Easter with the T’bolis

More than half my lifetime ago, I spend six weeks one summer with the T’bolis in the Sta. Cruz Mission run by a Passionist missionary named Rex Mansman (sorry, Fr. Rex, not even sure if I spelled your name right). This was in the mountains of South Cotabato. Everyone thought I was nuts because of the war in Mindanao, but the organizers of the program assured us that the South was, for the most part, peaceful. On that, maybe some other time. For now, I’d like to concentrate on our Easter there. As an aside, the program I joined was the precursor to the famous Jesuit Volunteers Program (JVP) which sends mostly fresh graduates to one-year missions in isolated, depressed communities.

Since it was summer, we were there for Holy Week and Easter. It started, as expected, the evening of Black Saturday, and what I remember most about it is the baptismal rites. For the benefit of those who haven’t been to Easter Vigil, one of the ceremonies is the baptism of new faithful. The candidates for baptism were on one end of a stream, in darkness, to signfiy the darkness of sin. We, the already-baptized faithful, stood on the other shore, carrying torches to signify the light that faith brings and to lead the newly baptized to us. At that point, I was trying to visualize how we looked to the candidates for baptism on the other shore. There was quite a distance between us, and although the moon was bright, we couldn’t really see beyond the torches. Baptism was by immersion, and each newly baptized crossed over the stream to our warm blankets and even warmer applause to welcome them into the fold.

Easter morning, we had the familiar salubong, although it wasn’t as early (I think) as in salubongs here — I seem to remember that it started at 6 or 7am. Whatever the time, the triumphant risen Christ rode on horseback to the chapel from I guess the outskirts of the Mission. By the time they got to the chapel, the horse got all excited and one of the young T’bolis had to take out a shovel. I don’t think I have to more graphic than that, but feel free to ask if you don’t get it. They were ready because the horse did it every single year.

I still have pictures of the Sta Cruz Mission somewhere in my closet, and hope to scan them in and upload them into a gallery  “real soon”. The group was composed of Porfirio “Perry” Mogar, Cecilio “Boy” Moraga, Bienvenido “Bien” Salinas, Jr, and Solito “Sonny” Barana. The last three were seminarians — Boy and Bien at San Jose Seminary and Sonny at the Loyola House of Studies. Sonny couldn’t join us on schedule so he caught up a week or two after we arrived. So the four of us said that two in the group were seminarians but we kept them guessing till the end. Even today, I don’t think the people there know.

In the meantime, if you haven’t attended the Easter Triduum, I urge you to do so. It’s a single celebration — the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Thursday, the Mass of the Lord’s Passion on Friday, and the Easter Vigil on Saturday — so you should attend all three. They stand as one, and missing one celebration will be missing out on the whole. The culmination is of course the Easter Vigil, which in our parish (Holy Family, Kapitolyo, Pasig) is an incredible production. One of our parishioners says that Bishop Teodoro Bacani Jr, who was main priest presider, even wrote about it in one of last week’s issues of the Manila Standard Today. Sorry, it doesn’t seem to be online. In brief: We had PowerPoint slides or video camera images projected onto two large screens on either side of the altar. There were also monitors on the altar so the priest-presiders could keep track of what was on the screen. This audio-video setup was courtesy of Sienna Olazo, who lives a few houses away from church, and Events@Work. The Youth Ministry had a few dances, one to accompany the first reading (about Creation). They even bought in a papier mache model of an elephant, which amused Bishop Bacani no end. I’d be surprised if he left that out of his column. We sang Fr Manoling Francisco’s Luwalhati to fireworks, the raining of confetti, dancing from the Youth Ministry, the tolling of the church bells, and the sound of smaller bells that the parish distributed to the congregation and the priests. I hope your parish had as raucous an Easter Vigil as we did, because that’s the way it’s supposed to be.