By: Keren Chelsea L. Guevara
For Filipinos, Lent is the busiest and the most sacred date in the Church calendar. Every day during the Holy Week, up until Easter Sunday, Filipino Catholics eagerly troop to their respective parishes to worship according to traditional Lenten rites and special observances.
This year’s Easter observance is muted by the sobering realities that Filipinos must face due to COVID-19. The Catholic hierarchy adjusted the Church’s traditional schedule to follow new rules imposed by the government during this pandemic, and to protect the public from the transmission of the coronavirus.
The surge of infections in the NCR+ bubble area has risen up to 80% of new cases daily, causing the trauma of the initial outbreak a year ago to hit home again. Once more, Filipinos deal with painful isolation, confinement of the ailing and the dying, fast-tracked cremation and burial.
Easter Sunday is the scheduled last day of the lockdown, but there is little optimism on the way forward.
The Philippines has a long way to go before it can fully recover from the setback and shock caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. After all, it has not only stalled poverty reduction and increased inequality. It has also pushed seven million Filipinos into unemployment, which translates into millions of families threatened or burdened by hunger and millions of young children likely to be malnourished. In addition, Filipino schoolchildren are enduring the one of the longest periods of school closure, and have thus become more vulnerable to stunting, “the impaired growth and development that children experience from poor nutrition, repeated infection, and inadequate psychosocial stimulation.”
Pope Francis’ words to the faithful a year ago now resonate more than ever: “The Lord awakens so as to reawaken and revive our Easter faith. Let us not quench the wavering flame that never falters, and let us allow hope to be rekindled.”
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