canadian girls and boys donned their gowns and barongs, and the procession would take on the route around the high-rise apartment buildings and a park to the accompaniment of a Banda Filipino or musiko.

Welcome to my First Day

Good day to all.

My name is Gener. Family members call me Gene. Those very close to me call me Oz. You can call me a brother.

I started this blog today, May 24th, Ascension Sunday. It is the day when Our Lord Jesus Christ has been taken up into heaven and we believe that He sits at the right of Our God the father.

While I started another blog called Lucky Canary at http://www.luckycanary.blogspot.com/, a while back, I felt a call to write a blog that captures my Catholic faith - its rites, events and practises. Already, my original blog had posts devoted to Philippine Catholic practises.

For starters, let me tell you that I am not a very religious person. As a child, I was first baptized an Aglipayan, in a church in the Philippines. Aglipayan, to those not familiar to it, is a Philippine Christian denomination with very close affinity to the Catholic religion, in its rites and practices.

Now called The Philippine Independent Church, officially the Iglesia Filipina Independiente (IFI) (also known as the Philippine Independent Catholic Church), Aglipayan is a Christian denomination of the Catholic tradition in the form of a national church.

The church was founded by Isabelo de los Reyes in 1902 and made Gregorio Aglipay, a dissilusioned Catholic priest, its head.

Aglipayan grew at an unprecedented growth from that time onwards because the Filipinos resented the Spaniards for its more than 300 years of repressive rule. Then, membership declined. Today, there are about 3 million Aglipayans throughout the Southeast Asian Peninsula of the Philippines, making it the country's second largest Christian church. It has members in the United States and Canada.

My mother's family is Aglipayan, and my father's, Catholic. There was even a topic, hushed mostly by my mother, that my maternal grandfather was a Mason.

But being so intertwined and similar to each other, these two religions and churches were but one to me...to us. While growing up, me and my siblings didn't really consider ourselves Aglipayans nor Catholics. We were foremost, Christians. Thus, even while baptized as Aglipayans, we - me, my siblings, mother and aunts, worshipped freely in both churches.

When I was about to start high school, I was baptized in the Catholic church, and thus now, I am a practising Catholic. All of us in our family are now practising Catholics.

I look forward to posting blogs that will talk about Christian religious practises, events, peoples and places, with a focus on Philippine Catholic practises.

I hope to see you along the way.

Serendipity

I remember watching the movies, Serendipity and A Knight's Tale, while on a plane travelling home to the Philippines.

Both movies tackle the tale of love. In Serendipity, John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale met at a New York department store while buying the same present for their loved ones, and immediately felt an attraction towards each other; but the girl decided to allow fate to take control of their future.

In A Knight's Tale, Ledger's character (William Thatcher) posed as a knight after his Lord died, and joined the "jousting" matches. In the process, he found the girl, Jocelyn, and his good fortune (befriending Edward, the Black Prince of Wales and Geoffrey Chaucer) of finally having a real knighthood bestowed on him. He also found his long lost father.

So, I found myself debating what the Tagalog word for serendipity is. All I could think of is ala suerte, or masuwerteng tadhana, but now, I think both phrases do not capture the true meaning and essence of the word serendipity.

Then this ancient story came back to mind. A story of a young boy who was constantly crying because he thought his father loved his younger brother more than he loved him. Whenever his brother got a toy, little Boy would grab it from him.

One day, after a long family trip, the little boy cried again. This time it was because his kid brother would not give him a piece of candy. He howled and cursed, until his father whipped him with a leather belt.

The little boy cursed even more, and threatened to run away from home. He went up to his room, put several clothes in a blanket, and checked the wound on his stomach which the belt lashing left.

He felt so sorry for himself. He then climbed on the bed's wooden headboard and reached for the bottle of oil kept on an upper cabinet, to soothe his wound.

A candle was burning on the altar beside the bed and as the boy reached higher, his legs quivered and he fell on the altar. When he did, his t-shirt caught fire. It was a new shirt, a gift from his mother.

The candle flame singed the shirt and produced a hole. Terrified, the young boy stood up and saw the icons looking at him from the altar. Somehow, he lost the gall to run away. It was the day after Christmas.

Sometimes when you're not seeking, you find the best.

There were some serendipitous moments in this blogger's life.

And as the days of our lives unfold, I hope there could be more.

Is there a serendipity in your life? Tell me.

This post was originally posted in my other blog: www.luckycanary.blogspot.com