Holy Week in Andahuaylillas, 2016

The plaza of Cusco on Holy Monday

My second experience of Holy Week in Andahuaylillas could not have been more different from my first. All the traditions were the same, of course, but the meaning of them was different for me.

Last year I was new to Andahuaylillas. Everything about the celebration of Holy Week was new. I was observing a culture that I did not yet know. Catholic means universal, but there's a lot of diversity within the Church, and that was so clearly on display during Holy Week.

This year I'm not new. The celebration of Holy Week isn't new. I've seen (almost) all of it before. So this year I was able to enter more deeply into the mysteries of Holy Week. I wasn't as distracted by the role of participant-observer because I knew what to look for. And what I looked for was Mary.

Last year was the first year I really gave Mary's experience during Holy Week any real thought. This year it was almost all I focused on. When did Mary arrive in Jerusalem? Was she filled with pride to see the crowds her son drew? Where did Mary celebrate the Passover Seder? Was she there the next day when the crowd shouted out “Crucify him”? Who held her as her son was slowly murdered before her? When did she receive the good news of the Resurrection? Did Jesus come to her, or did Mary of Magdala come running to knock on Mary's door before heading to the Upper Room because she knew that a disciple's grief pales in comparison to a mother's?

In the processions of Good Friday and Easter Sunday, I and many other people in Andahuaylillas walked with Mary. We walked with her in her son's funeral procession. We walked with her when she was dressed all in white for the joy of Easter.

There are two moments that are most striking to me from the Triduum in Andahuaylillas. The first came at the end of the Good Friday Procession. In front of the crowds on the steps of the church, Mary's statue is brought forward and bows before the glass coffin that contains the statue of Jesus. It is a moment of grief. A moment of defeat.

The second came at the end of the Easter Sunday procession. The host, the Risen Christ, leads the procession around the plaza and up the steps of the church. After the host is brought into the temple, the statue of Mary is turned around to face the people. This time she kneels to the crowds – a gesture of gratitude for the accompaniment given on Good Friday. She is brought into the temple facing backwards, constantly looking towards the crowd. In that image I see Mary taking on the role of intercessor. “You walked with me on my darkest day,” she says to us “I will not forget you on yours. I will walk with you, and I will tell my son to help you.”

Both those moments are shown in a video that I'll post tomorrow. The rest of today's post will explain all about the celebrations shown in tomorrow's video and my reflections on them. Follow the jump to read about my 2^nd (and last) experience of Holy Week in Andahuaylillas/Cusco. I know this post is really long, but I especially encourage Catholic readers to read all of it. There's a lot that US Catholics can learn from Latin American Catholics.

Palm Sunday

Palm Sunday is the celebration of Jesus's arrival in Jerusalem the week of Passover before his crucifixion. He arrived riding on the back of a donkey, and the streets, which were already full because of so many faithful Jews traveling to the Temple to celebrate the high feast, were packed with people waving palm branches and shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David!” It is a day of triumph, in which Jesus is recognized as a King. Catholics celebrate Palm Sunday by reading the relevant Gospel passage and processing to their church through the town waving palm branches and singing.

Palm Sunday isn't all that different here. There are palms, there is singing (in Quechua), there is processing to the church. A difference I noticed between American Catholics and Andean Catholics was the way people receive Holy Water. In the States, people try to avoid getting sprinkled with Holy Water. On Palm Sunday, the people clamored “We're still waiting for our blessing over here, Padre!” No one wanted to be left out of the sprinkling.

The other difference is that there were 2 arches along the procession route. They were hung with fruits, sodas, lollipops, breads, and flowers. As we passed under them, people reached up to grab things. One kid got a boost up and then swung along the line to reach some oranges. I had a definite height advantage, but a position disadvantage (I was at the back of the line). I managed to grab some flowers. But being the gentleman I am I handed them out to the student teachers from Lima. 

Holy Monday – Señor de los Temblores

Señor de los Temblores (Our Lord of Earthquakes) is a Cusco celebration specific to the city of Cusco. It does not commemorate any part of the historical Holy Week. The image of a crucified Jesus is carried throughout the city in an hours-long procession that ends back in the main plaza. The idea is to invoke the blessings of Señor de los Temblores to protect Cusco from the danger of earthquakes for the coming year. I'll do a post on the history of Señor de los Temblores next week.

I wanted to go to Señor de los Temblores. But I wasn't into the idea of going alone. Fortunately Fabio, a Spanish volunteer, felt the same way. So we made plans to go in together. 3 of the Limeñan student teachers decided to come with.

We met up in the main plaza of Cusco. It was jammed with people awaiting the arrival of the procession. We found spots near the window in Norton's, an American bar on the corner of the plaza located on the second floor with balconies. That's right, we went to a bar to observe a religious celebration.

Of course we had to buy beer to claim some table space. We sat around drinking and waiting for the procession, which showed up after about 45 minutes. I have never seen so many people present for a religious ceremony in my life.* The plaza and the surrounding streets were absolutely packed. Things were so packed you couldn't even get out of the bar. The image of Señor de los Temblores is huge and heavy, and was carried by teams of 30 men. One team brought him from the entrance to the plaza to the end of a block, and another team stepped in to bring the image up the steps of the Cathedral and into the church.

I'm really glad I went to see Señor de los Temblores. It meant leaving the specific context of Andahuaylillas, but I got to observe one of Peru's biggest devotional processions. Plenty of Peruvians are church going folk, and even more aren't. But it would be impossible to stand in the plaza on Holy Monday and say that these people aren't Catholic.

*I mean this in the sense of seeing with my own eyes, not on television.

Holy Thursday

The Mass of Community. The last teaching Jesus shares before his death. Holy Thursday commemorates the Last Supper – the Passover meal that Jesus celebrated with his disciples hours before he was captured and brought to prison. On Holy Thursday Jesus institutes the eucharist (the bread and wine we take at every mass) and the washing of the feet. He washes each of his disciple's feet as a demonstration of the service every person who follows him should give to their fellow women and men.

The mass of Holy Thursday includes a ceremony of the washing of the feet. In most parishes this means the priest plays the symbolic role of Jesus by washing the feet of 12 people. In this case washing means pouring a bit of water on a foot and toweling it off. It's religious symbolic ceremony, not a public health program.

In general people are shy to participate in the washing of the feet. Feet can smell, but that was part of Jesus's point. He wasn't washing people's feet after they had taken an afternoon shower. He was washing the feet of people who wore sandals to walk around city streets in a time before sewer systems. The feet Pd. Calilo washed were much dirtier and smellier than most of the feet washed by priests in the United States. These people also wear sandals all day. And many of them work in fields or with farm animals. They were more like the feet the Jesus washed.

I was one of the people who had their feet washed. I went up because there weren't enough people up on the altar to complete the number 12. The rest of the JV community came up soon after because the only people on the altar to get their feet washed were men, and the church has more than enough problems with sexism.* In the group of 12 there were people of varying ages, including 3 children. It ended up being a wide representation of the diversity of followers of the prophet from Nazareth.

I think we miss the point of Holy Thursday. The ceremony of the priest washing people's feet is nice and very symbolic of the Last Supper. But Jesus didn't tell the disciples present to perform an annual skit reenacting the time he washed their feet. He told them: "since I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you outh to wash each other's feet" (emphasis added).

He told them to wash each other's feet. It's not just the priests who should serve the people, it's every Christian who should serve everyone else. And in telling them to do for each other, Jesus is insisting on mutuality. It's “you wash my feet, I'll wash yours.” It's about caring for each other and building up the community of believers.

In my childhood parish, the washing of the feet was performed in pairs. If you wanted your feet washed, you walked up to the front and took your shoes off. Then you found someone else who was shoeless to join you. There were pairs of chairs set up facing each other with pitchers, basins, and towels. Your foot was washed by the other person, then you washed their foot. We sang the same song every year that said “The call is too community/the impoverished power that sets the world free.”

I think we did things right at my childhood parish. The call isn't to be passively served by your parish priest, the call is to serve and be served with fellow believers. The call is to “take up the basin and towel” not just leave it there for the official church leaders. The call is to ownership of the faith and the rights and responsibilities it places on all of us. Beware of passivity in symbolic ceremonies, lest they teach you to be passive.

The other key part of Holy Thursday is adoration of the blessed sacrament. After mass has ended, a single wafer of the blessed bread is placed somewhere that it can be adored. People then are invited to spend time in prayer before the sacrament. In Andahuaylillas, the 3 hours of adoration is broken up into 30 minute segments in which different groups lead the prayer. Prayer can be in words or in music. Together with the youth of Andahuaylillas and Hermana Rosario, the JVs were asked to lead the final segment. Hermana prepared some prayers, some songs were sung in Spanish, and we offered some song (Down to the River to Pray) and some violin music. I've wanted to play inside that beautiful church for a long time, but it's never been the right moment, until Holy Thursday. I played the melody of the song version of St. Ignatius's "Take, Lord, and receive" prayer. It was an honor and a joy to offer the sound of my bow and strings to God and to the people of Andahuaylillas.

*Many Catholics have found the fact that thePope declared it acceptable for the priest to wash women's feet during a Holy Thursday service to be upsetting. Others found it to be long overdue, because they were already washing women's feet at their parish because they know that misogyny wasn't a part of Jesus message. 

Good Friday

Good Friday celebrates the Passion (torture, questioning, sentencing, carrying of the cross, crucifixion, and death) of Jesus. It is the grimmest day of the Catholic calendar. There are no masses on Good Friday, just services. Common Good Friday services include Adoration of the Cross (kissing an image of the crucified Christ) and Stationsof the Cross (meditating and praying over 14 moments in Jesus's passion, often in procession).

Good Friday is the biggest religious day of the year in Andahuaylillas. More people turn out for the procession than for any other religious event or mass all year. To read more description about Good Friday, see last year's post.

This Good Friday, I did not get up early to pick flowers for the alfombra. I was just too tired. But I did go around town before the procession started to take pictures of the alfombras. Despite the fact that the procession had left the church and was under way when I was rushing through the streets to take pictures, many alfombras were far from finished. At the site of the 9^th station, I found my friend Babbi and his two children. He invited me to join his group and help pull petals off some daisy-like flowers. So I sat down with the kids and got to work. Plenty of time passed and the alfombra was finished. By the point the procession was within sight. I took pictures of 2 more alfombras, including the one made by the graduating class of FyA 44, and then joined up with the procession at the 8^th station.

The other JVs were at the back of the procession with the statue of Mary, so I joined them. I walked the whole procession with Mary. Just as last year, I found myself reflecting more on her experience of Good Friday. The Good Friday procession in Andahuaylillas is distinct from any I have seen anywhere else. Generally someone plays the role of Jesus by carrying a cross on his back. In Andahuaylillas, the image of Jesus is taken down off of the parish crucifix and placed in a glass coffin. The procession then becomes a funeral procession, complete with traditional funeral marches being played by a brass band. Mary, the mother of the deceased, follows dressed all in black.

As I walked with Mary, I wondered who walked with her on the way to Golgotha*. Who walked with her back to wherever she was staying in the city? What did she do on Holy Saturday, on the Sabbath day when religious observance prevented her from attending to her son's dead body? Andafter 6 weeks of Lent reflecting on racism in the United States, I found myself wondering who accompanies the mothers and fathers of all the young people who, like Jesus, were deemed dangerous and were killed by the authorities.

I don't have much more to say about Good Friday except for the lame phrase “it was powerfully moving.” I hope that the video shows some of the essence that I cannot express with words.

*Where Jesus was crucified.

Easter Sunday

This is the most important day in the Christian calendar. After dying on Friday, Jesus rises on the third day (Day 1=Friday, Day 2=Saturday, Day 3=Sunday). There are various accounts of the sequence of events on the morning of Easter Sunday, but they all start with a mysteriously empty tomb and continue to Jesus being physically present with his disciples. He eats and drinks with them. He allows them to touch and confirm that he isn't a ghost or an apparition. It is a day of victory, a triumph over death and sin. A day of liberation and hope for all Christians.

The Easter vigil mass starts at 4AM in Andahuaylillas. And by 4AM they mean 4:30 at the soonest. But we were there before 4 to practice the songs for mass. The service started outside the church on the steps where a bonfire had been lit. From this fire the pascal candle is lit. We processed back into the parish which was completely dark, and people lit their candles from the pascal flame. Soon the temple was illuminated.

I love the opening of the Easter Vigil. The light of Christ, represented in the pascal candle, is passed to some people, who then light the candles of their neighbors. It represents how the faith is passed on through generations and how necessary community is to our faith.

There's a lot more that happens at the Easter Vigil. There are so many readings it feels like we must have read the whole Bible by the time we get to the gospel reading of the resurrection. There's extra prayers. In Andahuaylillas people bring buckets, pitchers, or even soda bottles full of water. The priest blesses the water converting it into Holy Water which people bring to their homes for the year. There's the litany of the saints. There's lots of singing.

And in Andahuaylillas there is the procession that ends the mass. The host* leads this procession, and Mary follows dressed all in white. The procession is considerably shorter than the Good Friday procession – just once around the plaza. It stops at each corner and incense is burned and prayers for the town are said. In this way the town is blessed.

The Easter procession echoes the Good Friday; Jesus leads the procession and Mary follows. But the difference between the two is profound. On Friday Jesus is dead, his body carried in a coffin. It is a funeral procession and his grieving mother follows her son's remains. On Easter Jesus's living body, the eucharist, leads the procession. He isn't dead, he is risen. His joyful mother follows the risen Lord.

The suffering of Good Friday is what calls the attention of Peruvians more than the victory of the resurrection. This could be because there is so much suffering in the people, especially in places like Andahuaylillas, that it is easier to identify with the pain and defeat Christ suffered on Good Friday. But we should not forget that the story doesn't end in the tomb. Jesus lives again. We are guaranteed a victory through his resurrection. The people who identify with Jesus's suffering on the cross will share in the joy of his resurrection. That is the promise of Easter.

*Blessed bread that is the body of the Risen Christ.