Faith in Baclaran

The Baclaran Phenomenon is, first and foremost, the incredible number of people who come to the Redemptorist Church in Baclaran every Wednesday to make the Perpetual Novena to Our Mother of Perpetual Help. It is estimated that at least 100,000 devotees come on regular Wednesdays, reaching about 120,000 on the First Wednesday of each month.

When I was there on Wednesday last week, I felt the intensity of the energy caused by the prayers of the pilgrims. After saying a prayer in the shrine (my third time since 2006), I saw the magnitude of faithfuls who had come to the shrine to pray and to give thanks to the Lord through the Blessed Virgin Mary. It all would be summed up with one word: FAITH.

So what’s important with faith?

I’d been taught that He who has faith has an inward reservoir of courage, hope, confidence, calmness, and assuring trust that all will come out well - even though to the world it may appear to come out most badly. As what Mahatma Ghandi once said, Faith must be enforced by reason. When faith becomes blind, it dies.

After all, it’s not the prayer alone that stands out. It’s Faith.

As I gaze at the faithful in one corner while taking pictures in between, I remembered one thing: to keep our faith and surely, our faith will keep us.