RAYMUND FERNANDEZ
Can you measure the sacredness of a thing?
By the standards of Wikipedia, to be sacred means to be “dedicated to a religious purpose and so deserving veneration.”
This implies that as long as something is dedicated to a religious purpose, then it is sacred. Sacredness, therefore, is determined by one criteria: how dedicated is a thing to God?
In that sense, anything can be sacred. A week can be sacred too. It can be so sacred that for a brief moment, the world stops for it.
Before it stops, it becomes very busy.
People stop working, they leave the city for their hometowns and do their rush preparations, because when Thursday comes, the malls will close. The jeepneys, buses and boats will stop running their routes. The world stops.
And then, it becomes really busy. People meet with relatives and friends they haven’t met in a while.
Some they haven’t met since the previous Holy Week. Did you know that, according to our criteria, friends can be sacred too?
The very sacred friend will never fail to visit the churches for the Bisita Iglesia. They will never fail to march the entire procession.
Some of them might even attempt to include you in their sacred plans.
The relatively sacred will always say yes, though most of them will disappear halfway.
The not-so-sacred are usually found in the sidelines with a few bottles of Tanduay.
Words can also be sacred.
One sacred word in the dictionary of the Church would probably be “Amen.”
What is “Amen,” really?
What does it even mean?
Dictionary-wise, it means “Yes,” or “so be it.” But if you ask the normal 40 years old or younger, the majority would answer “Amen is … you know … Amen.”
But in a way, “Amen” really is Amen.
Even those who don’t know what it means have associated it with the sacred.
Some things are sacred by default. The carro, for instance, cannot have a sacredness ratio.
One carro can be more beautifully decorated than another.
One can even claim that the carros of Baclayon are more beautiful than another town’s.
Those claims can be truly objective and disinterested judgments of the beauty of carros.
But in terms of sacredness, they are all equal. Yes, even the carro with flickering lights.
And even the San Pedro with the live chicken who, for some time, crowed constantly out of panic through a Hail Mary, and eventually died amidst the “Jesus malooy ka kanamo …”
But don’t feel bad for the chicken.
He died for a sacred cause. Amen.
A life can be sacred too. Logically, it would depend on the amount and quality of sacred acts done in one’s lifetime.
A priest’s life might be considered more sacred than a sinner’s.
But one must wonder if life can’t be sacred by default.
And just like that, the day of traveling is done.
Tomorrow, the buses will stop running and the malls and shops will close.
One day left for the last batch of shopping, but there’s almost no time for it.
The procession comes this afternoon.
The carro won’t be perfect. It never really is. But for now, one can only hope for a sacred day.