Visita Iglesia

One very challenging practice for Holy Week is Visita Iglesia. Do you have plans for Visita Iglesia 2014? Which Churches do you plan to visit? Will it be local Churches found near your residence? Will you choose Churches found in Luzon, Visayas or Mindanao? You may opt to go abroad and go international! How about a pilgrimage to the Holy Land or the Holy City of Rome?

When my daughter was too small for this practice, we just stayed at home. It was great doing the Visita Iglesia through the Internet. I visited Churches all over the world through YouTube. Isn’t it great that Churches we cannot possibly go to, can be viewed through the web?

You might be wondering, why we are doing this Visita Iglesia after the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday night. Are you wondering why Churches on this night are beautifully decorated? Yes, the Altar of Repose where there is an Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, usually at a side altar of the Church is filled with flowers and candles. They look like real gardens. Why is this so?

There are two reasons why we have this Eucharistic Adoration. The first reason is because it is the night of the Last Supper when Jesus instituted the First Eucharist. So on this night, we celebrate Jesus’ gift of Himself in the Eucharist. We recall how Jesus became food for all of us. He took bread, broke it, and gave it to His disciples and said: “Take this all of you and eat it. This is my body which will be given up for you. Do this in remembrance of me” (words of consecration for the Holy Mass). The second reason is because we want to watch and pray with Jesus even if only for an hour as he agonized in the garden. Did Jesus not complain that Peter and the other apostles could not stay awake?  To make up for this, we make the sacrifice of visiting not just one but seven churches.