Oh My Janey

Holy Week Road Trip

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It’s a tradition in our family every Maundy Thursday to go on a Visita Iglesia. Years and years ago, we just spent the day by visiting the Dolores church then going to Mount Banahaw. But over the past few years, we decided to spend more time in prayer and that’s by visiting different churches across Laguna and Quezon. I know that when you do the Station of the Cross, you have to visit 14 churches since it’s one church for each station. However, we only visited 8. The churches we visited were the parish churches in Alaminos, San Pablo City, Dolores, Tiaong, Candelaria, Sariaya, Tayabas and lastly, Kamay ni Hesus. It was a long punctuated by long car rides. We also prayed the rosary and the chaplet when we’re traveling.  I fell asleep quite a few times.

Just some of my Maundy Thursday musings:

  • I know we’re supposed to be fasting. Heck, we didn’t even eat meat! But it didn’t stop us from binging. We were eating all the time! There’s really no pause from the feasting that happened last holy week.
  • The saint sculptures in churches are usually covered with purple cloth during this time but I was surprised that the ones in Tayabas church weren’t. But I still don’t know why they cover the saints, though. Where did this tradition come from?
  • I have learned tons of prayer when I was still in school, but the only ones I can remember now are Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, and Apostle’s Creed. My religion teacher is weeping.

I have once talked about my faith, and I am happy to say that I have changed since that point. I just kind of think too much and question a lot, and I just have to figure what I really feel and think. Today, I read Roger Ebert’s How I Believe in God. It doesn’t represent where my faith stands now, but it resonates with me. I was born and raised as a Catholic, but growing up I started to question things. Suddenly, my brain cannot wrap itself around things that I could neither touch or see.

My Psychology teacher once said that people believe in God because they need to believe in something. They need to believe that there’s a higher power that started everything. That’s why religions exist, he said. Ebert said the same thing:

“I believe mankind in general evidently has a need to believe in higher powers and an existence not limited to the physical duration of the body. But these needs are hopes, and believing them doesn’t make them true. I believe mankind feels a need to gather in churches, whether physical or social.”

I’m not saying that this statement defines my Catholic faith, but it definitely has a truth in it. And besides, there’s definitely Someone who planted that idea in our minds, right? 🙂

From Laguna to Quezon

I know I’m a few weeks late in blogging about Holy Week but my blogger’s motto is it’sbetter late than never. And no, I’m not just making up an excuse.  This blog post has been sitting on my drafts for a few weeks already but some important things cropped up and I didn’t have the time to write about it. I have tons of other things to blog about but I’ll make sure to get this out of the way first.

My Holy Week is pretty much the only real holiday I get every year. I think holy week is every employee’s favorite time of the year, because it’s definitely mine. This year was extra special, too, since it was followed by a holiday on Monday. Heh. But the five-day holiday was still too short!

Anyway, just like every year, my family and I went on a Visita Iglesia around Laguna and Quezon. Sadly, we seem to decrease in number every year because some of my cousins migrated to Italy. I don’t know. It’s quite sad that we’re getting fewer and fewer every year! But no worries, it was still fun. Also, this year was our first time to do the Station of the Cross! I’m not sure why we didn’t do it before.

Our first stop was the church in Alaminos, Laguna which is also the nearest church from home. After that, we headed to San Pablo. Those are the only churches we visited in Laguna, because we didn’t pass by Liliw this time.

It was so hot! Hello, tan marks.

[Read more…]

The Great Maundy Thursday Adventure

Every year, we go to Dolores and Lucban to celebrate Maundy Thursday. This year’s a bit different, though, since we visited other churches in Laguna and Quezon. It’s really tiring but it was all worth it! I never fail to enjoy myself when I’m with my family. I have tons of cousins, anyway, so having a good time is inevitable. I asked my mother about this and she said that what we did is called Visita Iglesias. I am quite hesitant to call it that since we didn’t do the Station of the Cross. There were too many kids with us, and they were quite a handful. It would be hard to keep them still. We spend around 20 minutes for each church, making sure to say our prayers and sometimes, to light a candle or two. [Read more…]

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