Santo Entierro (Holy Burial)

Santo Entierro is also taken to mean the Dead Christ. In our town, we do not use the Spanish term, We refer to the image of the Dead Christ as "Apo Natay," which can be translated as "Dead Lord."

We were in San Agustin Church this Holy Wednesday afternoon, There were two Santo Entierros that were drawing the fervent attention of people doing their visita iglesia: a reposeful image whose body is covered by a gold-embroidered white shroud, and the other, a dark antique image covered with an ornate red shroud.

Reposeful Santo Entierro at the San Agustin Church

Dark antique Santo Entierro originally from Lemery, Batangas.

According to the explanatory caption, the antique image was the 'crucified Christ' acquired by the Medina-Morales family in the 18th century. Before World War II, it was used in Lemery, Batangas during the re-enactment on Good Friday of the crucifixion and burial of Christ..

The wooden image is described as having moveable hands. This reminds us of the "Senyor Sepulcro" of Paete, Laguna whose hands and feet can be bent at the joints. Six years ago, we witnessed how the image was made to sit under a tent of linen and smoked, which was very similar to the ritual of the dead practiced by the Cordillera people until recent times.

Paete's Senyor after the ritual of the dead.

                                           

The "Senyor Sepulcro" was dressed in white and covered with an ornate red shroud for the burial: the men carry the senyor in his glass coffin to the church in choreographed rhythmic steps.

In Lucban, Quezon, the men also carry the Santo Entierro but the journey through the procession route takes hours: the ritual is almost similar to that of the Nazareno of Quiapo with the barefoot male devotees struggling with the ropes and clambering to touch the glass-covered sepulcher, The Senyor here is richly garbed with jewels and a golden shroud.

Lucban's "Santo Senyor Sepulcro"

I remember that at ten o'clock in the evening of Good Friday, a good two or three hours after the customary procession, my mother would tell us that she and her friends in the neighborhood were going to the "funeral" of "Apo Natay." It would be much later when we learned that they were actually accompanying the "Apo" from the church to the "burial ground," meaning the house of the caretaker of the image until the next Holy Week.

That is no longer practiced. What is significant in my hometown is that the "Apo Natay" of the Aglipayan church is the unifying icon of the descendants of Don Timoteo Fernandez and Dna Isabel Ramos, their rallying symbol for gathering all of them in a grand reunion.