Grotto of the Virgin Mary of Lourdes

Every afternoon, the Holy Rosary is prayed in the Grotto of the Virgin Mary of Lourdes, beside the side entrance of the Lucban Catholic Church.  A project of the Parish Youth Committee who spruced up the grotto, it aimed to raise funds for their summer projects and the beautification of the grotto.

New Servites of Mary formation house

A new formation house for the Congregation of Mother of Sorrows, Servants of Mary was inaugurated last Saturday, April 25 by Bishop Emilio Marquez, Bishop of the Diocese of Lucena. Located at Brgy. Tiawe, it was founded in India and has congregation in Australia, the US and the Philippines.

In photo (clockwise from top):  The new formation house; fountain with the miniature statue of the Pieta as center piece; Bishop Marquez blessing the house; guests and benefactors inside the chapel; view of the house from the left side, with the unfinished ground as the foreground.

Photo taken at 7am

Summer months has officialy started in April but the weather in Lucban, for more than a week now has not.  Rains and cloudy skies dominates the atmosphere in Lucban almost everyday preventing many activities to be cancelled or postponed, the basketball tournament being hit the hardest.   The sun shines though once in a while, for a minute or two then fades away and never returns.

Before Lucban gets congested with lots and lots of traffic coming from humans and vehicles even before the Pahiyas, its website Pahiyasfestival.com has already experienced its share of traffic, that is over the world wide web as thousand of viewers visited the site during the past few days.

Websites have certain limits on the number of times it can be viewed in a month, measured by bandwidth.  Once the limit is reached, the website becomes unvailable for browsing until the web server where its files reside, resets back to zero, usually at the end of each month.

As a precautionary measure, so as not to disrupt the availability of pahiyasfestival.com, we have immediately worked out and deployed a backup server.  Though minor glitches were encountered such as some of the modules not working properly, the site and its major contents remains available on the internet.

Registered users who cannot log in are also affected by the unexpected transfer to another web server.  Users are advised to reset their passwords by clicking the “Forgot your password?” link in the homepage.  A message will be sent to your submitted email for further instructions on how to proceed.

In all our years maintaining the website, this is the first time that we experienced this kind of bandwidth problem.  We don’t actually take it as a problem but a good sign that many people are visiting and getting to know about the pahiyas through our website and interested to see and watch the festival.

Anok

Anok is a term used in Lucban for miniature dummy, a mannequin that depicts a farmer.  It is displayed during the Pahiyas, complete with a farmers outfit and complimented with farm tools such as bolo and salakot.  The creativity of Lucbanins are evident with the way the anok is presented.  Some are animated and in fact live persons act as anok to the delight and surprise of onlookers, as the anok moves.

Ugat ng Kampana (Roots of the Bell)

The largest bell in Lucban, and probably the best sounding bell I’ve heard in all the churches in the Philippines where I’ve been, is hung not by steel chains or metal brackets, but of centuries old roots, some of which are as large as an arm.  It is still used today and is rung, sometimes with combination of 2 or 3 smaller bells, every 2 hours starting at 6am until 8 am.  Since it’s installation in the 1800s, it has never been broken and replaced.

1963 Lucban Arts for Commerce and Industry Festival

Photo shows members of the Art Club of Lucban, headed by the late Fernando Cadeliña Nañawa, posed for a group souvenir photo during the 1963 Lucban Arts for Commerce and Industry Festival which they organized.   The forerunner of the now famous Pahiyas Festival, it aimed to boosts tourism in Lucban and to popularize the celebration of San Isidro Festival, the title the festival was referred to during that time.

Experience the colors, sights, foods and shopping at the Lucban San Isidro
Pahiyas Festival. Join the day tour of the Pahiyas this coming May 15, 2009 and we will bring you to one of the most colorful festivals in the Philippines.

Inclusions

Visit Pahiyasfestival.com for more info and make reservations.

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San Isidro de Labrador

San Isidro Labrador is the patron saint of farmers.  It is for him that the Pahiyas is being celebrated not only in Lucban but even in other towns where agriculture is the primary source of livelihood.  In Lucban however, it is magnificent, colorful because of the kiping hung in houses where the procession of his image will pass.   Decorations of agricultural products, plants, flowers, fruits and vegetables also adorn houses of farmers while others, depending on the family’s source of income, hung buntal hats if the owners are hat weavers, coconut materials if he is a coconut farmer and the like.