¡Por fin!
Elaine Penagos finally lights her San Lázaro candle and says adiós to 2020
Altar to San Lázaro and Babalú Ayé, 17 December 2020. Photo: Elaine Penagos
December 17: After more than nine months of social distancing and isolation, the feast day for San Lázaro, patron saint of the poor and sick, finally arrived.
Around this time last year, I had just defended my comprehensive exams and become the proud parent of a beautiful French Bulldog puppy. My plans for research on lived religion included traveling from Atlanta to Miami for San Lázaro’s feast day in 2020. I was also fueled by my dream of finally being able to participate, as an adult, in the festivities alongside the saint’s devotees at the Rincón de San Lázaro Church in Hialeah.
The year 2020, of course, had other plans.
Fourteen days after I successfully defended my dissertation proposal, my spouse and I went into lockdown, hoping that, after a few weeks of social isolation, the government would declare victory over the novel coronavirus. We thought that our lives would soon return to some sense of normalcy. Little did we know that the virus would be around for the long haul, and that what began as a precautionary measure would come to define our lives for the remainder of the year.
Back in early March, as a visceral, faith-inspired response to the virus, I purchased a candle for San Lázaro during my last unmasked outing for groceries and household supplies.
I never lit the candle.
In May, I explored my reasons for not doing so in a reflection on my faith in San Lázaro:
“[B]y 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.”
In July, I had an accident in the kitchen, severing the tip of a finger. One visit to the emergency room and five stitches later, I was home with a throbbing reattached fingertip—which took more than a month to heal. During that time, I prayed to San Lázaro for my finger, hoping that I would regain full feeling and function of the wounded digit. Still, I could not bring myself to light his candle as part of my petition.
And nine months later, a part of me honestly thought that the prayer candle bought at the beginning of the pandemic would become a permanent part of my small bookshelf shrine.
Then last week, as the San Lázaro feast date approached, something sparked inside of me.
I revisited the local drugstore (wearing my mask this time) to purchase a new prayer candle. I had become quite attached to the one I bought in March. This particular candle is an enduring symbol of what it means to darle luz a mis espíritos in the more unconventional way of ‘giving light’ to my spirits internally rather than doing so externally.
To my surprise, the drugstore was all sold out of San Lázaro candles, usually displayed between candles of Pope Francis and the Divine Savior— also sold-out!
Had others in my suburban Atlanta community discovered San Lázaro as a result of the pandemic? Was I living among secret devotees of el viejo de las muletas?!
This had to be a fluke, or businesses were simply stocking less merchandise because of the pandemic...
I went home candleless but determined. However steeped we were in what is now a second wave of the pandemic, I was determined to celebrate in the best way I could.
Photo: Elaine Penagos
On the morning of December 16th, I called up my local florist to see if they had purple flowers for a bouquet. To my second surprise, the woman who answered the phone said that they only had two types of purple flowers left because the shop had been receiving a lot of requests for similarly colored arrangements.
First, sold-out San Lázaro candles, and now a shortage of flowers—purple flowers?!
Convinced that devotion to my beloved San Lázaro was reverberating throughout suburbia, I hurried to the flower shop to beat the demand. The florist put together a lovely arrangement of mostly purple and lilac flowers, with just a few white and yellow fillers to round out the bouquet. At home, I arranged the flowers in a vase and brought down the “March” candle and my figures of San Lázaro and Babalú Ayé/Omolú from my bookshelf.
At the stroke of midnight, with bated breath, I played Celina González’s “San Lázaro” and lit a match. As I watched la luz emanate from the candle, my chest tightened. A calm washed over me. I remembered the first time I created my own altar to San Lázaro: during my master’s program, as part of my degree-completion project on lived religion. I reflected on the way in which 2020 is concluding, especially in light of the presidential election and the beginning of vaccine distribution. The sensations in my body marked the start of a resolution to the crisis of faith I had experienced in May.
After so many months of numbness, simply kneeling in prayer on a tiled kitchen floor to thank San Lázaro for his continued protection warmed my soul with brand-new light.
Looking at the Rincón de San Lázaro Church’s Facebook page eased my fear of missing out on the communal ritual at a time when physical distance is required.
The usual feast day celebrations for the saint had been moved outdoors. Instead of its traditional street procession and mass, the church offered mass online for the Lázaro-faithful and expanded the celebration into a week-long affair in order to avoid crowding inside the sanctuary.
Photos show devotees, all masked, standing in line, six feet apart, in order to approach the statue of San Lázaro normally housed inside the church. My own celebration was a small and private affair in the sanctity of my kitchen. But my Celina-Gonzalez-playing and candle-lighting and gratitude prayer satisfied a longing I’ve had throughout the pandemic for communion not just with others but also with the divine.
Besides the multitudes that flood into Rincón de San Lázaro Church on his feast day, the only thing missing from my 2020 San Lázaro celebration was the company of my grandmother Abuela Hilda.
Photo: Rincón de San Lázaro Church
Abuela Hilda, who’d hand-sew capes for her San Lázaro statue with pieces of purple satin and velvet and burlap cloth and rhinestones and lace trimming.
Abuela Hilda, who’d hot-glue arrangements of plastic purple flowers to the small concrete San Lázaro altar guarding her front door.
Abuela Hilda, whom I made sure to call earlier on this Día de San Lázaro y de Babalú Ayé to tell her about the high demand for prayer candles and purple flowers and how much I miss her.
Abuela Hilda with San Lázaro during his feast-day celebration. Courtesy of Elaine Penagos
