Offering flowers
During
the festival in May flowers are offered to the virgin Mary at the
altar in the church. Young children, girls, dressed in
white,
will visit the church with cut flowers and baskets of petals in
their hands. While walking to the altar, they sprinkle the
petals in honour of Mama Mary. At the altar they leave the bouquet of
flowers. Every afternoon.
Nine days of prayer in
honour of the Holy
Cross, precedes the procession the Santa Cruzan.The procession is
always the final part of the festival of Flores de Mayo. The procession is a pageant held in many cities and even
in small villages.
The
highlight of the
celebration, is the Santa Cruzan, the
procession on the last day of the festival in honour of Reyna Helena. In
the year
326 A.D.
she and her son
left Rome and searched for the Holy Cross in Jerusalem. At last they
found the Holy Cross
and brought it back to Rome, the capital of their empire.
It
is more a parade than a religious procession. Instead of icons or
images, beautiful young women (or gays)
with appropriate
theatrical costumes, portray biblical and historical characters. Almost
all sagalas, the persons in the parade, symbolize
queens from the past! Each sagala is dressed
beautiful and is looking as the 'real' Reyna (Queen)!
More
about the historical explanation of the Santa Cruzan...
Constantine, the emperor of Rome some hundreds of years
ago, had a dream in which he was asked to go to the battle field to
fight in the name of the Holy Cross. He conquered his enemy and that
victory led to his conversion into a Christian. He became the first
Christian emperor in history. His mother
Reyna Elena, was inspired by all these experiences and in the year
326 A.D., she went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to
seek the Holy Cross, the wooden cross on which Christ was supposed
to have been
nailed. She successfully found the Holy Cross, complete with its inscription `INRI` on its top.
The
religious procession is a re-enactment of the
finding of the
Holy Cross by Reyna Helena.
Some of the Reynas
