Portal de Murcia
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I swear I've been looking for you.
A year after your steps, looking for you in the most hidden corners of the soul.
I have traveled all the paths with the hope of finding you unexpectedly.
I swear to you: I have longed so much for you, that tears were coming to my eyes.
I have fanned among orange blossoms, to draw you with the watermarks of their aromas.
I have felt the interlinings of my life, to look for you, even if only in memory.
But memory is fragile.
I have asked the painters and poets, the Mediterranean waves that form rumors of your coming.
But they hardly answer.
They babble inaudible words, words from a language I do not understand, words that are spoken only in spring.
I have asked the gates of the parishes, believing you can see where you are coloring lives and sacraments.
But nobody answered.
Do you remember how we were, day by day, in the years of my childhood?
How big you seemed to me.
What a continental now!
How I listened to your voice ... I felt childlike, like me, nestling in the depths of my soul, flourishing it.
I remember it day by day.
The voices of adult life can not silence the memory of that childhood voice, which is the voice that saves.
Because yes, dear, from You I learned as children that there are voices that save even when they are silent: that look of the mother that bellows a I love you, that smile of the father who kisses and cries out a caress with the silent words of the soul.
In the sands and on the beaches, in the old houses, I have searched for you without finding you.
I have walked all the roads of this beloved Spain, looking for you, craving the daily epiphany of your pierced hands.
I searched for you ... and you were here, in this Mediterranean flower, in this love for the land of Murcia!
GREETINGS.
HE and Rmo.
Mr.
Bishop of the Diocese of Cartagena Ilmo.
Mr.
Mayor of Murcia Mr.
president of the Cabildo Superior de Cofradías of the Holy Week of Murcia Excmas and Ilmas.
Authorities, civil, military and religious;
Mr.
Deputy Mayor and Councilors of the City of Murcia;
Ladies and gentlemen Presidents and Elder Brothers and the Fraternities and Brotherhoods of Murcia, Nazarenas and Nazarenes of our Holy Week, Ladies and Gentlemen, good afternoon.
A proud son of this land appears before you.
It is presented with the mouth and the soul in floods of joy.
This son of the land of Murcia is presented with the high word, very high, because it is the deep love to our land where he is born, because it is the love for our land that elevates it.
In the past, the town crier was responsible for making new people known.
He walked paths and roads, squares and towns announcing to the crowds gathered the new ones that were coming.
It was his an essential duty.
As is mine today, and that of all those who have preceded me.
I hope, dear Encarna, to be up to the task.
If there is a New one that approaches us, if there is a news that already hangs in the air, that is the one of the Death and Resurrection of Christ.
So be ready, Murcia, stay tuned that there are only days left.
Soon, Murcia, be ready that the real spring is approaching and death made life.
Nothing moves.
Let the air temper its path and the birds keep their chirping.
Soon, Murcia, be ready, that Christ is already here.
Little by little and without realizing it, another year has passed and we find ourselves face to face, with the greatest mystery that we Christians adore: the mystery of the vanquished death.
The days pass, and the light softens almost as much, that it seems to be on the verge of being rain.
The days go by and the streets dress up in festivity, the balconies are adorned and the souls jump and the families, full of joy for the hope of Life, prepare their monkeys.
From today, we contemplate death.
That is the fate of this Holy Week.
We contemplate death, but we do not regret it.
We contemplate Christ, his wound from the side.
But we do not lament, because there is in the wound of the side a whole world that spills, a whole world that is poured over the works of the soul.
We do not lament, because there is in the wound a constellation of eternal embraces, of eternal embraces of father, of hugs like those of this earth to his Magna Week, before the entrance of the Spring celebrations.
We do not lament, because there is a burning fire in the wound.
And to him we run these days Murcia, to warm up.
We get closer to that wound, yearning to be born in the blood that spills, yearning to drink that water that only Murcians can drink: fresh water from the side;
salt water of the mediterranean sea.
Every Lent, when the workmen begin to perfume the streets with that sweetness of burned sugar and illusions that crown the flesh, the memory begins to gallop like a horse with strong sides that travels the roads engraved with fire in the soul.
The gallop is so brave, that memory tires, that memory becomes fatigued and that these days are exhausted.
That grandmother who is not there;
That father who has left.
That mother who already enjoys the fruits of the Death of Christ ... The faces are piled up in the mouth of the soul.
How would we like to have them here today, with us, to plant two kisses like two rose bushes on the top of our cheeks.
In my mind the instants are drawn as watercolors of watery light, of that moist light that comes from the depths of the sea that bathes our earth.
Do not expect from me great theological disquisitions.
I am no longer and this is how I am before you, that a son of Murcia who has the scenes, sketches and scents of a Week that announces the greatest, the most fortunate new of how many Humanity has ever heard: Christ lives!
Maybe there are people who do not understand it.
That does not understand that we, the Holy Week we live it how the customs of the home are lived;
its smells, its way of setting the table, the celebration of important moments.
Each house, each family has its way of doing it, although all, in essence, are the same.
That is why, while it would be impossible to see a passport of the San Pedro eat a mona under the throne;
It would be inconceivable for other cities to fill their streets with hard-boiled eggs.
The traditions, dear friends, are particular and universal at the same time.
That is his magic.
There lies his strength.
Each family, each neighborhood, each city has its own, shaped by the slow flow of years and lives.
But all share the same nature, all are like a signature that initiates our own humanity.
Maybe, some people do not understand that we celebrate the Healthy Week with that feeling of celebration, of family meetings, of lived street.
They may not understand it because they do not know that we celebrate Holy Week, knowing what happens after it: the Resurrection, the great hope.
The pain for the death of the innocent Christ who surrendered is for us a hopeful pain: we know that death, as the song says, is not the end.
From Palm Sunday to Easter, Christians are born in us, a fresh air, a new feeling, an impetuous clamor for the triumphant life that, we know, will come to us.
And even if ours is a Passion of wood carving and trumpeting;
of full streets and souls shrunk by emotion, deep down, we all have our Holy Week.
We all live it in a special and special way.
I, for example, am not able to differentiate the magnificent size of José Capuz from that of Salzillo without Antonio Gómez Fayrén or Rafael Cebrián helping me in this task.
I am not an expert in sculpture, nor do I have the gift of knowing how to combine the colors of the flowers that masterfully decorate the steps.
I do not consider myself with enough knowledge to be able to decide on the best disposition of the processional elements.
For me, since I have Nazarene consciousness, Holy Week is music.
More than 25 years ago, at this time, a ribbon with processional marches came to my hands.
It was the first time I heard those first chords of the "Christ of Forgiveness" that place you on any night of the Passion Week.
It was the first time that unmistakable melody of "Mater Mea" reached my ears.
In my interminable weekly trips to Madrid there was always room to listen to Nuestro Padre Jesús or La Madrugá.
It did not matter that the thermometer marked 40 degrees in the shade and was a scorching June or that we crossed La Mancha to -4 degrees in January, the music of Holy Week has always been timeless for me and I think a little for all of us.
Ricardo Dorado, José Vélez or Gómez Villa are composers who have marked our way of understanding the days of Holy Week.
When we see the tumult of the processional parade in the distance, the first thing that reaches our senses is the distant melody of Jerusalem.
At that moment, the light step is imposed to enjoy the parade with that unmistakable background melody.
If Easter is unique it is largely by music.
One can admire the magnificent sculptures in its churches or museums, can relive important moments of our parades that were recorded as it passes through Belluga, but the live music while the procession parades is something unique.
Something that only happens when Holy Week passes.
I feel honored when I live as a shelf, I enjoy when I see it pass like another Murcian, but nothing compares to participating by putting sound to the cold nights of the Murcian spring.
Throughout the year I remember those hours in which time stops and I am one more within the Cabezo de Torres band.
Although in Murcia, it is Friday when we inaugurated this concatenation of excited days, for me I have that the Week does not start on Friday;
not even in our sister Cartagena and her early procession at dawn.
For me, as for many of us, the emotion, the pinch in the soul began days ago, when the priest, imposing the ashes, reminded us of a Truth that would be terrible if it were not a Truth of God;
this is: a Truth born of love.
"You are dust and dust you will become."
With these words of Genesis, you all know, Lent begins.
A Lent that I always remember and remember as that first Friday Mass, at a quarter past seven, in the Vélez Chapel.
A must-see and that always, always, surprised me.
In that chapel, on Fridays throughout the year we did not gather a group of friends to attend the celebration.
All those Fridays, no matter the date, are for me Friday of precept, a particular precept with which to prepare Holy Week.
When I returned from Madrid on Thursdays, I used to spend Fridays in Murcia.
And it did not matter that it was January that September, week after week this appointment was transforming;
little by little, as slowly as the time that happens when we want something to come, I was taking aromas of incense, until ending in the special ones of the Fridays of Lent.
These words of the Genesis with which we begin Lent, remind us of our nature.
Therefore, these forty days, like those that Christ spent in the desert before beginning his public life, are time, for me, of renunciations, of purpose and dedication;
It is a time of hope that culminates in the Week that begins a Friday of Sorrows.
A time that for me, is reading time.
Books have always occupied an important place in my life, and especially during these forty days that separate us from Holy Week.
Among all the titles, there is one that marked my days of Passion and its previous preparation: "The return of the prodigal son.
Reflections under a painting by Rembrandt "by Nowen.
I have read and reread it and I have also given it to my good friends, which is what is done with good books and above all, with good friends.
Under the image Rembrandt's painting in which the Father appears embracing the prodigal son with the eldest son, observant, Nowen lectures on the parable of the prodigal son.
Some reflections that I believe, they come to the case.
Lent resembles that return that the prodigal son begins when, wasting his inheritance, he starts the trip back to his father's house saying that in her as a servant he would be better off as a free man.
He tells it, and he says it badly, because although there is repentance, it is not a repentance in the light of the immense love of a God who forgives.
In the same scene, the eldest son.
He has complied with the rules, while his brother squandered the inheritance, he has remained with his father.
When he heard the joy of his brother's arrival, he felt bad.
He was not happy, he did not participate in the rejoicing for the return.
He thought he had never had a party like that.
He thought that the one who left was not worthy of such recognition.
He thought and thought badly.
His thought revealed that he was a slave in his father's house, not by conviction, free or voluntarily.
The work of Rembrandt shows us in the background, two lost children.
One who left looking for freedom away from his father's house and another who, although he stayed, stayed away.
Lent and Holy Week are a special occasion to discover that sometimes we are that youngest son who needs to return to his father's house, to return to that selfless love that welcomes us.
But also to keep that eldest son away from our lives, away from believing that only with respecting some rules have we met.
Today, we founded, as every year, our great hope, come to my memory, that morning that dawns lightly, like a nervous child before an imminent surprise, in which the Nazarenes of Amparo, go, little by little, very little to little, throwing its call to the wind: the Week begins!
It's Friday of Sorrows.
His blue velvet tunics, carpeting the view from the Sky, trace the path to the Mother, whom we will see so much these days, with her chest crossed, and her Holy Son, stretched out, according to the immortal art of Salzillo.
In San Nicolás, our time is founded.
Between vigorous arrows, full, and prayers of bullfighters who surrender to the Lord of the Great Power, so linked to our beloved Gonzalo Barnés, so that he imbibes them in his chicueline of tenderness and protects them with the flights of his holy crutch.
A San Nicolás always return, even from the distance that life imposes us, there is always a memory, an electric feeling that, every Friday of Dolores, transports us to the interior of the temple.
The tunics of the Amparo brothers in the streets start, as if inaugurated again, the story of the Passion that for years we wrote every Easter the Murcia.
With fidelity to the Church and its teachings, but drawing new drawings.
And the children, in the procession of the Angel, who have also had their proclamation, fill the streets with the joy of childhood, of their untouched tenderness.
This procession is the proof not only that in Holy Week we must also innovate, but also, we must do it if we want our beautiful tradition to be perpetuated for ever and ever.
Amen.
And when Friday goes out, the meeting is over, exhausted by emotion, asking for a well-deserved rest, a Saturday dawns.
I remember one Saturday afternoon when, as we were taking over Trapería, the director of Torres Cabezo's Band gave way to a march: Semana Santa Ciezana.
I searched, anxious, with cold sweats, among my scores that magnificent work of master Gómez Villa ... I do not exaggerate if I say, that at times I felt faint.
Suddenly, the INSTRUMENT weighed more than usual;
my lungs were airless and my knees trembled in a clash of bones.
I have rarely experienced a tension like that ... but suddenly, in the midst of my nerves, that trumpet solo began to sound.
My body calmed down, my muscles relaxed and my bones did not tremble.
Those notes drew in my eyes, like watercolors painted in the wind, the memories of my life as a brother.
The day dawns, for me, in San Miguel, in that very familiar procession, so brief and so beautiful that I call it Don Silvestre.
I have had the honor of being the shelf of the Sorrowful Virgin and the Holy Steps.
An honor I owed to the Mother after taking, under her altar, my wedding and the christening of our sheet.
Source: Teodoro García Egea
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