Lenten Season, is it spiritual or just a respite from a much needed vacation?

Being a Catholic, I have to be honest that for the past many years, I have stopped being religious for some personal reason.  For this Lenten Season we have been busy not with the spiritual aspect of life but on the physical side of it. We are busy cleaning the surroundings and to make the house spic and span for visitors who will come and visit us.

This is the time to prepare the place for the people we long to see, our children and my husband’s siblings and their families.

In the Philippine set up, Holy Week is the longest in all the holidays being celebrated. Almost all the people in Metro Manila long to have that much needed vacation in the provinces. But if you have no plans for an out of town vacation, you will surely enjoy breezing through the roads of Metro Manila. For this is one of those days that you will not experience traffic in the city, just like during fights of Manny Pacquiao. It is practically a ghost town.

I remember when we were children, during the Lenten Season, we are not allowed to listen to any music and to refrain from any noise making activities. But this is also the time that our family went out of town, either to La Union, my Mother’s hometown or to Albay, my Father’s hometown. We enjoyed watching the Holy Week activities like the procession of Saints and the Easter Sunday pre-dawn ritual called the SALUBONG (tagalog word meaning ‘meeting’ between the Risen Christ and his mother, Mother Mary).

For my husband and I, this is the busiest time of the year, not so much for the spiritual but more on the physical. I have to ask forgiveness for this. At one point in our lives, we have been very active with church activities, but have to take a breather.

How will you spend your Holy Week?