Penitencia or penitence is the operative word during the season of Lent. During this period, the Catholic faithful is encouraged to make sacrifices. Fasting. Abstinence from anything pleasurable in this world. That includes meatless Fridays.

Some penitents even go to the extreme level. They flog themselves on Good Friday. Some even have themselves nailed to the Cross.

It had been penitencia, however, for everyone during the past few weeks. In the beginning, it was only penitencia for motorists, who had to pay premium for gasoline, especially diesel. Any movement in the cost of fuel, sadly, also affects the prices of basic commodities. Consumers, therefore, already had to undergo penitencia even before Holy Week started.

This Black Saturday, let us try to forget the sacrifices we have to make as a result of the oil price hike that stems from the Middle East crisis. Of course, that’s difficult to do since reality stares at us in the face. For instance, how many of us have to give up out of town trips due to the cost of fuel? For an employee who works 9 to 5 every day, giving up a Holy Week break to recharge in the province can be a real sacrifice.

But that’s one penitencia we have to go through now that there is global unrest. Maybe you can join this writer in harking back to the good old days when the price of gasoline in the Philippines was at an incredibly low 10 centavos per liter.

Below, I asked some seasoned local celebrities to share with the readers of this column stories of their Holy Week sacrifices and some of the traditions they observed during their younger years come the season of Lent.

Zsa Zsa Padilla

Zsa Zsa Padilla grew up in the mestizaje side of San Juan – when it was still a town of Rizal and not yet the progressive city that it is now under Mayor Francis Zamora. One mestizo celebrity who was born and raised in that area was Pepe Pimentel, the first ever Tawag ng Tanghalan champion who became an iconic game show host.

The family of Zsa Zsa lived on Valenzuela Street, which was named after Sancho Valenzuela, the businessman-turned-Katipunero during the revolt against Spain. For their spiritual needs, they went to Pinaglabanan Church, which stood as mute witness to the first battle of the Philippine Revolution.

What a sight the pretty Padilla sisters must have been as they walked to the Pinaglabanan Church, which is dedicated to St. John the Baptist. Three decades earlier, it became a ritual for San Juan residents to look out the window every afternoon to have a glimpse of the elegant Tita Munoz as she walked to Pinaglabanan Church to hear mass. Munoz later became a respected entertainment personality and was always admired for her sophisticated ways.

Zsa Zsa and her sisters certainly did not look as glamorous as Tita Munoz when they went to church. They were then very young girls who opted for practicality since Pinaglabanan Church was a good 15-minute walk from their house. But they enjoyed the sights along the way, including the grand Ejercito mansion, where Joseph Estrada was raised. It is no longer there, but it used to stand — imposingly — at the corner of what is now Dr. Antonio Ejercito Street and Calle Sevilla.

During the season of Lent, Zsa Zsa recalls walking to Pinaglabanan Church to do the Way of the Cross.

Zsa Zsa’s father, Carlos “Sonny” Padilla, Jr., an actor-turned-international boxing referee, was then currently in town. Sonny had been based in Las Vegas for decades. One of the first activities he did upon arrival was to do a tour of their old San Juan neighborhood with Zsa Zsa. The place, she said, looks so much nicer now. They also visited Pinaglabanan Church and Zsa Zsa found the shrine to St. John the Baptist to be “so different — but much more beautiful” cthan it was in her youth.

Boots Anson Roa Rodrigo

The church had always been a focal point in Rodrigo’s life. When she and other Filipino movie stalwarts were sent to France in 2008 to represent the country in a film event, she managed to slip away from the Philippine delegation to pray before the incorrupt body of St. Catherine Laboure (the visionary at the Miraculous Medal Marian apparition) at the Rue de Bac in Paris.

For somebody who doesn’t speak French and didn’t know how to navigate the streets of Paris, that was some daring feat. Ever religious, she lifted everything to the Almighty and managed to rejoin the rest of the Philippine delegation before the official film festival activities started.

As a child, Boots’ family lived in the Santa Cruz district of Manila — at the corner of Oroquieta and Malabon Street. They stayed in what was known as the Cristobal row. Boots’ mother, the former Belen Cristobal, and the other Cristobal siblings built their homes there — four houses in all. One of the uncles of the Cristobals was the illustrious Filipino Epifanio de los Santos.

Boots’ parish church was Espiritu Santo at the corner of Rizal Avenue and Tayuman. The ground it now stands on was a cemetery until 1913. In 1926, the Espiritu Santo Church was erected on that spot and Boots recalls hearing mass there every Sunday and other holy days of obligation.

Boots attended several Lenten rituals in that church. But what she fondly remembers was the pa-caridad (distribution of free food) that her family sponsored during Holy Week. It was sopas (soup) that they gave away — elbow macaroni with minced carrots and thickened with evaporated milk. For variety, her family sometimes served sotanghon or glass noodles.

The tradition of the caridad is still observed to this day during Holy Week. But instead of sopas and sotanghon, packed mamon (round chiffon cake) is now distributed during the Good Friday procession.

Divina Valencia

Divina Valencia was born and raised in Abucay in Bataan. Her parish church was Santo Domingo de Guzman. St. Dominic of Guzman was the founder of the Dominican Order and is credited for popularizing the recitation of the Holy Rosary in honor of the Blessed Mother.

Still vivid in Divina’s memory is the pabasa or the uninterrupted chanting of the pasyon that narrates the life, passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. Right across their place was a house that sponsored the pabasa every year. Divina still recalls with fondness the pabasa tradition that is still held to this day in many Catholic neighborhoods all over the country.

In the morning of Holy Wednesday, she would wake up to cries of “Nasaan si Hudas?! (Where is Judas!?”). Holy Wednesday used to be called “Spy Wednesday” because it was on this day when Judas Iscariot betrayed Christ for 30 pieces of silver. That was a Holy Week ritual in Divina’s hometown where barrio folk collectively looked for a person playing Judas, who is mocked and humiliated publicly. That was part of the penitence of the Judas volunteer.

In the Philippines, Spy Wednesday is not a popular Holy Week tradition. But in Antique, particularly in San Jose de Buenavista, there is an annual tradition called “Hudas-Hudas.” It is usually held on the evening of Black Saturday or after the Easter vigil. A 10-foot effigy of Judas is filled with firecrackers and is lit in a public square while the townspeople cheer.

There was a time though when the Judas effigy had a phallus sticking out of it. Only that part of the Judas image remained unburned since it was always made of hard wood. It was available to anyone who wanted to keep it. But hardly were there any takers.

Perla Bautista

Perla grew up on Isla Balut in Tondo, Manila. She remembers how flagellants — participants in the “hampas-dugo” tradition — used their residence as the staging area every Good Friday. She witnessed how the penitents would have their backs lacerated before parading down the street while flogging themselves. It was blood galore. But that was part of the Holy Week tradition of her youth in Tondo.

To Perla’s amusement, a number of the flagellants in their place were neighborhood thugs. But they repented for their sins on Good Friday — only to return to their hooligan ways on Easter Monday.

Perla has since moved to her own house in Mandaluyong and is now an active parishioner of San Roque Church. When the time comes, Perla says that it is in that church where her wake will be held. Morbid? A devout Catholic ever since, she had always believed in the Catholic teaching, “From dust you came, to dust you shall return.”

That is one of the best lessons the church teaches us about humility — about how everything on earth is temporary. Even the oil crisis penitencia — with God’s mercy — should in time go away.