visita iglesia

This was the 2nd time SFC-Meralco went on a Visita Iglesia. We listed several routes for this trip. The first choice was to go to MTQ, EDSA Shrine, Christ the King, St. Claire, Ateneo, Dela Strada and UP. That would have taken only a couple of hours and a lot more convenient since we can ride our cars and there's less traffic. But wee decided to go on a more traditional but harder route-that meant taking public transpo and walking a lot.

The Manila route proved to be very interesting especially for first timers-a Visita Iglesia cum cultural tour plus the additional food stops at Binondo and Malacañang area. It turned that a lot of the "pilgrims" I was with were first timers in most of the churches so they had a lot of wishes to make. Too bad, my only "first time"
church was St. Jude, so I was entitled to only one wish. Haha.

We planned to visit 7 Manila Churches, tracing 2 Stations of the Cross for each Church. Our itinerary was UST, Manila Cathedral, San Agustin, Sta. Cruz, Binondo, San Sebastian and St. Jude but we ended up with 8. It turned out San Beda was also open so we went it and marvelled at the magnificent architecture and art work.

This early I'm planning on taking a trip to Laguna or Pampanga. They say that those are routes worth visiting. We definitely want to do another pilgrimage because just seeing the many devotees and learning a lot about our rich history made our day very rewarding. We were definitely enriched spiritually and culturally.
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Visita Iglesia

The custom goes back to the early Church when Christians would visit the seven great basilicas in Rome for adoration of the blessed sacrament after the Mass of the Lord's Supper on Holy Thursday. The sacramentary, the official altar book of the Church, says that after this Mass, "The faithful should be encouraged to continue adoration before the blessed sacrament for a suitable period of time during the night, according to local circumstances, but there should be no solemn adoration after midnight."

Visita Iglesia is a practice in cities, where there are many churches, in countries as diverse as Malta, Poland, Ireland and The Philippines. Filipinos have brought it to places in North America that never had it before.

- Source: The Catholic Herald