Let's Celebrate the Holy Week Holy

From google.com

For us Roman Catholic, we do have this celebration called Holy week and we literary celebrate this for one week. It will start from the Palm Sunday up to Easter Sunday. Since  based on (http://asianjournal.com) 81 percent of the population in the Philippines is Catholic we really do celebrate it and a lot of traditions are being done within this week.

What I will do is to share to all of you some of the well-known tradition that we do here in our country. I know this may seems bias or one side but if you are not a Catholic I totally respect that and will be thankful for you if you are going to read this post just for learning purposes.

Disclaimer: Some of the information that I will share to you is from different websites and I will surely going to cite them. This is just for reading purpose only no intended of copyright violation is intended.

Now let's start, Here are the following traditions that we do:


From google.com

1.  Palapas during Palm Sunday - We Filipino Catholic have this practice every Palm Sunday we go to Church and bring a Palaspas. This Palaspas will be blessed by priest after mass and lastly we put this Palaspas in front of our door or in our Altar. Mostly, we are keeping the Palaspas up until next and replace again for the next Palm Sunday.


From Google.com

2. Abstinence and Fasting - Abstinence is us Filipino Catholic will have a meal that doesn't have any meat such as pork, beef; so most of us are into fish during the abstinence period.

Now with fasting to be honest I am 100% sure about this but what I know is that it is not the typical fasting. Instead of you eating the usual amount of meal it will be half of lesser than your usual meal. I mean it is a part of our mortification or sacrifice just like what Jesus did on and before his Crucifixion.


From google.com

3. Pabasa - we have this practice that read a book in chorus with a Tune depends on the leader of the Pabasa. Actually I have experienced this tradition, I mean this will usually take one and half day and it will be non stop from morning up to the next afternoon. Sometimes the facilitator of the Pabasa will give food for the people who is doing the Pabasa which sometimes Lugaw, Sopas, Sontanghon. Also, it is given that coffee is also for free.

What I have witnessed, there some Pabasa that has evolved. How? There people who do it in rap or there are people who are using now LED T.V not books anymore. In my own opinion, I am totally fine with it as long as the essence of the Pabasa is there and the people who's doing won't ignore it.


From google.com

4 Visita Iglesia - we Filipino Catholic also have this tradition and we sometimes do it per group. We sometimes do it with our friends, colleagues and most of the time we do it with our family.

We aim to visit seven different churches and go to the station of the cross of each churches. I think it will be two station per churches, I am not sure about it but what I am sure of is we do it during night and group of people are travelling from on place to another. I've heard that there are families who aims to visit seven churches to different cities. So the location on each church is really far.


from google.com


from google.com

5. The "Papako sa Krus"/ Crucifixion - This kind of practice is not really being supported by the Roman Catholic but they are always saying that they respect their decision, as it is a from of mortification of the people who are doing it. This kind of tradition is being performed every Good Friday. Please be informed that they are really using a sterilized real nail and it will be hammered into the hand of the person. Even though we know it will really hurt them every year there are still many people who wants to do it. More interesting to this tradition is that, it is not just only for man, women can also volunteer for the crucifixion. What I also do know that one of the places that this tradition always happen is somewhere in Pampanga.

I hope this post will let you learn a lot of things about our Holy week tradition here in the Philippines. I also want to say, thank you in advance for reading my post. I really hope you will like it and please do spread my post to everyone you know. I will also appreciate if you will leave your honest comment.