One staple of Filipino Holy Week is Fr. Peyton’s Mysteries of the Holy Rosary which showcases the various mysteries through the Holy Weekend which are punctuated with the actual recitation of the Holy Rosary.
As things quiet down on Maundy Thursday, life actually grinds to a halt at 3PM the next day. Even the 24-hour 7-Eleven stores close for an hour or two in commemmoration of the Passion of Christ, and then it swings back into business as usual. The malls are closed, the streets empty. At home, we used to be told to wake up before 3PM as Christ was already suffering through the travails of the crucifixion. Then we would all stop everything at 3PM.
I got used to that exercise even during the summers we spent in Baguio City. When my siblings and I were young, my mom and dad would rent an apartment or a house in Baguio for as long as a month, and they would let us stay there with good old Auntie Lydia. They would come during the week and leave again before the weekend to tend to the business. We enjoyed those summers immensely. It also found us celebrating the Holy Week and several birthdays there.
I still remember Baguio.. let me save those memories for a different post. For now I go back to the days of the Pabasa of Mommy.. how we would create an altar at home and put our Birhen Dolorosa there (which we regularly lend to the barangay outside the Lenten Season). And how it would all end when Christ died on Good Friday.
Praying the rosary is not just a lenten ritual for me. I do it every day I walk out of the house. 5 decades every day — lifting my prayers up above. But this Holy Week, I feel the solemnity in a different sense, as if I were back home.
