You have to see the Sinulog Festival in the flesh at least once in your life. The brilliantly choreographed street-dancing—that’s quite a goose-bump experience in itself. But that ranks only third to what I think are two more important events: the solemn procession on Saturday evening; and all the Masses celebrated every waking hour for nine days, leading up to the final Mass on Sunday morning. In the three years I taught at Sacred Heart School in Cebu—there was hardly any drunkenness in the streets, no male-domination in the procession, and no troubling signs of superstition bordering on the disrespectful or the violent. This reverence of the Cebuanos for the Holy Child is age-old. And every January, this faith thickens like a fog to the sound of prayer, the chant of petition, and the dance of joy. If you haven’t already, you have to see the Sinulog festival in the flesh at least once in your life.

 

But long after the dancers have left the streets, after the image of the Santo Niño is safely back in its birina, and when the basilica settles back into its daily flow of devotees, there is a group of uncelebrated people whose prayer, song, and dance outlast the festival for they sing and dance their prayers every day—literally. To them, hundreds of Cebuanos entrust their most desperate prayers, festival or not. All day long, they hold a bunch of very thin red candles. On any ordinary day, they approach you asking, “Pa-sinug ka, sir, ma’am? (Would you like me to dance the Sinulog for your petitions?)” You buy a candle (which was two pesos when I was there years ago), but you don’t take the candle with you. You may if you want, but customarily, you leave the candle with the lady as you tell her your petition, or your name, or the name of the person for whom you wish to pray. The lady then faces the basilica, and starts dancing the cha-cha-like step  of the Sinulog. As she does, your candle is raised, and the petition or the name you entrusted to her finds its way into her chant.

 

These uncelebrated chanters/dancers of people’s petitions, as you may have guessed, are quite poor. Even the candles that they raise for you are “poor” because they are recycled from the drippings of the “official” candles people light in the basilica. To those who consider themselves highly-educated, post-modern, westernized Christians, these women may be a living superstition to brush off, a social artifact to study, or a local attraction to video and upload. But to Cebuanos, these women are worth entrusting their petitions to because in the course of each passing day, their voices, their arms and feet and eyes are all pointed towards the Santo Niño. Their poverty isn’t much of a credible PR especially to the cynics, one of whom actually asked me: “Well, if their prayers are so effective, why are they still poor? There are two scandals involved here: One, that these women make you believe their prayers are effective; and two, that Jesus Christ is still an infant.”

 

My dear sisters and brothers, this God we worship and love, who is Power and Might, all-knowing, all-embracing, eternally and ultimately beyond objectification—this God thought nothing of being exactly the opposite: to be delicate and vulnerable, to be educated out of his ignorance, to be subject to ordinary daily living, in other words, to be human… and not just human, but to be a child. Is this not one of the greatest scandals of our faith? God entering the world not as a sword-wielding angel or a spell-casting wraith but a human child born in a most unseemly condition, expected to grow up pointing his entire life to God, bringing others along with him while being one of them—what a mind-boggling scandal! Yet, we continue to believe that this scandal is the grace of the Incarnation, the becoming-human of God in a Christ who started out as anyone of us did—in the world, in time, in childhood, and in poverty.

 

Sisters and brothers, remember what our faith teaches us about the Incarnation: That it is God’s kenosis, God’s self-outpouring to humanity, totally and without reserve. Hence, you can think about it this way: Jesus Christ, the God-made-human, is the self-abnegation of God. Jesus is the self-giving to humanity that God is only too willing to do, no matter the scandal.

 

Therefore, wherever humanity is, there also is God. Wherever persons make a heartfelt dedication, there also is God. Where humanity’s prayers are chanted, petitions danced, candles lit, why should God be absent from there? When humanity’s faces are turned towards the altar in order to entrust its needs, and when people pour out themselves even for strangers so that their needs may meet God’s heart—bad news to the loftily-educated cynic, and good news for the rest of us—there also dwells God. This is because God is one of us in Jesus—Jesus who had to go through everything that is humanity save sin, so that we may be drawn to everything that is divinity.

 

Do you know what Cebuanos call these women who sinulog our petitions to the Christ-Child? I don’t. In fact, none whom I’ve asked knows; not my Cebuano friends, not my Cebuano brother Jesuits, not even Wikipedia or Google. Nobody seems to know what they’re called! Typical of the Incarnation: the unbelievable divinity arising from a child, something almost overly familiar, risking poverty, obscurity, and namelessness to bring us closer to God.

 

Long after our festivals are over, and our prayers have left our lips, long after we’ve reposed our deepest desires in the birina of our offerings, God never ceases to pour himself out to the world. Let’s sing to that, let’s dance to that!

 

- Fr. Arnel Aquino, SJ