‘Prusisyon’: The Gospels on wheels

Story and photos by Alvin I. Dacanay 

It’s Holy Week again. For Christians, especially Roman Catholics, it’s that week when Jesus entered Jerusalem as a king, was executed like a criminal, and emerged from his tomb a conqueror. It’s also the week many people probably look forward to the most, for many reasons. 

During Holy Week, people either leave Metro Manila for their home provinces—or popular tourist destinations, such as Baguio, Boracay and Palawan—or stay put and experience the capital at its most solemn. This solemnity is best seen and felt, not among shopping malls and office buildings, but in city or town centers, where the religious traditions taught to us by the Spanish colonizers are still upheld and cherished. Reciting the Pasyon, staging a senakulo, embarking on a Bisita Iglesia—these, among others, are still being practiced.

Of these traditions, none, perhaps, is more instructive or spectacular than the prusisyon—images of the saintly people involved, and tableaus depicting events, in Jesus’s public ministry, Passion and death that are illuminated and mounted on flower-decked floats, and pulled (or carried) by devotees through the streets of a particular parish. It’s like the four Gospels on wheels, or like Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ with much more color and much less gore.

Though the best-known Holy Week processions in the Philippines are held in the provinces—think of the ones in Bulacan province’s Baliuag town and Laguna province’s San Pablo City—those in each of the 16 cities and one town that make up Metro Manila have their own unique appeal, and can offer insights into the religious culture of the area.

One prusisyon that has been gaining notice is that of San Agustin Church in Intramuros, Manila, on Holy Monday. What is special about this one, besides its location— the National Capital Region’s top tourist destination and the center of Roman Catholic power during the Spanish colonial era—is that a few of the images to be brought out are, at least, more than a century old and, thus, priceless, like the image of the scourged Jesus and the tableau of the Crucifixion.

Another is that of Our Lady of the Abandoned Parish Church in Barangay Santa Elena, Marikina City, on Holy Wednesday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday. No other Holy Week procession in Metro Manila, I think, could match the number of images—some of which first participated as early as 1892—that parish brings out on those somber days: at least 65, and counting.

Plus, the Marikina processions have become a trendsetter of sorts, adding to their lineup depictions of events and images of previously obscure New Testament characters—Joanna, wife of royal steward Chuza, and Susanna, two of Jesus’s female disciples; Longinus, the Roman centurion who, legend says, pierced Christ’s side with a lance; and Clopas, one of two men whom the risen Jesus broke bread with on Easter morning, to name a few—that were later copied by other parishes in Metro Manila for their own processions.

And then there’s the Good Friday procession of the Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Barangay Malinao, Pasig City. What makes this procession different from most processions in the metropolis is the heavy presence of pasos—black-robed, purple-sashed, wreath-wearing, lace-collared, and veiled penitents of all ages who carry representations of every instrument and gesture connected with the Lord’s Passion. Their presence makes the procession all the more somber.

This procession is followed by another one hours later, but this time only a single image is involved, appropriately enough: Our Lady of Solitude. Garbed in dulled silver and black, this desolate-looking image of the Virgin Mary moves through the streets of the parish, its isolation prompting fresh meditation on her sorrows.

These processions are among the many to be held in Metro Manila this week. They may have their differences, but what they present is not only an eye-catching and mobile way to commemorate Jesus’s sacrifice, but also the endurance of our religious customs, even if much of it has been reduced through the years. They prove that, underneath its gleaming skyscrapers and towering structures, Metro Manila is still, in a way, a piety-preoccupied poblacion.

The Holy Monday procession at San Agustin Church will be held at 6:30 p.m.; the processions in Marikina City start at 7 p.m. on Holy Wednesday, 5 p.m. on Good Friday, and 5 a.m. on Easter Sunday; and the Good Friday and Our Lady of Solitude processions in Pasig City begin at 5 and 9 p.m., respectively.