When Faith is Really Grand Enough

Now, that the dust and smoke have all been dissipated and a certain quiet has descended upon our town-city, we look around and start to account for the things that might have been and should not have been.

The statistics of 2 to 3 million people arriving in our small city seem beyond our imagination. But it did happen. The world seemed much bigger then in those two weeks of September. But if there is a lesson in those nine days, it is that "People make the faith." Not the extrasomatic signs, not the statues or grand arches.

But we have now an arch and it goes by the name of Porta Mariae. Words have it that the structure cost a fortune. Millions of pesos.

What were the considerations for this monument? What could the monument achieve that churches and shrines are not able to? And, how long will the Arch?

For those familiar with famous monuments, the Porta Mariae recalls in shape, perhaps not in volume and certainly not in grandeur, the Arc d'Triomphe in Paris. There are many other structures - commemorative and triumphal arches they are called. There is the iconic Bradenburg Gate in Berlin. In London, there is the Wellington Arch. In Asia, we have the Patuxai or Gate of Triumph in Vientiane, Laos, and the Arch of Triumph in Pyongyang in North Korea.

Cursory research will bring us to one fact about majority of these arches: they are commemoration of material victories. The triumphs denote respectively a proclamation of a victory of a nation over another nation in a war and not in peace. Which is understandable, arches are always monumental monuments. They are grand perorations of narratives, a retelling of the stories about bravery of men and women over other brave men and women. The tales always have two sides: the bravery and cowardice; strategy and blunder; destiny and destruction. In other words, every arch set up has two stories: the victor's spoils and the vanquished whose lives have been spoiled.

These arches register along the physical and material. The soul of patriotism related to those who fought for their nations may touch the spirit but there is nothing spiritually uplifting about nations expanding boundaries through violence as well as usurpation.

Why build a massive and expensive monument to honor the 300 years of the devotion to our Lady of Peñafrancia? In homilies and in those little speeches delivered in the days leading to the festivities, the message was about the image of the Gentle Mother and not the royal monarch. "Ina" and "Lady" as we call the Virgin of Peñafrancia are names of simplicity and self-effacement. The "cimarrones" were tamed before her; the "infieles" turned their face once more to faith. The "remontados," if we follow the discourse of histories, came down from the mountain recognizing Her hold over them not by physically palpable power but by a mystical imperium that was beyond the earthly, the vulgar, and the profane.

Immediately after the fiesta, I recall Fr. Wilmer Tria sharing how he tried to simplify the metaphor laden in the celebration of the 300 years of festivities. During the countdown to the beginning of the commemoration, he asked the crowd to count with him first from 1 to 100. His purpose was to lead them up to a count of 300. The people got tired already even before reaching the 100. If the devotion was given for caring and safekeeping to the crowd - and through the symbolism of number - then the devotion would not have reached the 300^th year, he teased the crowd.