On a brisk Saturday in June, Fifth Avenue in Anchorage looked a lot like a street in Manila, Philippines.
Parading through downtown past a number of on-lookers were banner-bearers, a distinguished married couple wearing sashes and little flocks of quick-stepping, dark-haired girls in white First Communion dresses. Behind them were young women in tiaras and full ballgowns – each in one of the colors of the rainbow. They processed gracefully in intervals as if in a beauty pageant.
Meanwhile, men in translucent, pastel Barong Tagalog shirts carried delicate, wooden archways adorned with cascading flowers that framed each princess. And finally, came a little blue army of mothers and grandmothers wearing lacy mantillas on their heads and praying rosaries. These women flanked a flowered platform on which a statue of Our Lady of Fatima was carried.
A living faith
Welcome to the Santacruzan procession – an annual traditional religious procession in which many Filipinos commemorate the finding of the True Cross of Christ in Jerusalem about 326 A.D. by Queen Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great — the first Christian emperor of Rome.
The young girls in white represent angels; teens are dressed to symbolize the theological virtues, Biblical women, the Mother of God under her various titles and Queen Helena. One little boy wearing a crown and holding a scepter accompanies the queen as her son Constantine.
Leading up to the day, Catholics pray a novena — or nine-day series of prayers — in honor of the Santacruzan, meaning, Holy Cross.
The colorful, 28th annual procession in Anchorage on June 20 ended with a Mass celebrated by Oblate Archbishop Orlando Quevedo visiting from Cotabato, Philippines and a reception at Holy Family Cathedral.
The grand procession is the highlight of a year full of religious activities hosted by Filipino Catholics in Alaska. There is Simbang Gabi, a series of special Masses leading up to Christmas; at Easter, Salubong – a service to recall the meeting of Christ and “Mama Mary” after the Resurrection; and during Lent, Pabasa.
Additionally, there are novenas during the month of May for the Blessed Mother, feast day celebrations and monthly Masses at St. Benedict Church in Anchorage – at which Alaskans hear readings and songs in Tagalog, the language of the Philippines.
Through these traditions, Filipino Catholics are passing the Catholic faith to their youth as well as their non-Filipino neighbors in the mission territory of the far north.
More than social traditions
These religious practices are “not just a simple social tradition,” Father Ben Torreto explained in an interview with the Anchor. They are ways of being “prophetic,” he said.
Father Torreto is a Filipino priest serving in Alaska as part of a partnership between the Anchorage and Cotabato archdioceses.
“Filipinos are very religious,” St. Benedict Church parishioner and native Filipina Vickie Garcia added.
“We have been out of our country for a long time and we want our young ones – our children, our grandchildren – to know what we have been doing in our Philippines that they have never seen before,” Garcia explained, adding that “some of the seniors told us, ‘Oh we miss … our novenas, our processions, our fiestas, feast days of our saints and so on.’”
So after moving to Anchorage in 1982, Garcia and her now late husband Juan organized the first Santacruzan procession in the city. And in recent years, she established the Filipino Religious Tradition group to more formally foster the faith through Filipino devotional practices here – mostly centered at St. Benedict Church.
“She is an elder of the family. She is owed a sort of respect. I can call her, Nana,” said the unrelated Father Torreto.
Faith and family ties
That term of endearment hints at one of the reasons Father Torreto believes Filipinos are so successful at maintaining their Catholicity across the generations and wherever they go in the secular world, outside their Catholic homeland.
“It has something to do with our family ties,” he said.
“When elders would try to educate our younger generations, they would always say, ‘You know when your grandfathers were living’, ‘When your grandmother was doing this or that’ – so there’s always a connection of the family before with the present family and to the younger generation,” Father Torreto continued.
Religious practices like Santacruzan “would always go back to their experiences back home,” added Father Ron Licayan, a fellow Filipino and pastor of the predominantly Filipino St. Mary Church in Kodiak. “That would remind them of that time with their family, witnessing it or celebrating it.”
Impacting Alaska
A family of faith is the first source and practice field for faith, according to the Catholic Church. In his encyclical, “Evangelium Vitae” (the Gospel of Life), the late Pope John Paul II called the family the “domestic church” in which its members are “summoned to proclaim, celebrate and serve the Gospel of life.”
Indeed, in his boyhood home, Father Torreto said respect for family meant that meals never began without everyone at the table. Father Licayan said it means that despite our parents’ imperfections, “we should care for them.”
Like the Santacruzan procession which begins with the organizing couple, families begin with a man and a woman answering a call to grow the Christian family, explained Father Licayan.
“We always say that ‘When I married you, it’s not only me attracted to you, but it’s the will of God that the two of us would work, would be sent to raise Christian families, to raise Christian community.’”
The number of Filipinos in Alaska has steadily grown since they first arrived in the 1800s. And now, as they coordinate more closely in the Archdiocese of Anchorage, said Father Torreto, more Filipino youth are learning their heritage of faith and more adults are returning to the practice of their childhood faith.
“The impact of our Filipino Catholic spirit is something we cannot underestimate,” said Archbishop Quevedo in his homily during the Santacruzan Mass. “At your home, at your work, you can influence other people with regard to your Catholic faith. Do not hide it,” he urged. “We are proud of our faith, and we share it with others.” (www.catholicanchor.org)
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