A Castano Primo (MI) takes place this week in celebration of the s. Crucified. The massive wooden sculpture of Christ crucified is made transmigrate from one church to another - are two in all - in various stages in the districts of the town. The processions last for a week, divided into stages. Groups of 14 people between men and women take turns transporting the heavy relic, each for a distance of about seventy meters. Meanwhile, people queued pray or talk very quietly. The streets are decorated in full regalia, with thousands of purple flags imprinted with the logo of the crucifix, the Christmas lights under Christmas, the white or red lights along the sidewalks or fences and gates, some altars prepared by citizens willing, the white lilies fake. Then there are the "doors", unfortunately not as extravagant in the past, marking the entry in the various districts. And of course people at the windows, balconies, on the sides of roads.
Concluded the daily stage, the crucifix is \u200b\u200bleft to "sleep" in the designated facilities, watched over by volunteers until 6 in the morning, when returning to the liturgy.
All this is repeated every twenty-five years.
Some think that perhaps it is the last festival that will see the crucifix. Some twenty years is the first they see. Some have already seen three or four. Some will meet again when the fifties and are now university students with a vague idea of \u200b\u200bthe future (io!). The parish priest of Our Lady of the Poor is the first time he sees it.
The crucifix is \u200b\u200ba surefire way to mark time in a very clear and sharp. But not only.
can see changes in a small community: the ends of the streets, leaning out of windows and there are exotic faces, curious and serious, the new citizens Castanese: the Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and the Maghreb, which fill the life of the square now deserted by natives or acquired by two or three generations. They were not there five years ago. I wonder what they think of this event? Maybe for them Italians, Castanese are all mad. Or are they happy to be in this quiet moment of local folklore and told it to distant relatives with a hint of amused interest.
And then that long-term memory is needed to keep the reasons to celebrate something to which it is thought the first quarter of a century for the last time? But perhaps this is interesting, maybe a little 'is precisely the history that is celebrated the passage of time, the continuation of a tradition whose origin is lost in uncertainty and myth. It is said that Christ is on this cross has Castanese protected by gunfire of the Austrians, and even that has saved them from drought, maybe it was removed from the church of a neighboring country, or perhaps brought the river (Ticino) .
It 'still an extraordinary experience, which shakes the life of the sleepy town for a week, not counting the preparation and organization everything. And then for twenty-four years each return to their homes, and to remember the last Feast of the Crucifix.
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