Filipinos around the world continue to celebrate exuberantly the Philippine Independence Day. June 12 marks the official day when the Philippines declared independence from Spain after more than 400 years of colonization. “Kagitingan, Kagalingan, at Kasipagan” (bravery, creativity and industry) was the theme used when we celebrated the 111^th Philippine Independence Day. This year the evening events began with the Eucharistic Celebration which was prepared by the Filipino Brothers. The celebration was meaningful and attention grabbing because of the cultural rituals and symbolic offerings introduced during the Eucharistic celebration. The Mass celebrant was Fr. Edgar Xavier SVD, a very good homilist. In fact we were all felt challenged of his homily especially the Filipino Brothers. He spoke about the Filipino identity and its culture which was gradually vanishing or at least changing because of the influence of other cultures. At the end of the Mass loud applause sounded inside the chapel.

After the Eucharistic celebration, there followed a spectacular cultural show involving the Filipino Brothers and the Filipino Passionist Sisters who contributed greatly to make the presentations so memorable. Different cultural dances with gorgeous attire and props were presented. There were some trivia questions presented during the social and many brothers, as contestants, were able to answer a question and received a money award of twenty pesos. After the cultural presentations and games a “Salo-salo” buffet style of Filipino food and delicacies followed. We shared the food with each other, exchanged ideas, experiences, and laughter. In the MAPAC tradition all the Filipino Brothers and the Filipino Sisters cut the specially decorated cake towards the end of the evening.

Thank You God for our Independence, may You continue to bless our beloved country with freedom, peace, love, unity and prosperity!

This entry was posted on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 9:34 pm and is filed under NEW UPDATES, Philippines, UPDATES. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.