AS early as last August, the Augustinian priests at the Basilica Del Santo Niño led by their rector, Fr. Edgardo Lazo, have started to map out the nine-day general program for the Masses and novenas for the Fiesta Señor.

Fr. Apolinario ''Jing'' Mejorada, chair for the committee on liturgy which oversees nine to 10 masses daily, starting Jan. 6, has an important task: To keep the spiritual side of the Sinulog celebrations well-attended by devotees, pilgrims as well as everybody involve in the organizing committees. The program has been printed, posted and handed out.

Ironically, Father Jing is now focusing on more earthly matters since he also heads the committee on physical arrangement and decorations at the basilica.

The crowd of devotees coming to pray, light candles, kiss the Sto. Niño and attend Masses is getting thicker as the fiesta atmosphere pervades the basilica's Pilgrim's Center now crisscrossed with colorful buntings flying overhead.

Business is brisk for vendors of candles, religious artifacts and balloons as well as for photographers who watch the scenes from the sidelines--waiting for a pose and a shoot.

Juan Luna and Magallanes Streets are filling up with stalls and sidewalk displays.

In front of the church, the candle vendors, mostly old women in worn-out kimonas, are dancing the Sinulog as the fires on their candles wave in the wind.

It has been almost two decades since the first Sinulog Festival was conceptualized by local officials to become the historical, religious and spectacular crowd-gathering phenomenon that it is now having been absorbed into the mainstream of Cebuano and Filipino culture and reaching devotees from different shores worldwide.

The feast of the Señor Sto. Niño, decreed by the Catholic Church to be celebrated every third Sunday of January, is a major celebration not just in Cebu, but also in Kalibo with its Ati-Atihan, and Iloilo with its Dinagyang.

But in Cebu, where the devotion to the Child Jesus first had its roots, the religious fervor that comes with the Sinulog celebration far outweigh the street-dancing event that marks the finale of the festival.

There were Sinulog celebrations in the past when Church leaders worry over commercialization, only to be assuaged by the thousands of Sto. Niño devotees who would walk for hours during the Saturday's afternoon solemn procession and would willingly spend the night in vigil around the basilica just to be in time for the dawn feast day Mass on Sunday.

At dawn of Saturday, the reenactment of the Spanish landing via a fluvial parade across the Mactan Channel, the natives in a Christian Mass, the planting of the cross and the worship of the image are the Sinulog's elements which revive the religious, historical and folkloric and which involves the Catholic community in proportions unmatched throughout the country.

It feast also brings devotees at their best.

''Eighty to 90 percent of the devotees who come during the start of the fiesta days give thanks rather than ask for petitions,'' according to Father Jing. ''Most of them say that it is their panaad (vow) to express gratitude to the Sto. Niño because many of them are blessed or protected. They come here and endure the expected discomforts.''

Other devotees have even made as part of their yearly panaad to hand out food and beverages to others who have spend long hours to be in line for the few minutes they can spend to touch and kiss the exposed image of Sto. Niño.

And for the first time the Sinulog was conceived, a tent city has been set up near the basilica for the hundreds of out-of-town devotees without relatives in the city, who, in previous years, had to spend the night on the sidewalk.

The tent city, put by government and private agencies, has portable toilets provided by City Hall.

As in the past years, medical volunteers will be available on the church grounds during the Sunday Mass as thousands of people are again expected this year.

Just try to imagine the 10,000-capacity Pilgrim's Center bursting at the seams, with people spilling onto the streets surrounding the church.

Father Jing says the Jakosalem side of the basilica will be opened as main entrance for the line to the Sto. Niño Shrine. The Sto. Niño Museum at the back and basement of the Pilgrim's Center will be opened every day.