There is a theological sense a certain “obligatoriness” to celebration. One has only to look at the book of Leviticus and Deuteronomy to realize this. There are prescribed a feast at harvest time, feast of booths, the great feast of the Passover, and others that give one that give one impression that life for the Jew - who stared off as a “wandering Aramean”, a nomad whop could ill afford to celebrate – we largely spent to move from on feast to another, and one will be probably right. The feasts of the Jewish calendar reminded them of their destiny to people, surrounded as they were mightier nations, constantly exposed to cultural invasion. At the heart of this I dentity was being the people of Yahweh, called by one, true God from the howling wasteland through the magnificence of Exodus finally to the bounty of the Land of Promises

The Feasts made of days sacred days, and linked to the present generation with a sacred history. There was to be absolute no work on the Sabbath so that all would realize that while tilling, sowing and reaping were necessary for life, or was not to bondage the soil, or to servitude, that God created and called hi people, dear to His Heart all the world was His! By their feast, the people celebrated their faith that as they made that there were through their history, God was before them, “a cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night”.

I cant think of any other way to make sense of the celebration of our Lady of Piat’s Quadricentennial. Four hundred years ago, Dominican missionaries brought to Cagayan an image of Our Lady of the Rosary that was, through some quirks od local history, eventually enshrined at the Piat. For an ”outsider” – which does not mean a non-Cagayano – that is hardly any reason to celebrate, that will be four hundred years of infantile adherence to a vestige of detested colonalism!

“umay ittam ta Piat .” “intayu diay Piat.” This was, by itself, a state of that faith that somehow, God was especially close at Piat. Naïve? But does not faith sound naïve? What I preach to you is scandal to the Jews and folly to the gentiles. The whole of the New Testament is found this faith naïve faith: the availability of God, the accessibility of heaven. Put that in more sophisticated terms and you deal with terms with incarnation, Devine Kenosis, Redemption and Atonement! for Four hundred years then. The Our lady of Piat has been the iconic summer of our belief that God listens, that He touches our broken heart, wounded lives, that he consoles and heals. Is not that the good news of which the entire church is herald?

Our lady of Piat: to this shrine, the late revered Masignor Domingo Mallo wrote in inimitable way, come the mother devotees either bearing their tropihiesor baring their wounds! She has been the sign of divine tenderness, her image the visible reminder of the invitation to the divine comfort: come to me all who are weary and find life burdensome… she knew that it was to be weary, because escaping from the irate Herod must left her hapless and breathless. And standing beneath the cross, her heart is beating which is faltering breath of her dying Son filled her with the weariness that is necessary entailment of the mortality. Perhaps, this is the reason that the hardy sons and daughters of this valley of identified with her. Dark-skinned because of the harsh sun under which their soil, dark-skinned like her image is, when they see the handkerchiefs She holds, they know she understands and is ready to tenderly caress their feverish brows!

Simple they maybe, simpleton they are not! No Cagayano – Nor devotee of Our lady of Piat – has ever taken to God. That boringly repetitious accusation of Ely Soriano andhis querulous ilk is as ridiculous as they are! Ipakimallo mu kami… this has been her devotees’ prayer, a supplication markedly distinct from ikallo mu kami which they know , by native intelligence and ritual practice, they properly address to the Father, Son, Spirit. Ipakimallo… because Her son, Says the letter to the Galatians, was born of a woman, and hence born under the law – like we all are, heirs to the burden of the law of which heaven – and the God who alone there reigns – has been eternally free! But when they look at the four hundred year old image, they call to mind of the most beautiful mysteries of our faith: Hers was the privilege to carry him in her arms, as the church privilege of carrying Him for the World and to it. Who am I that the mother of my lord should come and visit me? Visitation is Four hundred has been about. Of course it refers to Mary’s cross-country walkathon to the hill of country of Judea. But it was all so joyful because it marked God’s invitation. And Piat it was been to us who has found solace and comfort on its hilltop – the powerful – awesome, inspiring reminderof God’s invitation. The sick raised to health, the dying restored to life, disaster averted, despair dispelled, flagging spirit revived – all is told in the first few chapters of the acts of the apostles: a story of a church alive with the Visitation of the spirit. All this is told about – by very same church, visited by God, and constituted by his Son into the dwelling place of the spirit!

Sacred time, sached history, God touching the world and making it whole, frail, yes, but beautiful beyond belief. This is was four hundred years has been. Four hundred reason to celebrate!