Celebrating holy week practices at home during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines

Abstract

A recent correspondence suggested that taking home ashes and launching digital Lenten ashes filters are non-traditional yet creative ways for the Catholic Church to perform the ritual practice in celebrating Ash Wednesday. These creative practices are deemed as necessary so that the Catholic community can celebrate the liturgical celebration while ensuring public health. With this, we propose in this paper practices that can be done during the holy week so that the spread of the coronavirus will be mitigated.

Maximizing social media for evangelization and religious activities during the COVID-19 pandemic as a model going forward

“…In the Philippines, upon imposition of the quarantine measures, subsequent instructions for local dioceses and parishes were given by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) to hold Masses virtually so the faithful could still fulfill their spiritual needs (Corpuz & Sarmiento, 2021). Even for the Holy Week celebration, the faithful are asked to stay at home and attend religious activities online so that the believers will be safe from transmitting the virus (Gozum, Nucum, & Noriega, 2021). As Corpuz & Sarmiento (2020, p. 4) emphasizes, "Online platforms as a type of media can be used for the worship of the Church."…”