Filipinos have plenty of religious Catholic traditions and practices which I’m not really sure are taught in the Bible or sanctioned by the Church. One example is holding hands during the Ama Namin at mass. Lent, and especially Holy Week, is replete with these Filipino traditions. There are the numerous processions where men flagellate themselves before swimming in the ocean and then have themselves crucified to the cross, the directive to be somber and miserable during Good Friday (mukhang Bierne Santo), and many others.

Don’t get me wrong though. I absolutely love these traditions (except being sad during Good Friday). I especially like the holding hands during the Ama Namin, although perhaps for the wrong reason. When we were dating, this gave Honey and me a valid (and holy) excuse to hold hands… right inside the church at that. I also had the chance to watch the Moriones with the masks and the flagellations in Marinduque and I loved it. When I was a still diligent nerdy piano student, Good Friday was the best time for me to practice piano. There were no TV shows to tempt me, no places to go to (besides church), and nothing much else to do. So I would break the contemplative silence (actually, my brothers and sisters would just be sleeping) with my maddeningly annoying scales and arpeggios. At 3 PM though, Mom would make me stop practicing for about fifteen minutes because this is the time of the death of Christ.

One of the most popular and widely-practiced tradition is fasting and abstinence from meat. I’ve seen a lot of fasting in the Bible but I don’t know where the abstinence from meat as part of a person’s penitence came from (not that I’m a Bible scholar or anything though). I don’t know how it could be though when most of Jesus’ disciples were fishermen, and not butchers, so they probably eat fish most of the time anyway.

And for us Filipinos, I really don’t see how eating fish and seafood could be considered a sacrifice when we have the most delicious fish and seafood in the world. So every Good Friday, when just as many Filipinos flock to the beaches as they do to the churches, they gorge on the freshest and most sumptuous seafood — inihaw na lapulapu, alimango, lobsters, sugpo, kinilaw na isda, bangus, tahong, etc.. And don’t forget — sweets and deserts are not meat either. So Filipinos also gorge themselves on bibingka, puto, espasol, panucha, buko pie, and all these delightful food which can be bought by the roads going to the provinces. And with all that, they can still manage to look mukhang Bierne Santo and have the audacity to say that they are doing their penitence… hehe! ) So that’s why they call Good Friday good. )

Read more in Toe’s Kurokuroatbp.

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