We were still a bit tired from the previous day's activities, so we woke up later than usual for the Bisita Iglesia. We're usually out of the house by 7am, but this year we already started at around 9am. So to make up for lost time, we decided to just visit 7 churches, and do 2 stations per church.
As usual, we started out with our own church, Parokya ng Pagkabuhay Parish. It was a quick 2 stations, both done for less than 10 minutes.
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| That's my mom and my dad. |
Next stop was the Our Lady of Annunciation Parish along Mindanao Avenue, near my grade school alma mater, St. James College of Q.C. The stations were at the basement of the church. The first four were along the columbarium. After praying at stations 3 and 4, we also stopped by the candles for praying for special intentions. There were about 5 colors of candles, each for a specific intention. Chea and I took the blue one for health, the white one for the souls of our dearly departed, and green (I think) for career.
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| Stations 3 and 4. |
I also bought a wooden rosary bracelet, as my last one was broken months ago.
After that, I said that we should go to the big churches with large parking areas and skip the smaller ones. We already had finished 2 of the 7 churches we needed to visit, and the last one was to be at the Garden of the Divine Word Columbary, so we just needed 4 more.
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| This is a very big church area. Nice to visit. |
The next church was the Our Lady of the Consolation Parish. It's at Mira Nila village, along Luzon / Congressional Avenue which is now part of the C5 road. The road has been open for the last 2 years. Before that, the way to go there was to drive along Tandang Sora Avenue, go into Tierra Pura village, and then on to Mira Nila. I always looked forward to going to this church yearly, as it allowed us to enter these exclusive subdivisions.
As usual, the church grounds were nearly fully with cars and people. By the time we arrived, they were getting ready for the Senakulo. We left after finishing stations 5 and 6.
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| Always the mid point of our Bisita Iglesia almost every year. |
Our next destination was the Parish of the Holy Sacrifice at U.P. Diliman. I always looked forward to going there, since there were street food hawkers nearby. We always have a little merienda here every year. So we make sure that this is the midpoint of our Bisita Iglesia. After praying at stations 7 and 8, we then went to the vendors.
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| Food! |
I bought squid balls and karyoka (fried sticky rice balls). My parents bought a plateful of fishballs. We spent about 20 minutes there before leaving.
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| This was air conditioned, a year after we got married. |
Chea wanted to visit the church where we got married, St. Ignatius Cathedral, in Camp Aguinaldo so we drove there. There were only one other car parked, and inside, there were only a few people praying. Most people probably don't know there's a church inside Camp Aguinaldo they can visit. We finished stations 9 and 10, and headed out.
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| It's a church, and there's a school inside as well |
For stations 11 and 12, I was thinking of either Mount Carmel or Our Lady of Victories Church. But then, Mount Carmel is the church for most catholics living in New Manila. And since most of them are well off, parking is usually full. So we opted to go to Our Lady of Victories Church.
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| Inside. |
It's a small church and it's inconspicuous because you will most likely find it's main entrance, a tall but narrow wooden gate, closed most of the time. What sets it apart is that it still holds its masses in latin. And they're also strict in regards to what you wear when you go inside the church.
There's no parking area as well, so we had to park along the street beside it.
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| Peaceful this year. |
After that, we finished stations 13 and 14 at the Divine Word columbary where my brother is interred. We spent a few minutes with my brother first, before heading out to have lunch. We drove around a while, looking for an establishment open on Good Friday. Unfortunately, the ones that we wanted to try out were closed.
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| So many to choose from, unfortunately, nothing I wanted to eat that time. |
We eventually ended up eating at North Park Noodles.
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