Holy Days

It is not how much we do,

but how much love we put in the doing.

It is not how much we give,

but how much love we put in the giving.

--Mother Teresa

Today, Good Friday is a holy day of obligation for us Catholics. But to me, it feels just like any ordinary day and it has been that way for years--since I moved to the US. Here we don't have holidays and non-working days during the Holy Week, so I have to go to work.

I remember my younger days when our family would observe Holy Week by going to church everyday for the entire week with the only exception of Saturday--the only day without mass or church activity. As a teenager, I wasn't so welcoming of the daily church trips and I envied some of my friends whose families would get away to Baguio or Tagaytay during the Holy Week. We didn't have the means to do so, but even if we did I highly doubt that my religious parents would even think about it. To them, it was a time to devote to God, to make sacrifices, to make amends, to spend time in prayer more than anything else.

I never thought I would miss those time, but I do now. I miss the Holy Week tradition we have back home--the processions, the days of abstinence when we would eat hot "champorado" or "binignit" for a meal, the Last Supper dinners on Holy Thursday when we would either pledge a dish or two for the priests or host dinner at our home, the Easter Vigil and the "Hugos" or "Sugat" where little kids dressed like angels sing in unison while one angel--the soloist, changes Mama Mary's black veil to white as a symbol of joy and celebration! I remember my little brother becoming that one angel, I still remember how he sang the song, how shaky his voice was, but how beautiful it sounded in the midst of the cold night.

Here we don't observe Holy Week the way we do back home, but I do remember well and one day I will experience it again and so will my kid(s).