More than a Tradition: Filipino Religiosity as a Signal of Transcendence

Filipino people’s pious celebration of the Lenten Season culminating in Easter celebration strongly manifests the fact that Philippines is the only Christian nation in Asia. Christians of different denominations all over the country went into prayer and fasting, retreats, and reflections and meditations on Christian faith. Catholic churches everywhere in the country were filled with people who participated in the remembrance of Jesus Christ’s washing of the feet of His disciples on Maundy Thursday, His passion and death and the veneration of the Cross on Good Friday, Christ’s lying in the tomb on Black Saturday, and His glorious resurrection on Easter Sunday.

I am an evangelical Christian, but since my husband likes liturgical symbolisms, rubrics and ceremonies, I went with him to Sacred Heart Parish Church here in Cebu City to attend services commemorating Christ’s Passion and Death on the Cross. Seeing families and individuals praying the Stations of the Cross inside the Sacred Heart Parish Church (now the Archdiocesan Shrine of the Sacred Heart of Jesus) and large numbers of people taking part in the procession of the image of the dead body of Jesus along Gorordo Avenue filled me with the thought that we are indeed a Christian people. We do value our Christian faith albeit in the folk Catholic ways or in the evangelical Christian way.

Looking at our Christian practices as people, I have come to appreciate the fact that we are a people who seek the Divine. We have not become too materialistic after all, news of Europeans who are leading materialistic lives and who do not go to their churches anymore make me feel thankful that we are still a people who have deep connections to our Christian faith and who are still seeking and yearning for spirituality. Catholic Masses and Christian fellowships are held in the mall theaters and spaces – something that integrates the profane and the sacred.

According to Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher, there is a “God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing”. People try to fill this vacuum with created things by having as much pleasure they can get from food, sex, money, recreation, material things, and the pursuit of fame, the “high” one gets from illicit drugs, or the pursuit of praise from other people, but the feeling of emptiness will always be there, a feeling of wanting for more, unless one turns to the Creator who is called in various ways in different theistic religions – as Yahweh, Jehovah, Father God, Allah, Brahman, or simply, the Supreme Spirit.

Filipino religiosity, I believe, is a response to fill the need to satisfy this God-shaped vacuum, not just to follow the religious traditions handed down by our colonizers. The devotees of the Black Nazarene, the Filipinos who pray the Stations of the Cross inside the churches, the evangelical Christian retreats and worship services, the Muslim practice of Ramadan and celebration of Islamic sacred feasts – are all signs of yearning for spirituality. We, Filipino Christians in particular, are seeking for a spiritual meaning to our own sufferings and struggles in life, and we find the meaning and hope we are looking for in the Passion and Resurrection of Christ and in the person of Christ Himself. We are a people who have gone through a lot: centuries of colonization and oppression, Martial Law years, years under corrupt leaders, but we have risen from our sufferings and humiliation through People Power and the sheer resolve of sincere leaders in the government and civil society to rise up from corruption and human rights abuses.

The yearning for spirituality is one of the marks of what Gerard Arbuckle, an Australian priest who wrote several books including Violence, Society, and the Church, termed as the “paramodern culture”, which is characterized by nonviolence, interdependence, systems thinking, collaboration, gender equality, reconciliation, accountability, and a yearning for spirituality. Peter Berger calls these characteristics as signals of transcendence, referring to people cooperating with God in transforming the world. Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa wrote a book entitled God has a Dream, where he wrote that God has a dream of transfiguring the world through us. We are God’s partners in transfiguring this sin-fallen world. The spiritual life is utterly crucial as we work to bring God’s transfiguration into our political life. Part of this transfiguration is electing the right leaders in our country. We should elect those who have a fear of God, those who follow His laws and teachings, not those who are humanly popular only. Societal transformation must spring from the conviction that God wants to transform the world into one where His kingdom of love, sharing, caring, peace, goodness, and kindness reigns.

If we are to integrate our religiosity as a people into our lives, our remembrance of Christ’s Passion, Death, and Glorious Resurrection need not be confined to the Lenten and Easter seasons, but should be done throughout the whole year and integrated into our work and daily existence. We can integrate our religiosity in the way we deal with our environment, the way we treat our fellow human beings, and in the way we conduct our business and political affairs. We need to advocate for a more responsible form of capitalism, one that puts a limit to extraction of natural resources, and one that makes use of zero waste in manufacture and production, and greater environmental responsibility if we are not to suffer from the pile up of garbage and the increase of pollution of air, sea, water, and land.

Electronic and digital technology paved the way for the global village, global community, global connectivity, and global responsibility to care for the planet and for each other’s welfare. From the Christian point of view, the making of nuclear armaments is a sign of psychological disease, a neurosis, and a distorted worldview that only the powerful and the might of the military will save one’s skin or will settle disputes with neighboring countries. Those who do not recognize the existence of a Supreme Being tend to make themselves their own gods, which is a very dangerous thing. They can seek to annihilate other people for their own self-survival or the survival of their own people. In recent news, North Korea threatened to retaliate if South Korea and America will not stop their airplane surveillance over their air space. War is a sign of psychosis and neurosis springing from godlessness, lovelessness, and fear to be attacked by those who possess more superior arms.

Nicolas Perlas, in his book Mission Possible! Sow Courage, Harvest a New World, wrote that based on quantum physics, human consciousness is deeply embedded in and in communion with the very essence and processes of the world, of the universe itself, including the non-manifest. This is from the human point of view, and it actually coincides with the spiritual point of view that God’s dream is for His children to participate in transforming the world as they move to achieve levels of national and planetary cooperation to address global warming, food security issues, and the attainment of peace and prosperity through mutualism and social cooperation. Our religiosity as people can truly be a signal of transcendence if we participate in God’s dream in transforming the world, and we can start by contributing to transform our country into a clean, green, livable, God-centered society where there will be no more poor and oppressed but where equality and prosperity is enjoyed by all. It is an idealistic vision, but one which I hope can inspire us and lift us out of our daily grind to make a living as we contribute our little parts in transforming our society and the world.

About the author: Belinda F. Espiritu is a faculty member of the University of the Philippines Cebu. She holds a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature and a PhD degree in Communication. She would like to hear from the readers about their feedback or comments on her articles through her email address: belinda.espiritu@gmail.com to set a conversation going even after her articles have been published.