Clinging to Faith as to Pulling the Ropes:
Faith, Suffering, and the Pull Towards Jesus the Nazarene
In the early hours of January, before the city fully wakes, Manila already knows what is coming. Streets are sealed, radios issue warnings, and old arguments resurface—about safety, excess, faith gone too far. From balconies and sidewalks, observers will later watch the mass of bodies move as one, dark and restless, like a tide pulled by something unseen. It is a ritual repeated every year, both familiar and unsettling, drawing devotion and disbelief in equal measure.
To some, it is an anachronism—a remnant of an older, rougher Catholicism that refuses to modernize. To others, it is a public inconvenience, or worse, a preventable tragedy waiting to happen. But for those who walk barefoot on hot asphalt, who press forward despite the heat and the crush, the procession is not an idea to be debated. It is an encounter they believe must be risked.
The procession is scarred by injuries and, at times, by death. Still, every year the crowd thickens. Under the harsh Manila sun and the flicker of streetlights, devotees surge along the nearly seven-kilometer route, pushing and pulling their way toward the carroza. Towels are hurled into the air, vanishing briefly before returning—creased, darkened, and transformed into amulets. It is dangerous, chaotic, and relentless. And yet it grows.
To some, it is an anachronism—a remnant of an older, rougher Catholicism that refuses to modernize. To others, it is a public inconvenience, or worse, a preventable tragedy waiting to happen. But for those who walk barefoot on hot asphalt, who press forward despite the heat and the crush, the procession is not an idea to be debated. It is an encounter they believe must be risked.
The procession is scarred by injuries and, at times, by death. Still, every year the crowd thickens. Under the harsh Manila sun and the flicker of streetlights, devotees surge along the nearly seven-kilometer route, pushing and pulling their way toward the carroza. Towels are hurled into the air, vanishing briefly before returning—creased, darkened, and transformed into amulets. It is dangerous, chaotic, and relentless. And yet it grows.
Why? Fr. Francis Lucas, president of the Catholic Media Network, points to the same reasons heard year after year: miracles claimed and retold, bodies healed, lives put back together, and a profound identification with the suffering Christ. For devotees, this is spirituality lived in the body, not merely spoken in prayer. But to dismiss it as fanaticism—or worse, idolatry—is to miss its deeper pulse.
This devotion is not driven by faith alone. It is driven by struggle.
In every pull of the rope, there is a life straining against its limits. In every hand reaching to touch the Nazarene, there is an echo of the woman in the Gospel who whispered to herself, “If I shall touch only his garment, I shall be healed” (Matthew 9:21, Douay-Rheims). Christ’s reply still hangs in the air of Quiapo, amplified by sweat and shouts: “Be of good heart, daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole” (Matthew 9:22).
For many, wiping the image with a towel is not superstition but translation—a way of turning invisible prayer into something tangible. The cloth becomes proof that suffering has been noticed, that hope has weight. It is both plea and promise, both prayer and gamble.
The majority of those who walk—and are crushed—in this procession come from the working class. They arrive burdened by debts, illness, precarious work, and quiet despair. To them, the Black Nazarene is not distant or triumphant. He is the Christ described by Isaiah: “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with infirmity… Surely he hath borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:3–4). His bruises are not symbols but credentials. “By his bruises we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).
The danger of the procession mirrors their daily lives. Injury is familiar. Risk is routine. When Christ says, “Come to me, all you that labour, and are burdened, and I will refresh you” (Matthew 11:28), it sounds less like poetry and more like an invitation meant specifically for them. They believe this Christ understands exhaustion because he bears it.
Critics see chaos; devotees see communion. Where outsiders see bodies colliding, they see the truth spoken plainly in the Psalms: “Many are the afflictions of the just; but out of them all will the Lord deliver them” (Psalm 34:19). And when logic collapses under the weight of the crowd, faith reaches for the impossible, trusting the promise: “With men it is impossible; but not with God: for all things are possible with God” (Mark 10:27).
In the end, this is not a procession seeking spectacle. It is a procession seeking contact. A people reaching for a God they believe can still be touched—“a high priest who cannot have compassion on our infirmities” (Hebrews 4:15)—and approaching him, as the letter urges, “with confidence to the throne of grace: that we may obtain mercy, and find grace in seasonable aid” (Hebrews 4:16).
Like so much of the realities—raw, crowded, loud, and aching for meaning—the devotion to the Black Nazarene is messy and excessive, unpolished and sincere. It is faith with calloused hands and sweat-soaked shirts. It is hope dragged through the streets, refusing to stay quiet, insisting—again and again—that even in pain, grace might still break through.