FEATURE ARTICLE: SI MARIA AT ANG MANANAMPALATAYANG HAGONOEÑO: On Marian Devotion in Hagonoy

The almost 200 year old image of the Nuestra Señora dela Asociada de Purissima Inmaculada Concepcion de Hagonoy which is considered as the patroness of Marian organizations in Hagonoy. This was once under the care of the Tanjutco clan of Hagonoy. Its is now under the care of Rev. Fr. Vicente Burayag Lina, Jr., President of KAKATHA and Chairman of the Diocesean Committee on Church Cultural Heritage. Photo Courtesy: Julian P. Liongson (National Shrine of St. Anne)

   One of the classical celebrations of Filipino Marian piety is the Flores de Mayo, a month-long expression of devotion to Mary by Catholics that culminates in many places with the Santacruzan. The month of May is considered a Marian month precisely because of these May-time devotional practices so very popular too in my hometown of Hagonoy, Bulacan. Together with the town and barrio fiestas celebrated during summer, the dry season is a factor in the popularity of these Marian devotions. For the adults, works in the field have winded down and the harvests are in, and for the youth and children school is on vacation, so for many people the season means greater opportunity for religious celebrations that engage local participation. Also of importance is the fact that by May the major date in the liturgical calendar, Ang Mga Mahal na Araw (the Easter Triduum), is over and the fields are literally free in their summer bloom for some people-initiative in popular piety. But is everything in order with these particular Marian devotions, even as they tell us in particular of the Marian piety of the Hagonoeños? As a professor of Mariology in our seminaries, what can I say about these two forms of our devotion to Mary?

     FLORES DE MAYO. It was towards the end of the 13^th century when the Catholic custom of dedicating the month of May to the Blessed Virgin Mary started in Western Europe. This was part of the conscious effort by the Church to Christianize the persistent pagan feasts that continued in places to be part of the religiosity of the people. In particular, there were May or spring celebrations of Germanic and Roman origins wherein offerings from Mother Nature were made to deities. Instead of offering the richness of nature’s luxuriant flowers to goddesses of sorts, the people were encouraged by the Church to bring the flowers to Mary the Mother of our Saviour. The present form of the May devotion of prayers and flowers for Mary the entire month first appeared in the second half of the 18^th century in Italy particularly as a pious exercise among the students of the Jesuits in their Roman College and for the public in their Gesu church, and from there it soon spread to France and Spain and by the middle of the 19^th century it was well all over Europe. Pius IX granted plenary indulgence to the devotion in 1859.

Pope Bl. Pius IX, known for his defense of the Blessed Virgin Mary through his declaration of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary was also one who granted indulgences for pious devotion to her for her example as a true follower of her son, Jesus Christ, Our Lord.

    This Marian May devotion got its big boost in the Philippines when Fr. Mariano Sevilla, an outstanding diocesan priest and a patriot from Bulakan, Bulacan, wrote in Spanish his earliest work “Las Flores de Maria” in 1864-5 hardly two years after his ordination to the priesthood and while assigned as an assistant priest in San Rafael, Bulacan. In 1867 as newly appointed faculty member at the Real Colegio de San Jose he published its Tagalog translation: “Flores de Maria o Marikit na Bulaklak na sa pagninilaynilay sa boong buwan nang Mayo ay inihahandog nang mga deboto kay MARIA SANTISIMA”.  This work gave form and devotional substance to the practice adopted too in the Philippines, as first introduced by the Jesuits, of offering flowers to Mary daily with hymns and the praying of the Rosary during the whole month of May as an act of special devotion. A brief description of this “Pag-aalay” to Mary as personally lived by this writer as a boy growing up in Hagonoy in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s is given in my latest book: “A Priest at Seventy – A Continuing Service” (Quezon City: GPV Printing Ventures, 2012), p.10.

     The prayers and paranetic reflections penned by Fr. Mariano Sevilla for “Flores de Maria” are no longer in use today, but his May hymn to Our Blessed Mother Mary “Bulaklak na Alay” has become a classic that is still sung today in many parish churches and chapels in connection with the Flores de Mayo. With some minor editing of the lyrics, I have published the music scores of the hymn as sung traditionally in Fr. Mariano Sevilla’s own town of Bulakan and in Hagonoy where he last served as parish priest for two decades (1901-1921) before retirement, including the more contemporary music by Fr. E.P. Hontiveros, S.J., in my book “Ang Puso Ko’y Nagpupuri sa Panginoon (Flores de Mayo)” (Makati: St. Paul Publications, 1988), pp.225-232.

In pursuit of the Vatican II renewal of the sacred liturgy, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments has come out with the Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy (nn.190-194) which points out among others that a pious exercise like the Marian month of May should specifically correspond with the spirit of the fifty days of Easter and take into consideration the mystagogy of the Sacraments of Christian Initiation, even as it is to incorporate the celebration of the Word of God. For these same reasons, I have published “Ang Puso Ko’y Nagpupuri sa Panginoon” to exemplify a Flores de Mayo according to the mind of the Church, with a special emphasis on Sacred Scripture to push for the continuing evangelization of our people and with a concentrated presentation of Mary as our mother and model in the life of faith and discipleship, while distancing the devotion from the traditional recounting of miracles and extraordinary phenomena in her name. Flores de Mayo, to be what it should and can be today, must not simply be a retention or revival of a popular religious tradition of our people, but rather a real loving homage to and veneration of Mary who leads us ever closer to Jesus and to a life of doing “whatever he tells us” (John 2:5).

SANTACRUZAN. Another May festivity we have in Hagonoy as in many other places in the Philippines is the religious pageantry of the finding of Christ’s Holy Cross by Queen Helena. By reason of association, being of the same month of May, the Santacruzan has come to be celebrated in conjunction with the Flores de Mayo and held in many places as its highpoint at the end of May. The oldest feast of the Holy Cross is the celebration on September 14 following the consecration of the Constantinian basilica on Golgotha in Jerusalem on September 13, 335. It was on September 14, 320 that Queen Helena successfully discovered the Cross of our Lord, and so on that date the Bishop of Jerusalem would show the Cross to the public for veneration (Exaltatio Crucis). This accompanying celebration of the Holy Cross soon overshadowed in popularity the dedication of the basilica. By the 5^th century it has become a high feast in Constantinople, and by the end of the 7^th century also in Rome. But in Gaul since the 8^th century, another feast of the Holy Cross had evolved for May 3, the date in 628 when Emperor Heraclius recovered the relic of the Holy Cross from the Persians who had taken it away as booty of war, and on that day triumphantly brought it back to Jerusalem. This Gallican feast soon found its place in the Roman calendar, identical in content with the September 14 celebration which was termed the Exaltation of the Cross. And the May 3 celebration was eventually called the Finding of the Cross. Benedict XIV in 1741 tried unsuccessfully to correct the confusion. Blessed John XXIII in 1960 removed the May 3 feast from the Roman calendar, and gave back to September 14 for the whole Catholic Church the original celebration of the Finding and the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.

Pope Benedict XIV was one of the the popes who tried to correct the situation wherein confusion has arisen due to the separation of the May celebrations. It just comes to show that there is a need for the betterment of the Church through catechism.

Through understanding the meaning of the celebration and the practicality of it, Pope Blessed John XXIII decided to move this celebration on September 14 as a remembrance to the love of God through the Passion of Jesus Christ.

    It is to be noted that the form of pageantry and procession we locally call Santacruzan in celebration of the Finding of the Holy Cross of our Saviour, was first put on in the early Middle Ages in Trier, Germany, the imperial city where Queen Helena resided and on the foundation of whose palace the Liebfrauenkirche was built. Incidentally, it was in this German city of Trier that I made my doctoral studies in theology. The colourful display and parade of religious figures and symbols was basically a translation in flesh and blood of the Biblia Pauperum (“Bible of the Poor”), i.e. the graphic presentations of biblical characters and events depicted on the glass windows of European cathedrals and churches for the instruction and edification of the faithful who otherwise had no Bible to read or could read. In the original Trierer Kreuzauffindung (Finding of the Cross) celebration performed every 14^th of September the characters stepped out, so to say, from the church’s glass windows unto the street, with the highlight of their Queen Helena triumphantly bearing the Holy Cross home.

    Our Santacruzan is a veritable pass-in-review of the history of salvation culminating at Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary and its sequel of the finding of the Holy Cross by Helena. But the pageantry has become mixed with our Flores de Mayo devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Santacruzan exhibits biblical figures and much more in rich variations to remind everyone of God’s divine plan of salvation. Methuselah the ancient is there, so old he can no longer walk but merely ride a cart, to represent humankind waiting for salvation; the Reinas Banderadas, one holding the Philippine flag and another the papal flag, both sagalas saying that the Church and our nation belong to the world blessed by the coming of salvation; the Aetas say the same in local colour. The Old Testament women-heroes: Esther who as Xerxes I’s queen saved the Jews from extermination, the Queen of Sheba on a hammock who visited Solomon in her love of wisdom, and Judith carrying the head of the Babylonian general Holofernes, are represented in the exhibition, types also pointing to “the woman blessed among all women”. To be unmistakable about it, little girls dressed as angels carry each a big letter to spell out the acrostics “AVE MARIA”. Now comes a long commentary about the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is symbolized by the theological virtues for everyone: Reina Fe carrying a cross, Reina Esperanza carrying an anchor, and Reina Caridad carrying a heart, then by her many titles drawn from the Litany of Loreto mixed with many other appellations of more recent vintage: Reina Abogada as our protectress, Doctora as our health, Reina de los Angeles, Rosa Mystica, Seat of Wisdom, Divina Pastora, Reina de las Estrellas, Reina del Santissimo Rosario, Reina de la Paz, Reina Candelaria, Reina de los Patriarcas, Reina de los Confesores, Reina de los Martires, Reina de las Virgines, Reina de las Flores, and many others titles with the corresponding symbols depending on the availability of sagalas who have the means to buy or rent gowns and crowns. From the New Testament, calling attention to the actuality of salvation, are the Samaritana, Veronica, and finally the Tres Marias reminding the public of what happened on Calvary, Mary of Magdala, Mary wife of Clopas, and Mary, Jesus’ sorrowful mother. The representations of the passion and death of Christ are the three dice, the thirty pieces of silver, Peter’s rooster, the spear, the nails, the crown of thorns, and label “INRI” – all on separate plates borne by sagalas. Finally walking under a flowered arco or canopy, the climax of the procession Reina Elena carrying a small cross and escorted by Constantino. The mother and son tandem personify the nascent Christian faith, but incongruously the emperor is portrayed as an adolescent. The whole procession moves to the singing of “Dios Te Salve” (Hail Mary).

    This Santacruzan is a confused and arbitrary marriage of the May devotion to Mary and the May celebration of the Finding of the Cross by Queen Helena. The May 3 liturgical basis for our Santacruzan as the Finding of the Holy Cross has already been removed. To be in accord with the Sacred Liturgy, Santacruzan cannot be in May which is in the glow of Easter. And to be true to history, Santacruzan should be on September 14. The Marian components need to be returned to the culminating procession at the end of and proper to the Flores de Mayo. The present form of our Santacruzan is a marriage of convenience that is unconscionable. It has degenerated into mere pomp and display literally outside the church and without any church supervision, a secular display of celebrities and even gays with religious props. We have to properly treasure our religious heritage and correctly practice our Catholic devotions according to Church guidance.   

About the Writer: Our moderator, Rev. Msgr. Sabino Azurin Vengco, Jr., H.P., S.Th.D. is a renowned professor of Mariology in different seminaries like San Carlos Seminary, Loyola School of Theology, Immaculate Concepction Theologate and others. He is also President Emeritius of the Kapatiran ng Kapariang Taga-Hagonoy, Inc., present Chairman of the Msgr. Jose B. Aguinaldo Foundation, Inc. and president of Kadiwa sa Pagkapari Foundation for the old and sick diocesan priests in the country. He has won several awards in his lifetime for his utmost service to the Church. In Hagonoy, he has been known as one of her beloved sons, promoting evangelization, devotion and catechism to different parts of the country.

Other Links: Ang Pagkakaiba ng Flores de Mayo at Santa Cruzan - Mark Die M. Atienza