What does it mean to follow the Nazareno?

Just how much inconvenience, discomfort, and even pain can one endure in the name of devotion? 

Ask a devotee of the Black Nazarene.

The sacrifice is offered in traveling from all over the country, even as far as Mindanao, to make their way to Quirino Grandstand or Quiapo Church in Manila on this special day.

It is shown in camping out at Quirino Grandstand, with the barest of necessities, days before the feast.

It is in enduring 12-hour-long queues, under the scorching heat of the midday sun or the sudden onset of afternoon rain.

The reward: a chance to touch or kiss the foot or the cross of what they believe is the miraculous image of the Black Nazarene. 

To the devotees, the Black Nazarene is the generous giver who blesses devotees with abundance or, to some, just survival. 

To others, it is a wonder drug that heals anything and everything that ails them.

Common ground

Devotion to the Black Nazarene knows no age, gender or social class. It is an equalizer with faith being a common ground.

Zenaida Crisostomo knows this well. Frail and barely able to walk at 87, she spent Sunday night under the stars in front of Quirino Grandstand to be first in line for the ‘Pahalik’ that was to commence at daybreak of Monday, the eve of the feast of the Black Nazarene.

Her weak body is buoyed by over five decades of devotion to the Black Nazarene.  

Zenaida said she owes her long life to the Poon. This year, she is asking for  more strength on her feet, and more clarity in vision, so that she may live to a hundred years.

She believes it, and she is claiming it.

‘Only way to God’

The Black Nazarene is believed to have millions of devotees. Last Monday at daybreak, crowd estimate was at 3,000, even before the “Pahalik” began. The estimate stood at 20,000 by sundown.

As hours passed, the crowd swelled. After the midnight Mass on Tuesday, police estimated the 3:30 a.m. crowd at the Quirino Grandstand at 365,000.

The sight of a mammoth crowd waving white towels while chanting “Viva” creates an atmosphere that is sure to give even a non-believer goosebumps. The energy, the passion and intensity, is almost palpable.

The Philippine Catholic church recognizes that this is one of biggest religious events of the year and no less than Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle delivered the midnight Mass homily.

Tagle reminded everyone that beyond individual petitions and beliefs, everyone should remember that Jesus is the only way to God.

Zenaida is just one of millions of Filipinos who comprise the oft repeated phrase “sea of humanity” flocking the almost 7-kilometer procession route of the  Black Nazarene on the 9th of January every year. 

To an outsider who is seeing the procession for the first time, it will be easy to dismiss the devotion as excessive, fanatical, even suicidal. The faces of devotees squeezing their way to the “andas,” getting crushed, losing breath, grimacing in pain, but carrying on anyway is a sight that makes some people shake their heads.

But how can one argue against faith, when to some, it is all that they have? It is said that the ease or difficulty at which the procession moves predicts what lies in the year ahead.

On Tuesday, the procession began even before 5 a.m., much earlier than usual, and with relative ease.

Will it be a prosperous, peaceful, healthy year? Such is the prayer of a million people flocking the  Black  Nazarene, but as Quiapo Church rector Monsignor Hernando Coronel puts it: The essence of the Black  Nazarene is forgiveness, hope, salvation, and most of all, faith. — RSJ/KG, GMA News