Here in Philippines, it's been Good Friday for a few hours and for a penance, I'll be blogging a LarryD trifecta.......publishing three posts that connect in some way to LarryD's Acts Of The Apostasy blog.
On Wednesday, Larry had this post - PARISH REPORT: Pastor Starts Cross-fit Box To Prepare Liturgy Team For Triduum, Easter. In this humorous post, Larry writes of a parish priest who gets "his parish liturgy team into shape ahead of the Triduum and Easter Sunday celebrations" by way of a number of challenging physical endurance tests.
Here in Philippines, they also combine spiritual training with physical training. It's the Via Crucis. Here, we make our way to the church by 4 AM on Good Friday to do the Stations of the Cross. Unlike in the United States where the priest walks around the inside of the church while praying the Stations, in Philippines hundreds (if not thousands) of people follow the priest through the streets stopping along the way to pray.
I measured the distance after completing the Via Crucis this morning - seven kilometers.
I don't speak Bisaya so I could not follow the prayers, but I kept pace with the priest and the young men who were taking turns carrying the wooden cross.
Most the the walk was along a back road which does not normally have much traffic. By 7 AM, we had made our way back to the highway. From there, the crowd had no choice but to walk along the highway for about 1 kilometer. Needless to say, there were cars on the highway by this time who had to stop to let us continue. While we were blocking traffic, a smaller Protestant denomination were doing their own Via Crucis, coming from the opposite direction.
I really had to smile at the people stuck in traffic. I can't imagine anyone attempting to get anywhere by car while this was going on. Hey, they should have known better. It's not like this is something new.
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