MANILA - The bishops concur. Mel Gibson is the
new Mother Teresa.
After being invited to a
special screening of Gibson's The Passion of the
Christ, Philippine bishops, such as Bishop Ramon
Arguelles declared: "Mel Gibson may be the best
evangelizer of our times. So far, the best evangelizer
of our time is Mother Teresa. Now, they say Gibson may
beat out Mother Teresa because of the millions who have
seen, and will see [his] film in such a short time."
Like the bishops, Filipinos are flocking to see
The Passion as if it were a kind of Lenten
obligation. One bishop declared the film "better than
four spiritual retreats", while President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo has called it "wonderful" and likens
Jesus' suffering to the suffering Filipinos must endure
if they hope to progress.
But the popularity of
Gibson's film, a relentlessly graphic depiction of the
final 12 hours of Jesus' life, needs more explanation
than the fact that the majority of the Philippines is
Catholic. In fact, the film resonates with Filipino
audiences because it reflects a Filipino appreciation of
Christ's suffering. Filipinos tend to equate suffering
with truth, and therefore equate the goriness of The
Passion with accuracy - an "accuracy" they are
taking as evidence of the authenticity of their faith:
that if Jesus suffered more than any mortal could
withstand, he must certainly be God. The emphasis,
contrary to the Gospels, is neither on Jesus' teaching
nor his Resurrection but on his torment and death.
As such, an editorial writer for the Philippine
Star even implied that Gibson's presentation was mild.
In the film he details the "15 secret tortures" Jesus
underwent, as revealed by an 18th-century Franciscan
nun. These include the driving of needles into the pores
of Jesus' uprooted beard, making him stand barefoot on a
heated metal sheet, pouring molten lead and tar into his
wounds and filling his mouth with excrement.
The local Pasyon Even without
Gibson's film, Filipinos would not have gone without
their own show of gore this Lent. The Pasyon, a
re-enactment of Jesus' betrayal, trial and death, is
staged during Holy Week through dramatic readings in
churches, street plays and, in some provinces, 24-hour
recitations lasting the entire week. In some areas of
the country, the suffering Jesus underwent is physically
emulated.
In Tondo, an area of Manilla, hooded
penitents crowned with thorns flog themselves with whips
made of rope, vine and leather - the rope whips are
tipped with eight-centimeter bamboo rods, the vines are
thorny, and the leather whips are embedded with glass
shards. While the penitents' petitions vary, the motive
behind their self-flagellation is the same: they seek
holiness through mortification. For two hours, the Tondo
penitents march barefoot on the scorching pavement. They
fall twice, touching their foreheads to the ground, and
when they reach Manila Bay, they jump in - their wounds,
they claim, miraculously healed in its fetid waters.
In the village of Cutud in San Fernando city,
Pampanga province, Lenten flagellants are actually
crucified. They end their procession at makeshift
Golgothas, and, three at a time, are nailed to their
crosses. Eight-centimeter steel nails are doused in
alcohol before being hammered into their hands and feet.
Once fixed, the penitents are hoisted upright upon their
crosses for minutes at a time. The crosses are lowered,
the nails are wrenched out, and penitents either walk,
or are carried off to make way for a new set of
crucifixes. Every year, about a dozen men are crucified
in Cutud. The village's Holy Week activities are capped
off by blowing up a Judas Iscariot doll stuffed with
fireworks after Easter mass.
The morbidity of
these rites is not without savor. They are generally
undertaken with a festive air. Vendors line the Via
Crucis, the path of the penitents, hawking peanuts and
coconut juice. Men on horseback, brightly clad as Roman
centurions, ride recklessly through the crowd. Tourists
position themselves for photographs and devotees try to
get themselves splattered with as much of the penitents'
blood as possible. One observer noted: "It's barbaric,
it's inhuman, it's a good show."
To be sure,
these practices are frowned upon by the Church.
Monsignor Hernando Colonel, the secretary general of the
Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines, called
them "a misrepresentation of our Catholic faith". An
editorial in the Manila Standard said they show "the
paganism of Filipino Lent". Such censure, however,
hardly detracts from their popularity. Although
unsanctioned by the Vatican, these rituals authentically
represent the folk Catholicism of the countryside. As
such, Good Friday not Easter Sunday, suffering not
transcendence, is the centerpiece of celebration.
The penitent nation Filipinos hold the
Pasyon dear because they see themselves in it. It
is their story, an allegory revealing their identity and
destiny as a people. Philippine Daily Inquirer columnist
William Esposo writes: "Watching The Passion was
an experience in suffering so close to home. I cannot
help [but] associate Christ's passion with our people's
agony and continuing crucifixion. Christ's passion is
now history, but the Filipino people's passion is a
never-ending tale of abuse, deceit, exploitation and
oppression."
For Filipinos, the suffering of
Christ puts their own suffering in perspective. He saves
it from futility, and it suddenly becomes purposive as
both punishment and penance. Filipinos suffer as a
consequence of sin - their poverty, for instance, a
result of corruption - but also, like Lenten penitents,
as a way to absolution. Hence, suffering gains a certain
savor; a gratification that comes with an awareness of
mortification.
This conception is confirmed the
only way it can be, by God himself through signs: a
statue of the Virgin weeping blood, say, or the
disappearance of penitents' wounds in Manila Bay - or
even stigmata, the sudden appearance of wounds. Just as,
for believers, the "miracles" surrounding The
Passion - such as Jim Caviziel, the actor playing
Jesus, being struck by lightning; or even Caviziel being
33, Jesus' age when put to death, and possessing the
initials "JC" - are interpreted as signs of God's
thumbs-up.
More than just sanctity, the ultimate
recompense of suffering is redemption. In this regard,
the Pasyon has given a model to social movements
throughout the history of the Philippines. Under the
yoke of Spanish colonialism, Filipino peasants saw in
Christ's suffering not only the inspiration to endure,
but also to rebel. A number of native uprisings during
this period invoked the suffering of Christ. Later, the
Maoist New People's Army would appropriate the same
template but substitute the people's suffering for
Christ's. Johanna Son writing for Inter Press Service
notes that, even today, Holy Week remains "an occasion
for groups like the urban poor to dramatize their
plight".
The promise of redemption implies a
messiah, and for as long as the Pasyon has
enthralled the popular imagination, there have been
candidates for the position. The quintessential messiah
of the Spanish period was the national hero Jose Rizal,
whose satiric writings and alleged association with the
underground insurgency, the Katipunan, got him executed.
Rizal's death was immediately recast in the mold of the
martyred savior. Revolution, as the consummation of his
death, became irrevocable.
The mantle of messiah
has extended to other, more dubious figures throughout
Filipino history. General Douglas MacArthur's return to
the Philippines during World War II was heralded by one
newspaper columnist as "the completion of the
Fil-American cycle of setback and triumph, of Calvary
and Resurrection". Ninoy Aquino, once safely
assassinated, was portrayed as an incarnation of Rizal.
His killing, wrote Ian Buruma in the New York Review of
Books, set off "a fiesta of grief", and the image of his
bullet-pocked head and chest at the open-casket funeral
"briefly gave the nation a sense of identity".
Even Ferdinand Marcos, in the early years of his
presidency, was not without a messianic halo, although
he greatly aided efforts to have himself and his wife
Imelda transmuted into myth. (Perhaps part of his
failure was that he survived long enough to belie what
the Filipino people wanted to believe.) One might also
read in the cult of personality surrounding presidential
candidate Fernando Poe Jr the same desire for a savior.
But there is no guarantee, of course, that
should Filipinos get the savior of their choosing, their
suffering will end. That would take a miracle.
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