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Today we celebrate the feast of St. Sebastian, a Roman who was martyred in the middle to late 200s. That is about all the factual information we have of this saint other than he was widely celebrated by the early Church.
St. Sebastian is the patron saint of the municipality of Reitoca. So, every year before his feast day, the statue of St. Sebastian travels to the various churches of the municipality of Reitoca so that all of the people can have a special Mass in his honor. Many of the churches of Reitoca are an hour’s journey by truck or longer.
On the day of his festival, the statue of St. Sebastian (picture above) is decorated with flowers for a special procession. In this photo, St. Sebastian is waiting for the arrival of St. Lorenzo (Lawrence), the patron saint of the municipality of Alubarén. Once the statues come together, they dance, kiss, and then lead the procession to the church of San Francisco de Asís in Reitoca for the feast day Mass.
The reason the two municipalities come together on each other’s patronal feast day, is that in the distant past, Alubarén was the seat of the parish. For reasons unknown, the seat changed to Reitoca. So, this dancing and kissing is to symbolize that there are no hard feelings between the two municipalities.
You might be wondering why St. Sebastian is the patron saint of Reitoca when the main church of the town is called San Francisco de Asís. Nobody seems to know for sure. Some say that in the 1700s when there were Franciscans around, they liked to name everything “St. Francis of Assisi.” The people of the town, however, had already established their devotion to Sebastian instead.
For a whole week, the pueblo of Reitoca celebrates with a festival – food, music, games, and the like. This year, however, we won’t have the celebrations because of the pandemic.
