Limandaang Taon ng Paglakad ng Bayan Kasama ang Poong Hesus Nazareno Michael Charleston “Xiao” Briones Chua, PhD (Cand.) Lars Raymund Ubaldo, PhD Department of History, De La Salle University michael.chua@dlsu.edu.ph (This is the full text of Prof. “Xiao” Chua’s oral presentation of a plenary lecture delivered on the first day of the National Research Forum on the Black Nazarene held on 16 March 2022.) Abstract We currently celebrate the 500th year of the arrival of Christianity in the Philippines as part of the first circumnavigation of the world, we also highlight the culture of our ancestors, who subsequently accepted the faith and appropriated it in their own lens. We may not know exactly when the image of the Black Nazarene arrived in the 1600s, or when the devotion started to spread and become popular, but what we can see throughout history how Jesus as the Nuestro Padre Jesus Nazareno (NPJN) became central to Filipinos’ understanding of Jesus Christ as Emmanuel (Ang Diyos na nakipagkapwa-tao) and how it strengthened them throughout the various struggles in our history. We also continue to express that spirit of pakikipagkapwa-tao through one of the most overwhelming manifestations of Filipino devotion to Christ—the procession and eventually the Traslacion of the NPJN every 9 January, wherein the devotees and the whole society, in general, is united to maintain order, and Bayanihan as the devotees worship. The whole bayan working together in pagsalya (pushing and putting into order) of their faith and their culture as a way of sharing in the via crucis of the Lord, and in thanking Him for the many hopeful resurrections. Keywords: pakikipagkapwa-tao, bayanihan, pagsalya Nazareno Studies_01 layout.indd 19 11/18/22 9:55 AM20