"My Kingdom is Not of this World":
Thoughts on the Traslacion 2024
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| Source: Inquirer.net |
This 2024 commemorates the physical return of the Traslación of the image of Jesus Christ as the Black Nazarene, four years since it was last held before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the City of Manila and the rest of the Philippines.
Millions of barefoot devotees are expected to touch, kiss, or wipe cloth on the Black Nazarene, a 17th-century image of Jesus Christ carrying His cross, as part of the event commemorating its transfer from the Church of San Juan Bautista in Bagumbayan (present-day "Rizal Park") to its new home, the Church of St. John the Baptist in Quiapo district, Manila. The image is believed to be miraculous.
However, the image being pulled by many is in a glass enclosure, a sound system, and a Closed Circuit Television (CCTV); even surrounded by around 20 "Hijos del Nazareno" members to prevent devotees from climbing onto the image. And yet despite warnings not to get close to it, devotees rather cling to the "tradition" of touching or wiping cloth in its image- for again they still believe in its powers, whether it can heal previously incurable ailments or to bring good fortune to them and their loved ones.
But, despite this popular religiosity, this act of faith shown by most devotees is seen by critics as driven by material wishes than spiritual graces. Of course it is easy to dismiss them knowing that the reasons behind their devotion is that of material- and therefore easy to paint these devotees as fanatics especially when you see the multitude of people scrambling just to touch, to get a glimpse (and therefore disobeying orders for "tradition's sake"); but, cannot blame them on their actions for from these devotee's way of believing in Jesus Christ as the Black Nazarene is itself an authentic faith experience- that those who touch the image, wiping it with cloth, or that they were praying, many were crying or pleading for guidance because something happened to them in their visits, helping to resolve their problems be it spiritual or material. After all, in seeing them it becomes a valid expression of the people’s need to commune with the divine.
As an observer, would say that their devotion tries itself to be genuine, especially after the abuses that have developed through centuries of tradition. As said earlier it becomes less spiritual and more material in their motivation to get close to the Black Nazarene, and thus not from the expression of people’s faith, but from those who manipulate the devotion; it may also become fanatical as some failed to focus on God and Christ and instead into their own self and their egoes, desires. Thus, it becomes a duty for the faithful, aside from the Church for fellow devotees to better understand their faith and to put things in their right perspective- and it takes a long time for people for them to trying to help and guide the people and understand more the catechism and really get closer to Christ as the Black Nazarene.
Perhaps, in this current unjust order would say that by making people guide and understand the reason for devotion is more than simply the material want and even spiritual need- that "Christ's Kingdom is not of this world" and that by building a just society on earth as Christ envisioned includes cultivating moral and social virtues in themselves and spread them in society, that includes the need for freedom, justice, solidarity, love, and a lasting peace by any means. After all, it is what the substance of Christ's messianic mission and ministry on earth, which he himself said:
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord" (Lk 4:18-19; cf. Is 61:1-2).
The devotees, as that of the faithful, wanted spiritual redemption so is the liberation from their suffering; they wished and working hard for a life of a world to come to happen on earth as that of pulling the ropes, accompanying the image on top of the carriage for long hours, enduring bump, sweat, and pain to gain the grace as they themselves mostly from the toiling masses and the disenfranchised. Their cries for help towards Christ that is, focused on justice for the poor, as poverty of the exploited and oppressed, the weak and the indigent, as evil; the prophetic tradition that condemns fraud, usury, and gross injustice as causes of poverty (cf. Isaiah 58:3-11; Jeremiah 7:4-7; Hosea 4:1-2; Amos 2:6-7; Micah 2:1-2).
