La Naval de Manila
LAST Friday, devotees of the Blessed Virgin Mary flocked to Santo Domingo Church to begin the annual “La Naval” novena that culminates in a grand procession on Sunday, October 8.
This Marian devotion, which has persisted for almost 400 years now, commemorates the naval victory achieved by the combined Filipino and Spanish forces in 1646 when a Dutch armada threatened to annex the country to the Dutch East Indies and render extinct the Catholic religion.
Using creaking galleons remodeled into warships, and armed with inferior weapons and substandard ammunition, the combined Spanish and Filipino forces went to sea haunted by imminent defeat. But before the fighting began, they did something that imbued them with the indomitable will to win. They prayed to God through the intercession of the Blessed Mother, and solemnly made a vow that, should they win the battle, they would walk barefoot to the Santo Domingo Church to thank God and pay homage to the image of Our Lady of the Rosary.
Historians narrated that when the smoke cleared, the Dutch fleet had retreated, with “heavy casualty,” while the outnumbered Filipino and Spanish forces suffered only minimal damage. The Dutch navy never again threatened to invade the country.
On April 9, 1662, a commission created by the Archdiocese of Manila to inquire into the event declared that the naval victories of 1646 were “granted by the Sovereign Lord through the intercession of the Most Holy Virgin and the people’s devotion to her Rosary.”
It was a humble admission that, although the soldiers won the war, it was a triumph not only of human courage and ingenuity, but of faith. The late National Artist for Literature Nick Joaquin beautifully puts it:
“The Battles of La Naval was not just the bloody naval wars between the Dutch and the Filipino-Spanish forces. The battles were not a fight for supremacy of one religion over another. Those various battles were really one, concerned with the same eternal conflict between fate and freedom, and in each of those wars won through Our Lady’s intercession, the Rosary has always been wielded against the same enemy: hopelessness and despair.”
Today, the insidious enemy that plunges us into hopelessness and despair is no longer lurking outside. It is within us – our tendency towards rampant divisiveness, factionalism, and collective apathy. The image of Mary, Our Lady of the Rosary, which we now fondly call “La Naval de Manila” reminds us that we have what it takes to overcome these, if only we get our act together, and draw strength from our most precious resource: Our faith in God’s abiding providence.
More than 400 years ago, Filipinos fought unafraid, prayed unashamedly, and later walked barefoot at dawn in solemn fulfillment of a promise made to God. Such heroism, spurred by devotion to Mary and her Rosary, was repeated throughout our history – in the revolts for our independence from Spain and America, in the People Power Revolution of 1986, and many other occasions where we showed the world why the Filipino is worth dying for.
It would be tragic if we just venerated this image in all its grandeur every year, while forgetting to exhibit what this image symbolizes – the inherent goodness of our character as a people, the positive and transforming values in our culture, and the power of our Christian faith. If we draw strength from these, we can overcome our inability to get our act together, as well as the collective apathy tearing our country apart.