DON'T GIVE UP Suffering FOR LENT.

Latino spirituality and rituals help bring a message to a world obsessed with avoiding pain: Suffering and struggle are part of daily life.

There was a statue in my home that I remember, as a child, being both curious and frightened of. My family referred to it as "El Santo." He stood about four feet tall and had a look of sorrow on his face. Drops of blood ran down his legs as he stood there motionless with his head hanging. When I first came in contact with him, he was kept in a shed behind our house with a heavy cloth draped over him. I discovered him because I had a tendency toward crying and whining spells when I didn't get my way. My mother would make me go outside because, she said, I was not pleasant company when I was in that state. The shed was my haven for self-pity.

One day I noticed the strange parcel and peeked under the cloth. I gasped as I saw bare feet and bloody legs. Gradually I pulled the sheet off and discovered the statue of a very sad man. Strangely, I took comfort in his sadness. He was not some laughing clown mocking me. He was as downhearted as I was. I kept my discovery secret for a short time, then began to ask questions.

I learned that the statue was with us because my great grandfather had been responsible for the Semana Santa (Holy Week) activities in our parish, in which El Santo played a prominent role. El Santo had been with my family since the Mexican Revolution when churches were burned and statues destroyed. This particular statue of Jesus of Nazareth had been rescued for use in the Passion play and Holy Week services of our parish, which holds the distinction of being the oldest mission in Texas, founded in 1680.

The Holy Week traditions and practices that included the Passion play had been going on in the parish for as long as anybody could remember. When "foreign" priests came to the parish, according to family lore, they discontinued the community's Holy Week practices because they did not understand them and considered them childish and disruptive to the solemnity of Holy Week. The priests would not even keep El Santo in the church because they thought him unsightly. My great-grandfather brought him home along with many of the props and costumes used in the Passion play and stored them in the shed, where many years later I would discover them.

I used to question my grandmother relentlessly about El Santo and the unusual assortment of articles in the shed. She was a young child when El Santo was first brought to our home; she remembered a huge procession of people accompanying her father and his friends as they carried him on their shoulders. People gathered at first to pray, then to celebrate. She told me her father used to ride a horse in the Passion play. She described some of the scenes and the cast of characters that I later discovered were not necessarily from the scriptural account of the Passion. They were probably using one of the ancient scripts the early Franciscan priests had used in the teaching of Christianity.

Eventually my parents decided to build a grotto next to our home for El Santo. Our parish priest blessed the grotto, and El Santo was ceremoniously moved to it one Easter Sunday. My mother had a robe made for him, and my father placed a cross in his hands, which were prepared to embrace it. Along with my family and neighbors, I have spent many hours at that grotto begging for mercy or interceding for others. The grotto has served as the spiritual center of my family's life. During the summer we would gather in front of it to pray the family rosary, and at different times of family crisis one or another of us can always be found there. It also has become an informal chapel for the neighborhood. My parents have never fenced the yard so that neighbors and passersby could have access to the grotto.

In the course of the past 30 years since I left home, I have continued to visit El Santo, and he has continued his presence of solidarity with all those who come to share their struggles with him. I have also discovered, as I have worked in or visited different parts of Central and Latin America, that similar statues of Jesus, bloody and tortured, are very common. I have found myself sitting in churches and watching as people come in a steady procession to kneel before, touch, and pray at the feet of this battered Jesus. I suspect that this suffering image offers comfort and hope to those whose lives are characterized by hardship. But, beyond that, this image of Jesus also reminds us that suffering is a part of life.

This is not a welcome message in a society obsessed with avoiding or alleviating pain at all costs. The very existence of suffering is evidence that we are not in total control of our lives. Contemplating the suffering Jesus is a reminder that we cannot avoid pain any more than Jesus could. Perhaps that is why such stark images of Jesus' agony are not very common in our churches. We do not like to think about the existence of pain, particularly when we are feeling in control of our lives and enjoying relative comfort and peace. Being confronted with grotesque statues of a tormented Jesus in our churches is not appealing. Yet, suffering and struggle are part of the daily life of the majority of people. The agony of Jesus continues in our world today, and those experiencing it most acutely in their lives find solace and hope in Jesus' suffering.

Latino popular religion and spirituality do not shy away from the theme of suffering, which is dealt with most vividly in relation to the Passion and death of Jesus. Popular religion draws its rhythm from nature and the indigenous understandings of the cycle of life in which suffering and death are commemorated as a natural part of life. The death and suffering of Jesus are incorporated into this understanding. Death closes the circle; the new life of the Resurrection continues the cycle.

From Ash Wednesday to Holy Week, popular religion has us confront the themes of suffering and death. On Ash Wednesday we are marked with ashes as a reminder that we are mortal and "to dust we shall return." The marking of the forehead with ashes is one of the most powerful observances in Latino spirituality. On Ash Wednesday the churches are filled to overflowing with the faithful, who come to be reminded with the symbol of ashes that death is part of life.

Lent, the time between Ash Wednesday and Holy Week, becomes a time of preparation and reflection on death and suffering. Lent is a privileged time to reflect on the suffering that is a natural part of life but also the suffering that is brought about by injustice. Although suffering is universal and unavoidable, we must also recognize that some suffering is brought about by social systems that impoverish and disempower. Latinos, both as a minority group in the United States and as immigrants, are often victims of these systems. We ritualize this realization in the Passion of Jesus during Holy Week.

Holy Week is one of the most intense and stirring commemorations in the Latino liturgical calendar. The concentration on the sufferings of Jesus during Holy Week is so ardent that it almost overshadows the triumph of the Resurrection. Latino popular ritual vividly portrays the Passion and Crucifixion that immerses everyone in the drama of the week's events. Holy Week in Latino religious practice is not only a matter of attending additional church services on Thursday evening and Friday afternoon. Rather, it is a time when life comes to a halt and is marked by a different rhythm. It is a time of total preoccupation with the events surrounding the Passion and death of Jesus.

Rituals ranging from diet to ancient family customs characterize the week. Certain foods have come to be known as a Lenten or Holy Week menu, including in my home shacales, lantejas, tortas de camaron, and capirotada. I don't know the origin of these food traditions except that they are probably related to the observance of abstinence. One theory is that the Holy Week rituals in the southwestern United States stem from the syncretization of Catholic and Jewish traditions. Jewish families fleeing the Inquisition in Spain and Mexico City settled in what is now the Southwest. The isolation from their own communities led to the merging of certain traditions, especially those of Passover and Holy Week. The observance of Holy Week rituals was much stricter when I was a child, but there is a growing trend to recover some of these traditions.

Many Latino communities are retrieving the reenactment of the Way of the Cross. Actors, particularly the person who plays Jesus, spend months preparing themselves spiritually for their roles. This reenactment is not treated as a performance but as participation in a sacred ritual. Sometimes the Way of the Cross takes place in the neighborhood where the different stations are marked by actual events that have occurred at those particular sites. It is often so vivid that it is not uncommon to see people weeping as they see Jesus stumbling under the weight of the cross and hear the shouts of the Roman soldiers. People watching from their homes or just passing by join the procession all along the way. Some are drawn by personal piety, others by curiosity.

Whatever the reason, the very act of joining the crowd draws one into the experience. I believe transformation occurs as one walks this Way of the Cross even when the crowd is so dense that one can hardly see or hear what is being said. The act of walking with the community and witnessing the event immerses one in contemplation on the meaning of suffering.

The washing of the feet in commemoration of the Last Supper, staying up with Jesus and praying through the agony in the garden, and the Pesame--accompanying Mary after the Crucifixion--are rituals that also draw us into the experience of suffering. These services are familiar in most churches, except for the Pesame, which takes place on Good Friday evening and focuses on Mary's pain. This observance includes time for prayer and silence to ponder the sorrow of a mother who lost her son in an act of violence. The suffering of this mother is familiar, particularly in minority communities where so many mothers grieve children killed by violence. Popular religion offers an opportunity to acknowledge and ritualize the existence of suffering and struggle as a part of life yet draw strength and hope to carry on.

I believe popular religion has provided the Latino community in the United States a space not only to preserve our faith and cultural understandings but also to confront and transform the suffering and struggles of being a disenfranchised community and to hope for the future.

My family contends that the "foreign priests" who discontinued the reenactment of the Way of the Cross in our parish and who refused to keep El Santo in the church did not understand the meaning this had to our community. I believe my family is correct--the priests did not comprehend the power of ritual in dealing with the realities of life.

Ritual offers an experiential way to acknowledge and confront what we are afraid to name. The liturgical season of Lent offers us an opportunity to reflect on the cycle of life that includes death and to contemplate the reality of suffering in our lives and in our world. Identification with the suffering of Jesus may help us to see the redemptive value of suffering in our own struggles.

SISTER YOLANDA TARANGO, C.C.V.I. is a director of Visitation House, a transitional housing program, and teaches at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas.