Hail, king of the road!

Jesus probably has the most number of portrait versions done using all sorts of media. He appears on greeting cards, notebooks, books, leaflets, shirts, handkerchiefs and button pins. Sometimes he is white, brown, black and anything in between. We see him as a helpless tiny baby, a teen nomad or a Spanish gypsy. His icons serve as an amulet against aswang, evil spirits and the freaks. On the road, they say he works best with the Virgin Mary, so you’ll find mother-and-son team on car and jeepney dashboards and stickers, bus windows and tricycle units. If that is the case, your car, life and health insurance companies are in better hands than you are.

If he were a living person, his income from royalties would have made him richer than the Queen. Or J.K. Rowling. And this handsome Jew would have even made it big in Hollywood.

People down the ages up until now have painted their images of him from beggar to freak. But what is he really like? What did the Bible say about his life as an ordinary human?

Old testament prophet Isaiah had a glimpse of who the Messiah was centuries before he was born. He calls him the “suffering servant”. Jesus was never a Jewish heartthrob during his time.

2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

3 He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

4 Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.

Magellan's Cross, believed to be miraculous, is nothing but a deceptive tool to conquer the unsuspecting ancient Cebuanos.

I find it disturbing how some history textbooks tell us that the Philippines was “discovered” by Spanish-hired Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan in 1521. Wow Philippines has even repeated the same confusing remark when describing the island of Limasawa as a birthplace of Christianity in the Philippines. I question the use of the word “discovered” because hundreds of years before these Spanish/Portuguese explorations, the islands have long been inhabited by its natives. In fact, Mactan Island’s chief Lapu-Lapu was already there when Magellan and his team arrived.

The word Christianization also does bother me. Spain that time was using God as a scare tactic to conquer and manipulate inhabitants in the east. What the Spaniards had really brought us was an idolotrous religion that subsisted on the sweat and blood of those they have conquered. Where is Christianity there? Not even a trace.

The house built for the ancient cross

Just across the present Cebu City Hall is Magellan’s Shrine that houses the Cross of Magellan. The original cross, believed to be encased in Tindalo wood, was made a symbol of Cebu and local government seal when it is nothing but an ugly reminder of how our own gullibility made us Spanish captives for 333 years. Lapu-Lapu, probably one of the brightest minds of his time, refused this religious crap from gaining a foothold. We all know how this brave warrior made a faucet out of the Spaniard’s body. Our historians may have named a small city after him, but Magellan’s cross was made a symbol of the province the Mactan chieftain so tried to defend. Call that irony.

Devotees light their candles and offer up prayers

The marathon to explore Cebu City four hours before the flight schedule landed us on our second destination for the day. Our lengthy walks from one spot to another digested every lechon bit I had earlier and probably shed off a couple of pounds without even taking in Fastin diet pills. If I happen to be a Roman Catholic, I would have exclaimed, “Pit Senor!”

Basilica Minore del Sto. Niño

Just right across Magellan’s Cross is The Church and Convent of the Sto. Niño (known as Basilica del Sto. Niño), the oldest church started by the Spanish friars in the Philippines. It was founded by the Spanish Augustinian priest Rev. Andres Urdaneta in 1565. It was on the same year that the Legaspi expedition arrived in the Philippines and gained foothold in this southern city. What followed next was a strong Spanish influence that scattered like a disease lasting for more than three hundred years.

Spanish influences remain inside the house of prayer

The intense devotion of the Visayans to the Sto. Niño and religious pilgrimages are centered on this church since the time of Legaspi. Aside from being a house of devotion, the Church and Convent of the Sto. Niño was also a center for educating the natives, rest house for missionaries and care home for the elderly and the sick.

Today, this church remains as the permanent home of the oldest known relic of the Sto. Niño for centuries.