SLIDESHOW: Black Nazarene Procession
The procession started at 8 a.m..
It was not until 22 hours later that the longest-ever feast of the Black Nazarene came to an end.
And it was not until all the barefoot devotees, at least 3 million of them, painfully and dangerously struggled to go near the image of Jesus Christ so they can touch or kiss it.
In these pictures, photographer Rem Zamora captures the drama that unfurled as the yearly procession was played on air and on the streets against the backdrop of a mass of people crying for salvation from poverty.
Who is responsible for the injuries?
The chaos that was seen in the feast of the Nazarene in Quipo, Manila, on January 9, 2012, is a consequence of making the people believe that the statue is the statue of Jesus Christ and that God is pouring his miracles through the black statue. Of course, if that is true, those who believe it will do anything to throng the statue in order to touch and kiss it. They would surely do it more than some of them thronged Wowowee that resulted in a stampede in 2006. Those who are believed to be responsible in the Wowowee stampede were brought to court. Who shall we blame this time for the injuries during the feast? It is the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines, specially those who make the people believe that the statue is God’s instrument in granting the devotees’ wishes.
God has nothing to do with the feast. He even dislike it. God said “I am the LORD: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images” (Isaiah 42:8).
Because the statue of Nazarene is believed to be a statue of Jesus who is believed to be God, the praise and glory that people supposedly give to Jesus is shared by the statue. You will not miss to see that during the procession. The Catholic encyclopedia agrees when it says ““Relative worship is paid to a sign, not at all for its own sake, but for the sake of the thing signified. The sign in itself is nothing, but it shares the honour of its prototype” (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07664a.htm).
If God (the prototype) is the one represented by the image, that image shares the glory of God.
Roman Catholics make the statue of the black Nazarene share God’s glory which God said he will never give to graven images. That worship of God through the statue is an act He did not authorized. It is detestable to Him.
So this faith and fanaticism that the devotees of the black Nazarene display are not of God. And those who make them believe what they believe about the statue are responsible for the physical and spiritual harm that the poor devotees suffer.