A Saint for the Pandemic
Elaine Penagos reflects on what it means to light a candle for San Lázaro
Altar to San Lázaro and Babalú Ayé, courtesy Elaine Penagos
My belief in San Lázaro is a familial tradition, taught to me by my abuela Hilda, my maternal grandmother.
It is a belief that her son, my tío Leonel, also maintains. As an act of devotion, Abuela Hilda used to make the capes for her San Lázaro statue (her arthritic hands no longer allow her to make any type of craft). She would buy pieces of purple satin and velvet (purple is the color associated with both San Lázaro and the orisha of disease, Babalú Ayé) and burlap cloth to make the cape, then hand-sew onto it gold embellishments like rhinestones and lace trimming. Because she was crafty, Abuela Hilda would also make arrangements of plastic purple flowers, going as far as hot-gluing a string of them to the small concrete San Lázaro altar that guarded her front door.
The San Lázaro popularly worshipped among Cubans, Cuban Americans, and other Latinx peoples is an amalgamation of three religious figures: the resurrected Lazarus of Bethany from the Gospel of John, the poor man Lazarus from the parable in the Gospel of Luke, and the orisha Babalú Ayé. Due to his multifaceted identity, devotion to San Lázaro is an intersection of faiths where African and Catholic beliefs converge to form a powerful system of symbols and a symbolic language meaningfully interpreted by his devotees, regardless of religious or cultural background.
Although my abuela considers herself a staunch Catholic, her interactions with San Lázaro reveal a different and more complex understanding of the saint—one that strays from doctrinal teachings about saint veneration and more closely resembles the knowhow of African heritage traditions like Lukumí.
Left to right: Abuela Hilda (shown) with San Lázaro during his feast day celebration and the altar of Tío Leonel, courtesy Elaine Penagos
When news about COVID-19 began to swell and take over media outlets in the United States, my partner and I decided to self-isolate, even though neither the city of Atlanta nor the state of Georgia had issued stay-at-home orders at that time.
During my last outing to procure some extra groceries and other necessities for the house, and a day before we officially began our quarantine, I came across a display of votive prayer candles at my local drug store. As I looked through the various saints and virgins available, towards the back of the shelf, I found a candle for San Lázaro; something inside me told me that it was important to bring home a candle for him. While I searched the aisles for Lysol, I began to think about what it truly means to light a candle and pray to San Lázaro, the patron saint of disease and the poor, during a time when the novel coronavirus assaults the very breath we use to pray.
I got home a few hours later and started unpacking all the items I had bought. When my partner saw the San Lázaro candle, she gave me a puzzled look. She is a Methodist and has watched my quasi-Catholic relationship with el viejo Lázaro evolve, both personally and academically, over the last few years.
“I saw it and thought it would be a good idea to light a candle to ol’ Saint Laz, given the situation,” I told her with a smirk.
She chuckled and didn’t say anything else about it.
Omolu wood sculpture by Héctor Julio Páride Bernabó (Carybé), Museu Afro Brazil, Salvador, Bahia, Brasil.
Photo: Elaine Penagos
I put the candle on my bookshelf, where my small altar to San Lázaro and Babalú Ayé sits. I placed the candle next to my small statue of San Lázaro and his 17 pennies and the crotched figure of Omolú that I’d gotten over the summer in Brazil (Omolú is the orixá in the Candomblé tradition who is synonymous with the orisha Babalú Ayé in the Lukumí tradition).
My intention was to light the candle as we began our quarantine and ask San Lázaro to keep the novel coronavirus away from our home and to swiftly vanish it from the face of the earth.
It’s been 58 days since I came home with that candle for San Lázaro. And despite the increasing severity of the present pandemic...I still cannot bring myself to light it.
Had I lived with my abuela, I know that San Lázaro’s candle would have been lit a long time ago. In fact, I’m almost sure that we would have stock-piled candles for the saint and had them continuously burning throughout our time in quarantine. I look at the candle every day while I prepare my morning coffee and ask myself why I haven’t lit it.
The truth is: I don’t know.
Under any other circumstance, I would have already done the ritual work I felt was needed to alleviate the current circumstances. If I am completely honest with myself, I think my hesitation to light the candle is due to the paralyzing fear that the current pandemic has instilled in me: I fear for the lives of those I love, for the health of our elders, and for the overall well-being of our communities. I also fear the uncertainty of the future, despite knowing that, in some strange way, this virus has forced a long-overdue reckoning with the status quo.
Given my belief in the saint and all of my fears around this pandemic, I know that it may not make sense that I still haven’t lit San Lázaro’s candle. I want San Lázaro to get to work on all aspects of this pandemic, to clear the way and help usher in a new way of living, one in which the possibilities of true communion with our neighbors, along with responsible care for our planet and all of its creatures, are at the forefront of all of our actions.
So, why don’t I just light the candle, already!?
I think that the fears instilled in me by this pandemic also make me fear the consequences of lighting San Lázaro’s candle.
My fears are not simply based on a concern for actual flesh, blood, and bone but are also part of a crisis of faith with which I seem to be struggling. It’s not that I don’t believe in the efficacy of San Lázaro; it’s that keeping my faith in him in the abstract is part of what is sustaining me during these strange times.
Darle luz a tus espíritos, to give light to one’s spirits, is an instruction given to me by every practitioner of Afro-Cuban religions and Espiritismo that I have ever met. And while San Lázaro is not a spirit in the ancestral sense, he has been—and continues to be—a guiding and healing presence for me and for other members of my family.
So, by not lighting his candle and instead turning my energies towards this meditation, I am perhaps ‘giving light’ to San Lázaro in a more lasting way, one that will outlive the limitations of a burnt wick and melted wax. My candle-lighting dilemma has also brought me closer to Abuela Hilda, who I cannot visit at this time for her own protection, and to Tío Leonel, a long-distance truck driver who is risking his health day after day as part of the unappreciated yet essential Latinx workforce in this country.
San Lázaro, in fact, reifies his position on the side of the poor and marginalized by retaining the symbols of disease and oppression on his body—and visibly so. He also teaches us how to use these symbols to remake the world. The stories of San Lázaro and Babalú Ayé can teach us lessons about why and how diseases like COVID-19 become so widespread; their stories similarly underscore the vital role that so many ignored and taken-for-granted peoples play in the delicate balance of society.
In times like these, the actions of San Lázaro’s devotees, and their ability to find hope and empowerment in his symbols, can teach us how to enter into meaningful relationships and communion with the sacred and with one another.
As San Lázaro’s candle continues to sit unlit on my bookshelf, I meditate on what it would mean to finally light it and beckon San Lázaro to commence the necessary healing from this virus. When San Lázaro begins to sweep it from the face of the earth, he won’t just sweep away the novel coronavirus; he will also start sweeping away the viral settler-colonial capitalism that has plagued this world for far too long.
The total impact of COVID-19 is far from being assessed or understood. Still, one thing I know for sure is that, whether or not I ever light his candle, San Lázaro will not permit the socio-economic disparities and issues of accessibility that this pandemic has made bare to go away quietly into the dark of night.
