I CARRIED JESUS!

[Note: There is a Macintosh connection here, believe it or not. It relates to something John Martellaro wrote a while back about "Macintosh chi." And while I know full well that talking about things like spiritual energy is going to send the cynically hip running for their barf bags, my own experience tells me there's a substantial non-quantifiable energy at work in everything around us, and putting your fingers on a Mac puts you in touch with part of it. "Chi," perhaps. As far as religious rituals are concerned, I am no orthodox believer in anything. I am, however, a sensitive boy, and I know when I've been whacked! -- JHF]

That ain't no metaphor, folks.

Hard to believe, isn't it, especially if you think you know me. I just spent most of Good Friday taking part in ceremonies with the Hermanos Penitentes, the Veronicas, and a host of my neighbors, and I have to say it was one of the most extraordinary days of my life.

People "live different" here, you see. Spanish settlement in this geographically isolated region occurred well before Europeans colonized the East, and the local culture developed largely on its own. Since the first few priests were quickly dispatched by the Indians, a brotherhood known as the Hermanos Penitentes arose to fill the gap. What follows is from a September, 1978 National Geographic article entitled "New Mexico's Mountains of Mystery" by Robert Laxalt, who is speaking to one Father Casimir Roca of the Chimayo parish in this excerpt:

"Secret Sect Practiced Bloody Rites

Although it is a subject that one inquires into with caution, I asked about the church's once troubled relations with the Penitente sect of the Sangre de Christo. To my surprise, he waved his hand airily and said, 'I have the highest regard for them.

'They have been a much misunderstood people because they practiced whipping and crucifixion as their ancestors had in Spain in the Middle Ages,' he continued. 'But they did much that was good. They cared for the sick and conducted funerals, and they provided for the families of the dead. Most important, they kept the faith alive for fifty years or so, when there were few if any priests in the area. The faith was their life's blood.'"

Despite everything I knew, I could not have imagined the impact of seeing Holy Week re-enactments performed by ordinary people without priestly supervision. These are penitente rituals, remember: home-grown, totally sincere, performed for their own sake and not for tourists. Since a number of these were scheduled to take place just down the road, I decided to see what the fuss was all about. The first event I witnessed was a very old drama called El Encuentro. An available description of this reads:

"In the plaza beside the old Church of Las Santisima Trinidad the Hermanos Penitentes and the Veronicas will re-enact the first nine stations of the Way of the Cross carrying the black veiled Madonna and the bound statue of Christ."

I already knew that the statue of Christ had literally been seized on Thursday night by penitentes who burst into the church at the end of the evening Mass, spit on the statue, whipped it, and tied it up with ropes! Needless to say, this piqued my interest considerably.

On Friday morning I was late, and showed up at the plaza just after the part of the drama where the Madonna meets her son being taken to be crucified (heavy,that, no matter what your beliefs). The Veronicas (pre-adolescent girls dressed in black and wearing black veils) carried a 3-foot high statue of the Madonna (wearing an identical black dress and veil) on a litter, one girl at each corner. They were accompanied by a similarly-dressed elderly woman and a group of parishioners. Across from them stood the Hermanos Penitentes at the head of another group of parishioners. The penitentes carried a litter with a small figure of Christ, tied to a crude wooden cross made of sticks.

Between the two groups, a narrator dressed in black gave a passionate dramatic reading complete with shouts and sobs, while spokespersons from both sides recited 300-year-old texts in Latin and Spanish. At the end, the narrator explained to the crowd that the statues of the Madonna and her son would now be taken separately to the nearby morada (penitente meeting place) and that they would "never see each other again." (If you've ever experienced a death in your immediate family, you would relate immediately to this reality check. I cried half the way home without really knowing why. What on earth was going on here?)

An overwhelming sense of acceptance and forgiveness first choked me up, then filled me with the strangest calm. Later that afternoon my wife and I returned for another very old ceremony, El Sermón del Descendimento, described below:

"...a re-enactment of how Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus removed the body of Jesus from the Cross and laid him in the sepulchre. This moving drama was revived in 1997 after over a century of being lost. The body of Jesus then becomes the Santo Entierro which is venerated on Good Friday evening with a rosary. Please come to the Morada de Nuestra Señora de la Soledad in Arroyo Seco."

The operative phrase for me here was "please come to the morada." Penitente meeting houses are generally windowless adobe structures next to cemeteries, and usually no one but members of the brotherhood is allowed inside. "Come to the morada" ?? Oh yeah!

We arrived early and made our way up a dusty, rocky lane past newly-green willows and a gurgling irrigation ditch to the morada. At the entrance to the grounds was a sign reading: "This is a HOLY PLACE: No Photography, No Painting, No Sketching." No one was there but a single old man, who welcomed us inside the low-roofed adobe building. The narrow interior consisted of two separate rooms with an opening between them: the first room was an unadorned space with a mud floor and crude wooden benches lining the walls. A cylindrical wood-burning stove stood in the corner behind the door. At the far end was a small chapel or sanctuary. An altar packed with icons, burning candles, plastic flowers, and a central crucifix ran from wall to wall like a little stage, framed by a lace curtain extending across the ceiling and down the walls. High up on the left was a small window that admitted just enough light to illuminate the gloom. In the windowsill sat a live blooming geranium and a fresh roll of bathroom tissue (?). The floor of this room was carpeted, and over on the right, against the wall, lay a life-sized statue of Jesus on a white wooden litter, partially covered by a black cloth!

This was quite startling, to say the least. Regardless of your religion or the lack of it, one is used to seeing crucifixes. But a full-sized bloody statue of a dead Jesus lying on the floor is pretty spooky, especially if you're all alone in a dark room with the thing.

After taking this all in, we thanked the nice old gentleman and walked back to the village church, which was packed, naturally. We saw the veronicas sitting in a group to the right of the altar. When the service ended we still had no idea where to go, but my wife's suggestion to "stick close to the veronicas" proved to be sound.

Soon we were part of a long procession that made its way up the same dusty lane we had just walked twice. The centuries melted away as penitente escorts at the head of the column sang a single verse of a mournful dirge over and over all the back to the morada, where the procession slowly shuffled back inside the gloomy little building. The penitentes disappeared behind a guarded door while everyone else found seats or went inside the chapel room to pray. I peered inside, but Jesus was gone! "They nabbed him," I whispered to my wife. A very elderly woman dressed in pink and white made her way slowly and shakily to the altar and prostrated herself full-length on the floor, praying silently. No one looked.

Soon a penitente carrying a large crucifix emerged from the closed door and walked outside into the yard, followed by the narrator of the morning event looking very stern and somber. Behind the narrator walked three penitentes side-by-side, the two on the outside (Joseph and Nicodemus) wearing black cloths on the tops of their heads and holding by the arms a middle person whose face was completely hidden by a black hood (executioner? condemned prisoner?)! We were all invited to follow, and soon another long procession slowly wound its way around to the back where 20 or 30 spectators waited on either side of three full-sized crosses. "Joseph," "Nicodemus," and the hooded figure took up position in front of the tall, life-sized crucifix in the center. I recognized the wooden litter with the prone statue of the body of Jesus, covered with a black cloth, lying on a stone altar at the foot of this middle cross. The narrator began his recitation. . .

It lasted a very, very long time. As he detailed the story of the Crucifixion in a mixture of Latin and medieval Spanish, the hooded man stabbed the crucifix with a 10-foot spear, "Joseph" and "Nicodemus" removed the crown of thorns, placing it on a red velvet pillow carried by one of the veronicas, and both of them symbolically lowered the body from the cross. After covering the now "empty" cross with a large black cloth, they removed the shroud from the statue on the litter and lowered the body from the tall stone altar. Four penitente brothers took hold of the rope loops at each corner of the litter with the very life-like scourged and mutilated body, and we all began the trek down the long dusty road back to the church.

All of this had been quite something to behold. The whole thing took place under a cloudy sky in front of towering mountains. A chilly wind whipped the edges of the large black shrouds while crows soared overhead. I swear it looked like it was going to rain or storm. As we walked back to the church, our escorts said that anyone who wanted to help should move to the front of the procession. To carry the body for a few paces would be a great honor, and having come this far, I knew I had to follow through.

A moment or two later I was walking behind the litter awaiting my turn. A penitente brother stood ready to keep the statue from hitting the ground if it were dropped, and with his help I took hold of the rough hemp loop at the left rear corner. The weight was a shock. I was also surprised at how life-like (death-like?) the statue was and couldn't take my eyes off the gory sight as I staggered along. A few paces later I handed off to the boy behind me, wondering how he could possibly hold on (but he did). As I dropped back into line I noticed the end of a catsup dispenser protruding from the jacket pocket of the man whose job it was to keep the statue from falling, and I knew another reason why the body had seemed so real! That and the weight. (If you've ever hoisted a corpse, you know what I mean.) The effect of all this was to solidly drive home, in the most visceral way possible, the similarity of the carrier to the carried. I may be a damn heathen, but I was stunned at the directness and strength of the message.

Whoever thought this up knew what they were doing, all right. Macabre, yes, but what a way to jolt the jaded! I'd say if anyone ever asks you to carry Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, or someone you know, stop whatever you're doing and give 'em a hand --

Money can't buy that kind of lesson in being human.

John H. Farr edits the Apple Computer News for Applelinks.com and invites your comments. The Farr Site Archives will take you to the past two years' worth of columns. John also writes his WebFaust column for MacAddict.com and a monthly op-ed page column called "El Emigrante" for Horse Fly in Taos, NM. His Zoo Zone site is worth a visit too.

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November 20, 2008