Popular Religiosity: Piety of the Masa

During these days we are witnessing the piety of the masa, that is, of the simple people. We call this POPULAR RELIGIOSITY. We have witnessed this in the Simbang Gabi. Droves of people went to the early dawn masses for 9 consecutive days so much so that our churches were all full during the Simbang Gabi. These dawn masses are popular even among the young who usually do not care about going to church. We witness this now in the phenomenon of the Poon Nazareno or the Black Nazarene. Millions of ordinary people, many of them young, lining up for hours to touch or kiss the image of the Jesus Nazareno and brave the hot sun the whole day, bare-footed, for a procession that could last for 22 years or more! After 10 days this will be followed by the Sto Nino festivities all over the country, known by such popular names as Sinulog, Ati-atihan, Dinagyang and other local nomenclatures.They are a combination of religiosity and festivity. Then during the Holy Week we have the VISITA IGLESIA, the processions of the SANTO ENTIERRO, and the SALUBONG. In a smaller scale we have fiesta celebrations with their processions and fluvial processions as in the Penafrancia. All of these are manifestations of popular religiosity.

Some common characteristics of these phenomena are:

• They are very popular, both in the sense that very many participate in them and in the sense that the participants mostly come from the common tao or the masa (the popular class), not the cultured or the elite.
• People exert extraordinary effort and patience to participate in them, such as staying early in the morning for consecutive days, walking bare-footed, enduring long queues and processions.
• The participants manifest a lot of energy and emotion, at times shouting, singing, or shoving and pushing. These are many times mistaken by outside observers as fanaticism. Many participants, however, consider them as ways to publicly manifest their faith in the Divine.
• These practices did not come out of official church liturgy. The official church, however, not only accommodate them but also use them to purify and deepen the faith of the people. These practices connect many people to the Church.

Pope Francis recognizes the validity of this expression of the faith among the ordinary people and the poor. He wrote in his encyclical Evangelii Gaudium:

• “Popular piety manifests a thirst for God which only the poor and the simple can know and that it makes people capable of generosity and sacrifice even to the point of heroism, when it is a question of bearing witness to belief.”  (EG 123)
• “Popular piety is a spirituality incarnated in the culture of the lowly…. Let us not stifle or presume to control this missionary power!” (EG 124) Indeed,they have missionary power because without much prodding from the official church, and even despite many precautions, they spread among the people and the young by word of mouth or by mutual influence.
• “Expressions of popular piety have much to teach us; for those who are capable of reading them, they are a locus theologicuswhich demands our attention, especially at a time when we are looking to the new evangelization.” (EG 126) Alocus theologicusmeansa source of theological reflections. The phenomenon of popular piety can show us how the faith is caught by the ordinary people and even by the unchurched. This is the aim of new evangelization.
• “Popular piety enables us to see how the faith, once received, becomes embodied in a culture and is constantly passed on.”  (EG 123)

The Holy Father looks at popular religiosity as a way that the Gospel message is being accepted and lived by the poor. So instead of looking down on these practices of the rugged crowd, let us try to understand and appreciate them. More than a religion of the head, it is an expression of the religion of the heart. Moreover, we cannot say that this is just a temporary burst of enthusiasm because many of these devotees go back year by year to the same practices, and in fact invite others to join them. Some have been doing them for years. Surely, they find something meaningful there and they experience in a tangible way through these devotions, which they have made into a panata (a vow),that God is close to them and helps them.