“Penitensya” (penitence, penance, loosly translated from Tagalog).
It happens once a year at about high noon, the hottest time of day, on Good Friday, two days before Easter. Some believe that it is one of the most extreme examples of colonial mentality resulting from Spanish colonizers, who, in 1521, planted the Catholic cross in the island of Cebu. I saw that wooden cross preserved and protected in a glass enclosure in 1979. The colonizers imposed their dogmatic church beliefs on the indigenous population, who later were called Filipinos.
Today, the Philippines is the only country in Asia that is predominantly Christian. According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, in 2020, 78.8% of the population were Catholics. As an aside, with the cross, Spain also brought western education to the country. The oldest university in Asia is the University of Santo Tomas, a Dominican school. It started as a college in 1611 and was elevated to university status in 1645. (In comparison, Harvard College, founded in 1636, was elevated to Harvard University in 1780).
Some Filipinos still practice the rituals of self-flagellation and reenact the crucifixion of Jesus in the Philippines today. Believing that those rituals will cleanse them of their sins and bring them closer to God, men devotees of the Church walk in a procession, usually from the local “simbahan” (church), frequently in the town plaza, toward the nearest beach. They hood themselves with cloth to hide their identities. First, their backs are slashed with sharp objects. Then, as they walk, they flagellate themselves rhythmically with arm length flagella fashioned from thin ropes, the far ends of which have pieces of metal, nails, or broken glass attached. By the time they reach their destination in midafternoon, their backs are literally torn, bloody, and macerated. If their destination is the beach, they wade in the salty water until they are submerged to their shoulders to cleanse their wounds. Otherwise, they lay flat, prostrate on the hot ground or pavement.
Other devotees walk in a procession carrying wooden crosses on their shoulders while their backs are being lashed. The procession ends in a designated area. Some of them are literally tied with outstretched arms to a cross where their feet and hands are nailed as Jesus was.
As a preschool kid growing up in the Philippines, I heard about this ritual of self-flagellation, but it was not until I was about ten or twelve years old when I first witnessed it in person. We had a family friend who had a vacation house on a beach. From there we watched the devotees. A couple of other times, faculty members and their children from Philippine Union College accompanied missionaries who wished to witness the ritual in person.
Why do these devotees flagellate themselves and allow themselves to be crucified once a year? Surely their devotion is remarkable. But I’m afraid they haven’t understood that our salvation is a gift from God. It cannot be earned. And our faults cannot be beaten out.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8).
“For it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).
May we believe and accept by faith that our salvation is a gift. It doesn’t require the bloody rituals of “penitensya.”
Honesto Pascual has not only seen torn and mangled bodies in three freeway accidents he witnessed, but has also treated, repaired, and sutured wounds of similar victims brought to the emergency room.