BY: GILBERT PILAYRE
Faith Carried Across Waters
After attending Mama Ludy’s internment in Bohol, we hardly had time to catch our breath before setting off again, this time to Venice. It was not the journey we had planned nor one we particularly welcomed. Exhaustion weighed heavily on us, and we had already warned our group that, given our jetlag, we might have to forgo the trip. We had hoped that our absence could be patched over, two other travelers filling our place. Yet time was short, and no substitutes appeared. The group, having already paid for our travel and lodging, left us little choice: either pay for nothing or go ahead. It felt like setting out with a broken compass, but there it was.
There was something familiar about the resignation of it all. I thought of the apostles after the crucifixion, retreating to their boats, attempting to fish, to return to the ordinary, to make sense of loss through the gestures of life they once knew. I had envisioned walking Floki again in the misty mornings, sweating out sorrow at the gym, chasing normalcy with discipline. But life, like travel, often asks more than we are ready to give. No sooner had we thanked our eldest daughter for watching over her brothers and Floki than we found ourselves once more packing suitcases, setting alarms, preparing for departure.
The morning air bit sharply against our skin. In the Philippines, waking to the heavy embrace of tropical heat is almost a ritual; the humidity pressing against you like a second skin, inescapable unless you lock yourself away with an air conditioner. Here, early spring brings a gentler awakening. The silence was broken only by the birds, the trees slowly dressing themselves again in green. The tram did not arrive as promised — a small but familiar betrayal of schedules in a world that demands patience. Five extra minutes in the cold felt like a pilgrimage in miniature.
The subway, however, was different — its rumble and the crush of passengers infused with the pulse of the city, a machine that neither notices nor cares for your fatigue. As we waited for the connecting bus, the old familiarity of our life before Bohol wrapped itself around us again: the ambulance sirens, the clipped shouts, the endless motion. It was not perfect, but it was home — not because it was ideal, but because it was ours.
When the bus finally shuddered forward, I found my hand reaching for Ludwig Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity, which I had brought along as a companion against the vacancy of travel. His ideas, sharp and critical, grounded my mind in something heavier than luggage or schedules.
The Dolomites soon rose on the horizon, like sentinels from a dream, their limestone peaks cutting through the gauzy veil of mist. Below them, Carinthia unfolded in softer hills and clustered villages, each steeple a gesture of hope reaching toward cold stone skies. Sometimes the mountains vanished behind dense pine forests, only to reappear, starker and even more magnificent, as the road turned.
In the way that landscapes change and reappear, so too does faith. Filipino communities scattered across Europe have learned this well. In places like Italy, Germany, and Austria, they keep alive the old devotions — Sinulog dances, novena prayers, and small gatherings around the Santo Niño. Amid foreign streets and cold seasons, they have not let memory die.
Kaplag Euro-Sinulog is more than mere nostalgia; it is faith as a living, breathing exile — not diminished by distance but made even more precious. Like an heirloom carried across oceans, it refuses to be lost. It teaches that what is discovered once — that first spark of belief, that fragile sense of belonging — can be discovered again, reshaped, reclaimed, and lived anew.
Yet behind this respectful distance, I cannot help but trace a deeper current — one that Ludwig Feuerbach, in his Essence of Christianity, articulates with merciless clarity. For Feuerbach, God is not a being external to humanity but rather a projection of humanity’s highest aspirations, ideals, and fears. In this light, what I witness in these persistent rituals is less an encounter with the divine and more a mirror held up to the human soul, shaped across centuries. What once belonged to the spirit-world of animistic ancestors has merely assumed new garments, now stitched together by colonial dogma. The sacred remains, but it bears the fingerprints of human longing — unchanged in essence, only renamed.
The journey we undertake, whether across continents or within the chambers of our own hearts, brings us back always to the same realization: that while we may depart many times, it is faith — persistent, transforming — that ultimately carries us home.