Letran 's Day

October is not only the month of the rosary for the Letran community. As soon as October begins, together with it is the feast day of Our Lady of La Naval. I used to look forward to what I call “Letran’s Day” and the Procession. Well, I still look forward to it, but I guess not as much as I used to, because unlike before these days are the days when we will be with good friends.



Letran’s day always falls on a Thursday, this is the day during the 9 day novena masses wherein Letran College is the one assigned to participate, I really don’t know what to call it, basta for me I call it Letran day. During this day, we go straight to Sto. Domingo Church to attend the 9am mass, which usually lasts for an hour. During the time when Fr. Joemar was still the head of the Media Center, D’ Gang goes to Dampa in Parañaque to have lunch. It has become a “tradition” so when Fr. Joemar was no longer the head of the department, we see to it that we go out and eat somewhere where we had never gone after the mass, we plan ahead of time, we consult each other. For this year we ate at Amici in Tomas Morato.

Amici, as one of our new companion this year means friends and we enjoyed the food so much maybe because we were with true friends when we had lunch there last October 9.

The procession, the feast day itself of La Naval, always is a Sunday. I mentioned that I used to look forward to this day because it is the day when we get together with friends that we don’t see often. These friends are Jensen, Sonny, Richard and Dad they are Dzune’s tropa and they participate in the procession since their college days, so for them this is a really long on going tradition. The group meets before the procession starts, then we go with Letran’s patron saint, San Vicente Liem Dela Paz. After the procession we usually have dinner somewhere. This is the annual bonding time of the group. Maybe you noticed that I used to look forward to this, used to… well, Miguel, Dad as we fondly call him, passed away two years ago. He is Dzune’s best friend; he was Best Man during our wedding. It happened so sudden; we never thought that he would be gone so early. Now it saddens me when October comes, last year after the my husband and I attended Mass, we didn’t join the Letran Group that year, and the choir was singing Salve Regina, I saw my husband crying, the church, the act of attending the mass, the procession just brings back so much memory Dad, they use to participate in the procession and they started doing it way back during their college days.




Ever since I joined the Letran Community in 1997, I became a devotee of the Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary, never did I miss the Letran Day (Thursday Mass) or even the procession, Oh the only time I missed the procession was in October 2006 when I was 7 months pregnant with Anne, and last year because our family went on a vacation to Palawan after my brother Jayson got married.

This year’s procession was so different from the past years. I can say that the tropa wasn’t nowhere to be found, the only ones present was Davy and us (Dzune and I). Jensen and his family is now based in Butuan City and Richard and his family in Zamboanga, they just won’t be able to make it. Sonny and Portia are here in Manila, but when we sent an SMS to Sonny, he told us that he couldn’t make it because they already have plans for that day, for all I know, the procession just reminds him too much of Dad thus the reason for making excuses, I guess he just isn’t too brave to face it like us, we are sad and yet in our hearts of hearts we will continue doing this as long as we could, so that Dad, Miguel’s memory lives on. After the procession, once we are back inside Sto. Domingo Church waving our hankies as Our Lady of La Naval glides back to her place in the altar, as we sing the “Adios” we could almost feel dad’s presence in our midst, and my husband and I agrees, that as soon as Anne is a little bit bigger, we will also introduce her to our Lady of La Naval.

And oh I used to be one of the official photographers of the procession but these days we can only get limited pass, so Davy does the photography. You can view more of the pictures taken here