By APRIL ANNE BENJAMIN
SAN PEDRO, Laguna–For 14 Maundy Thursdays now, Inding Amoranto has prayed the rosary while walking the eight-kilometer distance from her house to the Shrine of Jesus in the Holy Sepulcher in the village of Landayan mornings.
It is her way of thanking Jesus Christ for another year of “good health and happiness.” She says she has never asked for anything but longer life. “You don’t need material things to be happy. It is enough to have peace of mind,” she said in Filipino.
The church has been one of the Holy Week destinations of devout Catholics in the town of San Pedro, Laguna for many decades now. It houses Lolo Uweng, an image of the dead Jesus, which is believed to have done great miracles since it arrived in the church in 19th century.
According to the shrine’s website, the name Lolo Uweng is derived from Emmanuel, short for Emmanuel Salvador del Mundo, which according to elderly church workers is the name inscribed in the icon’s original wooden camarin, a shrine set above and behind the High altar in a church, but still visible from the body of the church.
Every week the church has at least 15,000 visitors but this number swells to 100,000 every Lenten Season.
On her way to the church, which is also called Sto. Sepulcro Parish, Amoranto meets hundreds of other devotees walking to the church, some even barefoot- the number increasing by thousands in the afternoon around 4 p.m.
Once the devotees reach the church, they fall in line and wait for their turn to touch the image and pray for a few seconds. The line stretches to at least a kilometer spilling outside the church to the streets.The paying of homage to Lolo Uewng lasts till the wee hours.
Myrna Seradilla-Rediman, a 60-year old choir member and a Landayan local, says the practice precedes her birth.
“It’s a sacrifice,” she said, adding that it is an “imitation” of Jesus’s walk before he was crucified.
Locals believe that the practice began during the times when there were fewer vehicles. On Holy Weeks, when people go on Visita Iglesia, it was more convenient for them to walk as churches are near each other.
It was like that until such time that people would just walk to visit the nearest shrine of Jesus in Laguna located in Landayan.
Devotees believe that Lolo Uweng walks at night. Some relate meeting an old man who would introduce himself as Emmanuel Salvador, which mean “God with us” and “savior,” respectively. This person was said to comfort the distressed and heal the sick. Then, he would tell them to find him in the place where acacia trees grew. Back then, acacia trees were only found in front of the church.
Devotees point to Lolo Uweng’s slippers wet with mud, with grass clinging to his bottom garments to prove that he was the old man the met during the night.
To Amoranto, her devotion is to show worthiness, “hindi pwedeng hingi lang ng hingi sa Diyos. Dapat ipakita rin na karapat-dapat ka sa ibibigay niya (we should also show that we are worthy of what we ask),” she said.
Rediman has a different take on it. Although he sees the devotion to Lolo Uwent as a sacrifice, she said the practice is not needed to show sincere gratefulness to Jesus.
“Hindi natin kayang tumbasan ‘yung sacrifice niya. At hindi hiningi ni Jesus ‘yun sa ‘tin (We will never be able to repay him for his sacrifices and Jesus never asks that from us,” she said.
The shrine is under the diocese of San Pablo, which covers the entire province of Laguna where 2,632,244 of its 3,005,785 population are Catholics.
(The author is a University of the Philippines student writing for VERA Files as part of her internship.)