Chimayo Santuario blessings in Semana Santa
La Semana Santa, the Holy Week of the Christian liturgical calendar, will once again commemorate the spiritually seismic events that occurred over 2,000 years ago in the city of Jerusalem in the Holy Land: the passion, crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, as the story is told.
Today we live in tumultuous circumstances, in global uncertainties full of explosive danger from that very Holy Land, dangers that can threaten the equilibrium of the world. Prayer is continuously raised up for the peace of Jerusalem, the peace of Gaza and the peace of the entire Middle East.
We always ask, however, could the counterpoint to these horrific prospects be found in the old accounts of the Holy Week events and in the triumph of the Prince of Peace? It is a story that brings hope to billions of people who are living in this current peril.
This year, as in centuries past, thousands of people from El Norte and around the world will converge in pilgrimage at El Santuario de Chimayo, seeking peace and personal healing during this concluding week of Lent, La Cuaresma.
Today is Holy Thursday of la Semana Santa. It is the beginning of the three-day Paschal Triduum. This is the day, the evening of the Last Supper of the Christ, when he proclaimed he would give to the world his own body and blood in the forms of unleavened bread and wine, known to Christians as the Eucharist.
After the supper, Christ’s passion began and moved with implacable fury. He was betrayed, arrested and put on a farcical trial, in which he was sentenced to death by crucifixion. He was scourged mercilessly, his flesh ripped by metal flails. A cap of sharp hard spikethorns was pressed onto his head. A heavy wooden cross was thrust upon him to drag to his execution on Mount Calvary. When he arrived there, his hands and feet were nailed to that cross before he was lifted up to the view of mocking crowds, who just days earlier had hailed him in Jerusalem as a king.
By then it was the Friday now known as Good Friday. His horrific torture had been relentless. At last, raised up and nailed to the cross, his own body’s weight suffocating him, he died, saying, “Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.” And finally he said, “It is finished.”
It is told that when he died there was a fearsome earthquake, and that the inner- most Holy Veil of the Temple ripped in half. The people were astonished and frightened. They cried out in remorse that he was the Messiah, Son of the Most High.
His body was given to his grieving mother, Mary. He was then laid in the sepulcher, his body enshrouded by a cloth. A great stone was rolled over to seal his tomb. He was dead.
Then it is told that he resurrected from his death, on the Sunday, now called Easter, or Resurrection Sunday. The binding cloth that had enshrouded his body remained in the tomb. Today the cloth known as the Shroud of Turin is widely believed to be that cloth. After much scientific analysis, even the most skeptical critics cannot rule out the Shroud of Turin as the funeral cloth of the Christ, upon which is inexplicably imprinted the image of the crucified man, believed to be that of the Christ.
The Shroud is believed to be the image of the Christ in the state of death, before his rising, and the ongoing scientific analysis point to its authenticity.
In El Norte, as elsewhere in the world, the story of the passion of the Christ continues to inspire and to call people to certain pilgrimage sites. Some fraternidades and sociedades perform devotions to unite their spirits to his, as hermanos and hermanas. El Santuario de Chimayo is such a site.
During Semana Santa some of Los Hermanos prayed a particular blessing of thanksgiving at El Santuario for those who maintain the site, including Father Sebastian Lee and all who care for the location:
“Senor Dios Nuestro, Cristo de Esquipulas, quien nos has mandado como la bendicion las vidas y almas de tus sirvientes; Padres Pastores como Sebastian para el alivio espiritual del mundo desde el Santuario de Chimayo, recibe ahora nuestros bendiciones de gracias para el y todos los ayudantes del Santuario.
“Vemos claramente, que por tu bondadosa voluntad nos has dado la prueba de tu amantisima divinidad por los venerables regalos al mundo do estos sirvientes, que han mostrado de como seguir en el camino de curar y sanar a los miles de las gentes en el peregrinaje santo de la vida.
“Entonces Señor Dios, recibe nuestra bendicion de gracia a favor de Padre Sebastian a quien ha pasado ahora esta santa tarea de cuidar y guiar nuestra Santuario de Chimayo; y a favor de todos los cuidadores del Santuario.
“O amabilisimo Señor, te damos las gracias por las vidas de estos graciosos Padres y ayudantes, por tus obras poderosas del Espiritu Santo, y rezamos continuamente que tu Paz y tu Gracia seguiran siempre multiplicando en los hechos de estos obreros del Santuario y por el mundo entero. Amen asi sea.” EDITOR’S NOTE: The Taos News is a secular publication and welcomes opinions by people of all faiths.