VALENTINE DATE at the plaza

A lovely date at the Cortes plaza? Why not?
This valentines, how about bringing your lovely date at the Cortes Plaza?
I got my answer later and I bet you have never seen me “go cute and bring a date” in that plaza.
A friend (who may truly be gifted) once told me that her hair stood on its ends when I was showing her Cortes Church and its plaza.
It was almost 6 pm and I told her anytime the centuries old brass bells would chime and the muted oracion would be heard in some houses.
Somebody flicked on the switches of the church lights.
I know it was the bellringer. He would be passing through the church to access the unusual bell tower. Unusual because like Baclayon and Loboc again, Cortes bell tower was not built as attached to the main church body. In fact, a short bridge would be the access from the church coro to the tower.

Minutes later, the somber chime of the lingganay drove a flock of kwaknits from the upper bossom of the tower. I could still imagine the efforts the bellringer has to overcome tograb on the ropes the hang from the wooden platform that covers the bells from below.
Lost in the sweet memory of having been once a substitute bellringer, I could imagine how adeptly I could grope the ropes when I get too lazy to climb the long flight of swaying wooden stairs to the top platform.
My journey to that thrilling memory was jolted when my friend suddenly held on to my forearms. She was gazing at the empty space in the middle of the plaza and she was mesmerized.
She was ashen and I had to usher her to the umbrella shed where she told me everything she saw.
At the strike of six, the entire plaza, she said was covered in thin mist, one I could not see.
Then, she said, some smokey wisps floated and drifted with the light breeze that came to stir the taller amorsecos.
The wisps she said then seeped into the main fabric of the old campanario. The “female” wisps appear to be dressed in flowing lace and the “males” wrapped themselves in old pinukpok and saguran. All of these happened when the campanario bells pealed its somber tolls.
It was only after several years when I realized my friend might indeed have seen an apparition of sorts, one that would only be revealed to not all of us.
A lesson in church history would tell us that the historic and legendary exploits of the retaking of the Holy Land from the Moors revealed to the crusaders the mysterious wooden Cross.
Santracruzan would tell us that the “Signus” was the sign of the cross which sowed fear among the Moors.
An apparition through a dream by Queen Helen portrays a cross and words which say, by this sign you shall conquer.
Helen then ordered the sign emblazoned in all their guidons and victory after victory, the sign soon became a universal battlecry for the Christians in their battle against the Mohameddans in the Middle East.
It was believed that anyone fighting on the shadows of the cross would never die and if they would, the warriors would rise up in the last days, all because they are protected by the same cross.
The concept soon spread to the universal church, redefining the signus into the main belief that the church was the same sign.
By late 16th century, the second Vatican Council has predetermined Umbra Ecclesia or under the shadows of the church.
That time, dead people were either literally buried inside churches or just outside the church but right where the church casts its shadows upon the graves.
People who have done significantly to advance the cause of the church deserve a burial ground sheltered by the shadows of the church.
Notice Reverendo Padre Nicolas Mendoza and Hilarion Casas inside the church?
And so it came unto me, the plaza, the very place where I trampled when we played volleyball, or marched during our CAT in high school days was a cemetery, a burial ground so souls could be sheltered in the shadows of the church.
Recent accounts by Nang Auring and the church elders would strengthen my claim.
When the plaza was levelled (Bulldozed) skulls and bones literally were dug up and stocked in the campanario.
So next time you and your sweet little thing decide to snuggle a bit at the plaza, you might as well remember there are countless other watchful eyes gazing upon you.