In PH’s oldest stone church, Simbang Gabi brings Catholics back to 16th century

MANILA, Philippines – It was a drizzly December evening. A wooden door with the elaborately carved image of Saint Augustine of Hippo, one of the greatest saints in the Catholic Church, welcomed massgoers on Friday, December 15.

Exactly 451 Christmases since it was founded in 1571, the Philippines’ oldest stone church – San Agustin Church in Intramuros, Manila – rang its bells for another nine days of Simbang Gabi or Misa de Gallo. These novena Masses, a Filipino tradition dating back to the 1600s, are held in the evening or at dawn, symbolizing the nine months that Mary bore Jesus in her womb.

A few steps away from the front door, on the left side, more than two dozen tombstones served as a somber reminder of the weight of history. The names of the dead, belonging to alta sociedad (high society) during the Spanish colonial era, were engraved on the floor with the letters “RIP” (Rest in Peace” or “DOM” (Deo Optimo Maximo, “To God, the Best and Greatest”).

Who were they? What did they wear? Why were they important? Reading each of their names – Maria Dionisia Tuason de Patiño, who died on May 28, 1862; Bonifacio Sainz, August 28, 1882; and Emilia Delgado, August 6, 1868, among many others – stoked the imagination as we entered this Neoclassical-Baroque structure.

The choral music ahead of the 7:30 pm Mass on Friday, however, was enough to jolt us back to the present. “Ang nagsindi nitong ilaw…. Walang iba kundi ikaw…,” the Christmas carol went. It was the song “Star ng Pasko (Star of Christmas),” popularized by broadcast giant ABS-CBN in 2009, giving a sense of the new in the old, the old in the new.

A mix of tourists, students, workers, and residents, a mingling of men in T-shirts and women in pants, trickled into this 16th-century church where indios (the name by which Spaniards called Filipino natives) in camisas or ternos heard the Misa de Gallo centuries ago.

We counted around only 200 massgoers on Friday, leaving many seats empty, as more Catholics heard Mass at the 2,000-seater Manila Cathedral only a few blocks away. Still, it was awe that filled many of the Catholics who joined Simbang Gabi at San Agustin Church that evening.

For them, it was history