John Jonas describes Holy Week traditions in the Philippines, from church visits and processions to extreme reenactments where volunteers carry crosses and get tied to them. This year Maundy Thursday and Good Friday fall on April 6 and 7, with some towns drawing crowds of 20,000 people.
Questions this episode answers
Episode 278
May 3, 2023
April 6 (Maundy Thursday) and April 7 (Good Friday)
Between about 3 and 15 churches.
14 stations.
Chapters
Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing to the Philippines. This is episode 278, Holy Week. So Holy Week was a few weeks ago at least as of recording this podcast. When it gets published, it'll probably have been about a month ago. And so it's. I'm a little bit late in telling you about this, but I just want to give you a heads up or explain about the culture of the Philippines around the Holy Week, which this year was April 6th and 7th, which is Maundy Thursday and Good Friday respectively. And then you have Saturday and Sunday is Easter, Easter finishing Holy Week. So the Philippines is predominantly Catholic and it's very heavily Catholic. They have a lot of traditions that do around this time. And the traditions can vary depending on where in the Philippines they live. And some of them are simple and some of them are super extreme. So in most places they have what they call Visita Iglesia, which is like a church pilgrimage. And they will go to different Catholic churches to offer prayers or light candles. And often they'll go from, to anywhere from between like three and 15 churches to visit them. And depending on this all depends on their local tradition. So another tradition is Stations of the Cross where they visit a Catholic shrine and pray at these 14 different stations which show the different stages of Jesus's last day on Good Friday. This can be as simple as a walk around a church or as much as like multiple kilometers to visit these different shrines, statues and pray at them. Another tradition is called Santo and Tiero, which is like the holy burying is how that translates. And they reenact the burial of Jesus, they cover his statue with a stone, they put all kinds of flowers on it, and they walk around the town in a big procession, parade in like a funeral procession. The people will chant, they'll throw flowers, they'll try and approach the grave and stone and try and touch it for good luck. All kinds of things go on here. So the last tradition I'm gonna talk about is this is the one that gets international attention and this is the one that my son talked all about. So this isn't practiced as much anymore because it's kind of crazy, but it's still, this is still happening in the Philippines. So they, this is where someone volunteers to be Jesus basically on, on Thursday. And I don't know if this happens on Thursday or if it happens on Sunday, but they walk around town and whip themselves on the back because that's what happened to Jesus. And Then they carry a wooden cross around town and then they actually get hung on the cross. Now, in the Philippines, they used to nail people. And my son, who is in the Philippines, in a place where, I mean, his house is like one block away from where they crucified someone, where they hung them on the cross. He said they used to nail them physically put nails in them. They didn't do that this year, although he has heard that basically up until, like, he thought they were going to nail them because people have said that's what they do here. They didn't nail them. They tied them up, but they tied them to the cross and set him up on the cross for a couple hours and then they took him down. So now this, this isn't practice as much anymore because it's dangerous. It gets a lot of attention, but it definitely still happens. And my son sent us pictures of it happening at Easter time. So this, the Holy Week, may not be a big tradition where you are, but this gives you a good idea of how some traditions and holidays are carried on in the Philippines. It's a big deal. And other holidays are going to be similar where they're a big deal and they have a lot of tradition around it and a lot of celebration and a lot of parades. My son, he's on this small island. He said There were probably 20,000 people in this parade. He said it went on for hours, a constant stream of people walking past his house because he's on the main street in this little city. But people had come from all over to come and be a part of this parade. It's a big deal.
