The procession of the Nazarenes is an example of popular religiosity, and is a staple of Holy Week celebrations in Segovia, Spain.
Popular religiosity is as old as Christianity itself.
It’s an expression of how people pray and encounter God, but it risks being lost in our secularized world.
DANIEL CUESTA, SJ
Author, “Lights and Shadows of Popular Religiosity”
“Oftentimes religious paintings today have been stripped of their soul. We only talk about the life of the artist and our interpretations of them. What they intended to express in their time is no longer expressed. Something similar is happening in popular religiosity. Many people outside the Church think of popular religiosity as a tourist attraction, an anthropological or historical phenomenon the same as other cultural events.”
Jesuit deacon Daniel Cuesta Gómez is the author of “Lights and Shadows of Popular Religiosity.” In it, he explains that popular religiosity is not cultural expression without faith, rather it is the incorporation of faith in culture. But it is much more than that, he adds, it also carries a strong emotional element.
DANIEL CUESTA, SJ
Author, 'Lights and Shadows of Popular Religiosity”
“When I was a teenager, in one of those crises of faith where you start to question everything, I remember how one of the floats in the procession stopped in front of me, and I was certain that it was Jesus who was looking at me and not the wooden image. Rather, it was Jesus through that wooden image. That left a lasting impression on me, and I said ‘I have faith, I want to follow Jesus.’”
Cardinal Carlos Amigo wrote the prologue for the book. For the former Archbishop of Sevilla, “popular religiosity reflects a thirst for God that only the poor can know.”
CARD. CARLOS AMIGO
Archbishop emeritus of Sevilla
“[Popular religiosity] comes very close to understanding that which is not understood from afar. That is, great things are not understood, they are lived.” 05:30 FLASH 01:49 “It was ordinary people who taught me to love and understand popular religiosity, and understand might be an understatement. There is a lot of emotion behind popular religiosity. It is a love that cannot be fully understood.” 02:09
With his book, Daniel Cuesta Gómez invites readers to know and love the practices of villages around the world, so that they do not become relics of the past or reduced to folklore.
Daniel Díaz Vizzi
Translation: Justin McLellan
