The Pabasa
Some parishioners of Santuario de San Vicente Ferrer have quietly attempted to revive a nearly forgotten Holy Week tradition—the Pabasa in the Pangasinan language (Pabasa na Pasyon na Katawan Tayon Hesukristo).
Yes, there is such a thing. With the support of returning parish priest, Fr. Anthony Layog, himself a Bayambangueño, it is led by 63-year-old Zenaida Esteban of Brgy. Bacnono, who happens to possess a surviving pabasa booklet published in 1952—a fragile relic of a once-vibrant devotional culture. Yet strikingly, those who gather around her today are not relics of the past but relatively young people, curious and earnest, lending their voices to something older than themselves.
Last Holy Monday, they started performing the long-dormant ritual at the convent of the church, chanting in the almost monotonal, sing-song cadence that defines the pabasa. With a microphone and a speaker amplifying the sound, the peculiar melody—at once plaintive and persistent—pierced through the hot, humid air. For many modern ears, it was an unfamiliar sound, almost alien, as though surfacing from a time long buried.
And yet, it was not always so. Those who were children in the 1970s, when the tradition still echoed across the different barangays in the Poblacion area, might recall it with a mixture of fondness and mild amusement. The style, to the untrained ear, seemed atonal, unstructured—almost stubbornly resistant to modern notions of harmony. It was easy to dismiss. Until, quite suddenly, it was gone.
It disappeared quietly, like many other local traditions: the zarzuela, panagkamarerwa, panag-kantores, parasal ed inatey, and the singing of pantawtawag, the Santacruzan songs, and the Christmastime galikin or aligando. Practices that once animated community life receded into memory, casualties of changing tastes, migration, and the steady pull of modernization. The only vestige left of Pangasinan-ness is the day's second mass in the Pangasinan language using Pangasinan liturgy songs, which back in the day were numerous in kind.
Today, however, a small but determined group of young people is rediscovering the beauty—and the wisdom—embedded in these traditions.
The pabasa is not merely a song but a sustained act of storytelling and devotion. It is a rhythmic, chanted narration of the Pasyón—the life, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ—often beginning with the creation of the world and threading through key episodes of salvation history. Traditionally performed continuously over nearly two days, participants take turns chanting in shifts, ensuring that the story unfolds without interruption.
Historically, the pabasa took root in the Philippines during the Spanish colonial period, particularly from the late 18th to 19th centuries, when missionary efforts encouraged vernacular expressions of faith. The text most widely used, derived from early works such as the Pasyóng Mahal, was translated and adapted into various local languages, allowing communities not only to understand but to internalize the narrative. In this way, the pabasa became an effective instrument of catechesis—teaching doctrine through rhythm, repetition, and communal participation.
“It is a nice instrument to catechize, evangelize, and educate,” says one neo-practitioner, Maria Rosario. “Aside from being an instrument of prayer and meditation at the same time.”
“So it looks like a one-stop-shop as a missionary activity,” she adds with a smile. “Plus, of course, doing this has an indulgence and grace attached to it.”
Once ubiquitous during the Lenten season, the pabasa remains vibrant in parts of Central and Southern Luzon. But in Bayambang, it has largely faded from the scene in the Poblacion area, perhaps dismissed as too old-fashioned, too slow, too distant from contemporary sensibilities.
A pity, for beyond its indigenous style of melody lies a deeply communal and profoundly Filipino expression of faith. Families who host the pabasa often do so as an act of thanksgiving—for blessings received, prayers answered, or vows fulfilled across generations. The event becomes, in itself, a kind of reunion, where devotion and kinship intertwine.
Food, inevitably, becomes part of the ritual. Simple Lenten fare—binulbol (lugaw), biskwit, kanen (kakanin), tambo-tambong (bilo-bilo), sopas, coffee, chichiria, etc.—is shared among participants, sustaining both body and spirit. In some places, entire communities come together to prepare these offerings, reinforcing bonds that extend beyond the religious into the social fabric of everyday life.
For others, the pabasa is an act of sacrifice, a vigil offered in exchange for grace. And for some, it deepens into something more: a contemplative immersion into the suffering of Christ, and a quiet gratitude for a love that, as the narrative insists, endures even unto death.
Holy Week in the Philippines has always been extraordinary in its intensity and diversity—from the waving of palaspas on Domingo de Ramos (Palm Sunday) to the solemn Visita Iglesia and the dramatized Senakulo, to the libot (grand processions) and even acts of extreme penitence, and on after the Easter vigil, the Abet-Abet or Salubong. Yet among these, the pabasa endures in a different register—not dramatic, not spectacular, but steady, patient, and communal.
Its power lies not in spectacle but in persistence. And perhaps this is why its revival in a small corner of Bayambang town matters.
To keep the tradition alive, Maria Rosario suggests, there must be some form of institutional support—an intentional effort to pass it on, to teach it, to give it space once more within the life of the parish. Otherwise, like the faint echoes of its chant, it may once again fade into silence.
But for now, in the humid stillness of a Holy Week afternoon, a group of young voices rises—tentative yet resolute—chanting a story that is at once ancient and ever new.
