anamnetic & mimetic (sounds greek? - they're greek!)

Going through the activities of the Holy Week one can find a lively Filipino trait, a trait that is vividly contrasted to the liturgical celebrations as these are placed side by side with our very own Filipino popular devotions.
At the outset it might be good to note that the liturgical activities of lent, the paschal triduum and easter, that is, the celebration found in the liturgical books, are essentially anamnetic . Anamnetic means “to make the events present in the Christian assembly.” In doing so we become participants (not mere spectators) in the passion, death and resurrection of the Lord thus permitting ourselves to be moved and therefore transformed by the events we recall.
Permit me to elucidate by way of revealing the reactions to the washing of the feet done on Holy Thursday in the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. If the reaction to this ritual goes like this, “wow our Judas this year really looks like Judas with his beard and traitor-like appearance and Oh the good Monsignor, he really looks like Jesus, so humble and serene,” then the audience is mere spectator rather than participant and the ritual is mere dramatization rather than a recollection and renewal of the events that transforms lives. If ones reaction to the ritual goes like this, “indeed it is painful to bend so low and wash each other’s feet . . . at home and in my community whose feet should I wash, to whom am I called to serve humbly?” then this reaction is clearly anamnetic for the symbol moves the individual to love and serve the unlovable and the least. One, in a sense, becomes a participant in the events that unfold in the liturgy.


Filipinos, however, are more emotional in our approach to reality rather than intellectual, and it would therefore take more effort, and therefore more words from the preacher to create the desired effect of the liturgy in the lives of Filipino Catholics. In other words, we fall easy prey to become mere spectators in a drama rather than participants in the events recalled. And I believe this is the reason why we come out of the Holy Week year after year still falling short of the expected transformation these Holy Week rituals wish and intend to evoke in us.
Filipino popular devotions in the Holy Week are essentially mimetic (in contrast to the anamnetic trait of the official rituals of the church). They are dramatic, appealing to emotions rather than the intellect, meant to portray the events exactly as they happened 2 millennia past so as to arouse pity, sadness, piety and even anger to the persecutors. We have apostles really dressed up as apostles with Judas attracting more attention with his red money pouch hanging prominently on his belt. We have a Way of the Cross complete with Jews, crying women, high priests, Roman soldiers, skimpily (almost sexy) clad Jesus and the two thieves and ketchup to simulate blood. We hang by the neck an effigy of Judas and burn it on the plaza. We have festive Visita Iglesias with bibingkas, ice cream, peanuts and what-have-you in between churches. We have (and some people and priests would even demand) a Siete Palabras that evoke compassion, sorrow and tears, therefore making people feel aghast, if not scandalized, when pop or upbeat music intrudes such sombre, gloomy and almost eerie atmosphere. We have beautiful pasos so vivid and almost exact to a fault in their portrayal of what Jesus went through that fateful day. We have dramatic Soledads filled with nostalgia as we count ourselves experts in identifying our very own feelings with that of a mother’s grief in the Dolorosa walking alone and lonely (in the Cathedral we can’t leave her all alone we have John and the tres Marias accompany her in a soledad of 6!). We have this dramatic lighting up of the Easter bonfire with fiery meteorites falling from the belfry piercing through the darkness and gloom of the highest vigil. And we rise in joy, though a bit sleepy, joining Mary in that glorious and wonderful Salubong on Easter morn as she greets her risen Son with three genuflections and with her black mantle of sorrow poetically and literally removed from her happy face by an angel, hanging precariously on top of something no building code would dare approve, but nevertheless singing to her heart’s content (and to everyone else’s) that wonderful hymn, Regina Caeli. If Oberammergau has a passion play to boast about every ten years, every Filipino town, city and parish would feel no less and with every year to boot.
So, would I frown on these popular devotions, relegate these as superstitions and promote instead with rigor the demands of the liturgy? I would dare not! But things could be worked out to promote the advantages of each, that is, liturgy with its evangelizing traits and devotions with its mass appeal. At least we have done some attempts.
First, we had the so called Live Via Crucis with our young people spearheading the endeavor. Instead of merely dramatizing what happened on the way to Calvary, they asked themselves the significance of each station in their lives as young people of today. They went through a process akin to a retreat asking themselves questions like, what is it in me that made Jesus carry his cross with dogged persistence; what is it in our attitudes that made Jesus fall three times; what is it that Jesus is trying to reach out in me when he had his face imprinted in the handkerchief of Veronica? These questions make such popular devotions anamnetic – making us participants on the way of the cross rather than spectators in anguish.
Then we did a little pamphlet to guide people in their Visita Iglesia so that it can become a silent and prayerful journey from one church to the other. The passages of scriptures recalling the long discourse of Jesus after the Supper can help us as we pray with him in the garden of suffering, Gethsemane.
The Siete Palabras for the past years now were reflections, that if permitted, would have transformed our pity, piety and sorrow into resolve and action. But even this we have to fight tooth and nail to transform it to something that would make Jesus’ last words relevant to our young people, to couples, to those who offered their lives in the service of others, to families, and even to priests.
To make a drama is one of the easiest things we can do if that’s what people want. But a drama can only do so much, no different from watching Avatar or Alice in Wonderland. But the life of Jesus was never meant to entertain. If that was meant as fodder for the entertainment world Jesus’ death would be a high price to pay for one cheap intention. But the celebration of his passion, death and resurrection was meant for greater, nobler purpose – this celebration was meant to transform us!
Happy Easter – Christ is Risen, Alleluia!