Visiting Magallanes

One Sunday afternoon, a quiet summer day, I felt a strange and irresistible urge to take the jeepney for the old section of the city passing through San Nicolas, Colon and then Magallanes St. With my wife and kids, we got off in front of Magellan’s Cross and went inside the Basilica Minore del Sto. Niño.

I have long vowed to bring the kids inside the church and that Sunday I brought my three girls (their only brother was on a summer vacation). Before the image of Senor Sto Niño, I explained to my daughters where we are and why we’re there.

It was an ordinary Sunday at the basilica perhaps giving visitors and tourists who now mingle with the faithful a glimpse of the Cebuano people’s life – that of centuries of veneration of the holy image.

(I sometimes feel annoyed by the tourists’ presence as they stood there ogling at what probably was a mere tourist site to them, without an iota of reverence for such a holy place.)

For centuries Cebuanos visited the basilica in veneration of the holy child’s image that Magellan gave to Queen Juana during her baptism and conversion to the Christian faith in 1521. Legaspi’s men discovered the image some 40 years later venerated by the natives.

Like other Cebuano families, we, through the years, bring the kids to the basilica to pray for good health and the children’s well being. That Sunday was one such visit.

In that old section of the city where the basilica stands was also where Cebuanos did their shopping and congregated before the advent of shopping malls. Today, a whole new generation is unaware of a time when Magallanes and later, Colon St. was the center of the city’s life.

After the mass we walked to Manila restaurant in Manalili St. where we had dinner. Walking, I remember when I was a little boy walking with my parents in Magallanes, looking at the shops and stopping by in one of the restaurants to celebrate my birthday.

On another birthday, it was my Lola Dalena (my father’s aunt who adopted him after his mother died) who brought me to the Augustinian church at the back of the University of San Jose-Recoletos across Carbon Market.

It was a nostalgic visit. Walking, holding my daughters’ hands, I was quietly reminiscing the past. Then I realized it would soon be my birthday. And there was I, a parent with my wife and daughters strolling to have our dinner in one of the few remaining restaurants in that old section of the city.