WARNING: Not for the faint of heart.
Penitencia or Flagellation is one of the more barbaric type of showing repentance, people do this for the atonement of their sins and a means of asking forgiveness for past weaknesses and misgivings. This act rooted from an episode in the Passion of Christ, when Pontious Pilate condemned Him, He was flogged to the point of physical degradation before His crucifixion. This practice is evident in celebration of Holy Week in the Philippines and Latin America.
I've asked around and I found out that most flagellants began their journey on the night of Maundy Thursday by doing Visita Iglesia and then after that, most of them stay in a nearby chapel or church where they pray and ask for strength of body and will, some starts flagellation right away and will continue to do so until the end of Good Friday while others wait and begins on the day of the event, itself. The Penitencia usually happens in the early morning and ends mid-afternoon or when the devotees reach their end-point or the designated church or any place of worship. After that, the flagellants will take a dip in a nearby body of water - river, stream, etc. - as a symbol of cleansing.
Photos above are shown in series, to give you a better idea of what and how it is really done. First, flagellants scourge their backs to make it numb, a self-induced anesthesia, and then they will be hit with a piece of wood embedded with rows and rows of nails or sometimes, instead of pointy nails, a razor called labaha is used to cut their backs to start the bleeding, after the said ritual, the flogging begins. To affix more pain, and to add a little drama, the flagellants are supposed to lie face down on specific stops, and their associates will strike them with a bamboo stick.
Flagellants are half-naked men, walking barefooted under the piercing heat of the summer sun, most used black or white cloth to cover up their faces, while others prefer to show their visage in public without any disguise at all. Some flagellation rites are planned and executed by groups as seen above and in the first cluster of photos, while others opt to do their own penitence alone and at their own phase. Others put head ornaments made of twigs and leaves patterned on Jesus Christ's crown of thorns, and then some even go to the extent of adorning their bodies with tree branches and leaves like a modern-day Adam.
During our Good Friday walk last March 21, I've had five different encounters with practitioners of the Filipino custom Penitencia, this is my third, a group of four or five flagellants with their children working as their nemesis, their little ones hit them with bamboo sticks and kicked their arse while they were lying face down contemplating their sins.
They commonly use ropes, bamboo sticks or any kind of wood as a makeshift whip, I heard, that the number of sticks on a flagellant's whip symbolizes the number of years that he commits in doing the yearly ritual.
I don't really like this tradition, I don't believe that God wants his sons to inflict harm and degrade their flesh as a means to repent for their sins, a thoughtful and heart-felt prayer plus a promise to do good from then on will do the trick. But, seeing this man really touched my heart, he was walking alone, no bunch of cohorts or even a single companion, no marshals or tanod (barangay counterpart of police officers) on his tail, just him, an unknown individual walking around whipping himself, no flare of drama, no dash of artistry. And, for the life of me, I can't understand why he had to used chains instead of the usual wooden sticks, it got me thinking, how bad can this person be, for him to think of this grave punishment for himself.
Another form of Penitencia, instead of beating himself and loose lots of blood in the process, this one decided to re-enact the crucifixion sans the nailing to the cross part and replaced it with a moderate version - tying to the cross.
Matthew 6:12, 14-15 “And forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us . . . If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins”.
