Sto. Nino devotion (3)

Fr. Leo Pabayo . 

OUR devotion to the Santo Nino ought to start with an appreciation of the basic truth of our faith that God became human in the person of Our Lord Jesus Christ. From the Gospel we learn that his humanity began when he was conceived in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

This beginning of the human life of Christ tells us also how he already began the work of our salvation in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This is evident in the words Elizabeth said to Mary in the Gospel on the Feast of the Visitation. “Whom am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me? The moment your greeting sounded in my ears, the baby stirred in my womb for joy.” These words of Elizabeth are very understandable from human point of view.

Anyone who has seen a picture of a happy child responding to the love and care of the mother and relatives can guess that such reaction must have their beginnings even when the child was still in the womb of the mother. Ultra sound images of a child in the womb can already discern various responses of the child from stimuli coming from outside the womb of the mother. Some of these have been most evident in instances of abortion that were filmed showing how the unborn child reacts against attempts to harm it during the process of abortion. In contrast to this we can presume that reactions of pleasure are made by the child in response to expressions of love and affection given by a loving mother and others who are relatives and friends of the mother even when the child is still in the womb of the mother.

I believe that we can also presume more subtle emotional reactions of fear, joy and others may have been already discerned by stetricians who have specialized in the study of the state of an unborn child in the womb must know of these responses of an unborn child.

The words of Elizabeth to Mary are therefore very understandable in the light of the above new findings of science on children who are yet to be born. Elizabeth was but making a statement of fact about her experience of the presence of Mary as she came to visit her and be of assistance to her during her own pregnancy. This experience of Elizabeth would among those that Mary would ponder in her heart. Elizabeth’s words about the child in her own womb (John the Baptist) leaping for joy have are so meaningful in the light of the story of our salvation in Christ that the Gospel writer (St. Luke) saw to it that it would become part of his Gospel.

We can presume that this meeting between the Blessed Mother and Elizabeth must have been related later on by the Blessed Mother to the apostles and disciples. We may not find this in all of the teachings of the apostles but we can presume it in the light of what St. John the Apostle and Evangelist who wrote that that “there are many other things that Jesus did  which if each of these were written down, the whole world itself  would not be able to contain.”  (John 21:25)

This would be meditated and contemplated on those who came to know Christ more intimately. And this will find itself in their preaching of the Gospel and later his would later be represented in various works of holy art through the centuries that would inspire others in their life of faith.

It will help deepen our faith in Christ to bear in mind that the episodes narrated in the Gospels like the one about the encounter of Mary and Elizabeth were real life narratives. They are not fictions or mere imaginings of some who did not really understand the Gospels. St. John put it well in his letter when he said of Christ: 

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes,  which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life, the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it andproclaim to you the eternal life, awhich was with the Father and was made manifest to us.” (1 John 1)

 The infancy narratives of the Gospels about the child Jesus, the Santo Nino, whose feast we are celebrating are distinctly different from what we know now as   apocryphal stories or “not authentic” stories circulated about Christ.

These apocryphal stories should not be the basis of any devotion to the Santo Nino. They are but the fictitious imaginings of people who did not have the real life experiences of Mary, Joseph and of the disciples of Jesus. It should be the real life experiences of Mary, Joseph and the apostles and true disciples of Christ that should make for a genuine devotion to the Child Jesus that we celebrate on the feast of the Santo Nino.

A true religious devotion like that of the Santo Nino needs to be continually be purified and clothed in its true meaning according to the authentic experiences of this devotion that goes back to the Blessed Mother Mary, Joseph  and the apostles and disciples.  This was what inspired the true Christian life in countless Christians through the centuries.

There must have been a very profound insight or even mystical experience among the saints who meditated on the humanity of Jesus as a child that was akin to the experience of Elizabeth during Mary’s visitation of her. Elizabeth’s association with Mary during Mary’s long stay with Elizabeth before Elizabeth gave birth to John the Baptist must have deepened. This happened similarly to the saints who have meditated much on this episode in the Gospel. 

Something of that experience was imbibed  by the many of the simple faithful who celebrate the feast of the Christ child through the centuries like the one we are familiar with in the Philippines particularly Cebu. This devotion seemed to have originally by the Augustinian missionary priests and has some similarity to the devotion to this image that came to develop in Spain and later in Prague, Chezchoslovakia.  This was shared by the Augustinians with our people when they came with Magellan to our shores.

The devotion to the Santo Nino was widespread in Europe around the time that Magellan came to the Philippines. Among those who were recorded to have this this devotion to it were St. Francis of Assissi and San Antonio de Padua at earlier times and later with St. Teresa of Avila in the sixteenth century. Later still in the 19th century, St. Therese of the Child Jesus adopted her name or was given her name because of her spirituality that focuses on the childhood or childlikeness of Jesus.

An appreciation of the history of this devotion of the saints ought to make us pause and think that there is more to this devotion that we ordinarily associate with the Sinulog. The development of this devotion was in fact praised by Pope Benedict XVI himself during the crowning ceremony of the image of the child Jesus of Prague.

The devotion to the Sto Nino celebrated with the Sinulog seemed to have their beginnings with the Negritoes. Whether the beginning of this was in Cebu or the Panay provinces I have not ascertained. I believe that religious historian Fr. Miguel Bernad SJ said something about how this came to be associated with the Negritos. 

The Negritos were known to be the first inhabitants in the Philippines. I speculate that it could be that because of the hostility of many Bisayans and other lowland settlers in their first encounter with the Spaniards that the preaching of the Gospel first found ready acceptance among the simple and childlike peoples among the Negritoes in the mountains before it became widespread among the Bisayans.