300 Years and the Eternal Return

A day after the Traslacion, I was with kin in the old shrine of the Lady of Peñafrancia. We were waiting for the next Mass, and I was outside looking up at the façade of the Shrine. The icon atop the portal of the church is a copy of the Virgin de Pena de Francia in Salamanca. She is a Black Madonna in the original but in the Shrine she is all dark brown monochrome. She appeared not to resemble at all the image inside.

As I look up at the humble, drab image on the façade, I can see the golden presence of the icon inside. Golden showers cover the canopy of her altar. She looms from her place in the altar, tremendous and touching at the same time.

Would her devotion to her be as massive in Spain where it all began?

The three hundred years of devotion began in Salamanca, Spain. But while the origin is endowed with near magical power, in the old Shrine can be found the power of faith and religion, colonization and evangelization.

Already, I have been asked what this tercentary is all about. What do the 300 years mean? In the many small feasts and pocket gatherings, there are sentiments from some people who feel they are left out.

In the Traslacion last Friday, I marveled at the crowd - the almost endless procession of voyadores. Year in and year out and during the September land procession, I am always ready for the flood of devotees walking behind the two images: Divino Rostro and the Lady of Peñafrancia. This year, I was not prepared for the sheer volume of the voyadores. In their selected colors, they were not anymore physical bearers of the Virgin. The number and the dimension of human beings precluded direct participation.  They were content to walk behind or in front of the image.

I believe the entire three hundred years prepared us for the number but not the physical presence of thousands and thousands of believers. In the end, the procession had to partake of the more mundane practice of counter-flow: people walked up to the cathedral and turned around again to leave the area that was getting denser and denser.

The density of the crowd became the fact of that afternoon. Soon, there were lines moving around outside the huge gate called "Porta Mariae." You either bore it alone in the stasis and the surge of people or you decided to leave and find your breath somewhere.

I went up to my cousin's place in Ramaida Centrum to get a vantage point of the phenomenon. The file of male devotees was relentless. The heat from below overpowered the fresh air between us and the humanity pooled under one faith.