LENT=BORACAY???

LENT=BORACAY???
by Reymundo Salao
Oftentimes Disturbing

This coming Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, I guess that means that it is the start of the Lenten Season. Holy Week is almost an entire month away, yet people are already marking their calendars to go to Boracay on Good Friday. I cant freakin believe how people (even my closest friends, so sorry guys, if this article will piss you off… I just gotta write off my mind on this) have associated Holy Week with summer vacation. Can you people not go BEFORE or AFTER Holy Week? Boracay is such a wonderful place, but going there to party on a Good Friday??? Arent we supposed to observe Holy Week properly. Mamalandung man ta. That means that one should, in my own way of putting it, be extra-Christian-like. Observe the solemnity of the week. No big loud parties, no disco, no rave.

Sheeez, man! Let's try to be a "good" religious community for a change. Look at the Muslims. When they worship Allah, they're pretty serious and obedient with it. Good for them, not like some of us Christians who make laughing stocks out of people who make the sign of the cross before meals. The Catholic Church isn't very strict when it comes to practices, so we tend to intentionally ignore the simplest of religious obligations. One hour in one Sunday of one week. Is that too much your God asks of you? Even with that little amount of time, many of us fail to take time with God. If you can do your best not missing your favorite telenovela, if you can do your best not missing the big basketball, boxing, and football games, if you can do your best not missing the Sex Bomb concert, why can you not do your best in setting aside one hour in a week for your God? But when your wallet's empty, when the ATM is offline, when your fever feels like death, it's the only time you whisper in desperation "Oh God, Oh GOD!"

It is kind of stupid too, that many people, opt to go to Boracay every Holy Week. Have a tropical vacation, go to Bazura, chill out watching butt-cracks of forty-year-old Europeans. Shit, man! Aren't you supposed to do the opposite?! Instead of observing the solemnity of the week, some Christians go basking in the sun with the tune of Shaggy songs in their head. It's funny and stupid that many Christians specifically set aside Holy Week for vacation, they don't wait for Labor Day, they don't celebrate on their Araw ng Kagitingan holiday, no, they had to make Holy Week "Party Week".

I wouldn’t be surprised if the plagues of Egypt would emerge on this modern society of ours. I wouldn’t be surprised if a wave of locusts, frogs, and snakes would come out and overwhelm our modern living. I wouldn’t be surprised if the multi-horned beasts and the four horsemen of the apocalypse would come decimating the planet. Maybe we need that now to be aware that we do have a God, whatever his name is, and He’ll teach us a lesson in discipline and proper schedule management for our little vacations.

Yes, yes, I know that I'm beginning to sound like one of those angry TV evangelists, but hey, am I not right? I'm not hypocritical to say that I'm the moral one, I'm a jerk too. God knows I am no better than ten Nazi jerks combined. But heck, at least, I'm not the jerk who's dancing "Horny" in some resort, while the Siete Palabras is airing in AM radio stations.

Other people even go through the penitensya, wherein they inflict pain upon themselves as an act of penance. Some people give themselves whiplashes, carry crosses over hills and rocky terrain, wear crowns of thorns, and go through an actual crucifixion. The practice of experiencing the pains that Christ has gone through. Although the Catholic Church doesn't really sanction these kinds of practices, many people believe that this is some way of making up for the many sins that they have committed. Don't you feel that you too should go through such act of making up with the sins that you've done? If you wont do it to impress God, do it for yourself. Do it so that you can feel the pain which is equal to the sins that you have done. The errs that has caused a damage to others. I don't expect you to literally hang yourself up a cross and let some dude in a roman costume give you lashes, but at least try to go to Church and find time with your God, man!

What? You don't believe in God? You think that you can rationalize his non-existence. If science hasn't prove His existence, does it prove that there is no God? And you claim the superiority of man, taking up lines like "The Triumph of the Human Spirit", and crap like that? Wow, that is indeed friggin PRIDE, man! Who are you to claim there is no God? You are just a man. Are you sure that the mind of man is so sophisticated as to comprehend all that is in the universe. We are just humans. We die, we suffer, and although we have the right to think freely, there are just thinks that we are not meant to understand. God may not be explained by science. But God is above science. I'm not saying that you should live life the way ardent charismatics do, but at least give time, to have faith in something, rather than the pride of believing that you can handle your life and your fate yourself.