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Fanaticism or authentic devotion?<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n by Bernie Lopez<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n To lure the Indios<\/em> of Mexico into Christianity, the Spanish frailes<\/em> made the images of Jesus and Mary look like them, dark and with kinky hair. These found their way to the Philippines via the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade, manifested today by devotions to the Black Nazarene of Quiapo and Our Lady of Antipolo, which have persisted through the centuries to become world famous through media coverage.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>The resilience of these two devotions surprised even the frailes<\/em> themselves. One has to witness the violent crowd of the Black Nazarene procession, which women do not dare join, to discern the powerful faith of the Filipino masses. Just watching makes one pray. The faith of devotees is mysteriously contagious. Everyone tries to reach Jesus. Towels are thrown to the carousel, wiped on His hand or face, and thrown back to the devotees. Some crawl on top of the crowd to get nearer. To be able to get a meter from the carousel is an almost impossible feat, an obsession, a vow. Everyone is barefoot because slippers will get lost and shoes will hurt others. The two to three-kilometer procession inches across the narrow alleys of Quiapo the whole day. An ambulance is on stand-by.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>The panata<\/em> (vow) is the driving force of the devotion. Every year, devotees, relating the forgiveness of their sins to joining the violent procession, flock from every nook of the city every second Thursday of January to fulfill that vow. There is a Church controversy over the Nazareno Negro<\/em>. One side says this folk devotion is plain blind fanaticism. The other side asks \u2013 who are we to judge what is in the hearts of devotees? Who are we to suppress such vibrant faith based on a mere suspicion that it is misplaced? Listen to logic of theologians, but also listen to the hearts of devotees. For the heart discerns what astounds the mind. The Black Nazarene defies logic because faith transcends logic. It is the symbol of true Filipino Christian spirituality.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span>Fr. Catalino Arevalo, SJ, sums it all, \u201cLooking at how deep the devotion of the people are to the Black Nazarene, we can really say, it is real and the people\u2019s devotion is an authentic faith experience!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fanaticism or authentic devotion? by Bernie Lopez To lure the Indios of Mexico into Christianity, the Spanish frailes made the images of Jesus and Mary look like them, dark and with kinky hair. These found their way to the Philippines via the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade, manifested today by devotions to the Black Nazarene of Quiapo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,60],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3022"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3022\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}