(PART I)
I have always been intrigued by the yearly spectacle of Filipino penitents being nailed on the cross on Good Friday in a small town in Pampanga. The practice was started by a faith healer in 1956.
In 2011, 30 males and one woman were nailed to the cross. This year, it was reportedly more than that.
I had so many questions about this strange and gory practice. Who started this and why? Do they feel pain when their hands and feet are pierced by steel nails? Is there any infection that has ever been reported? Any serious injury? What is the attitude of the Catholic Church? The local government?
What kind of people perform this sacrifice? Is this being practiced in any other part of the world?
The opportunity to finally witness this Filipino practice came when I was asked by my Danish former student, Pernille Harboe, to accompany her and three Danish documentary filmmakers to Pampanga to film the crucifixions.
They had originally intended to film cases of stigmata, but not finding one Filipino stigmatist, they decided to film the crucifixions instead, while still hoping to stumble on a stigmatist in the country. The Danish filmmakers were Lasse Spang Olsen (director), Emie Oigaard (cameraman) and a doctor of medicine, Jannik Helves-Larsen.
A coincidence, only a day before we drove to Pampanga, my wife and I were in the clinic of Dr. Eduardo Go, and she showed me a newspaper story about Ruben Enaje, who had been nailed to the cross 25 times since 1986.
I told her if I went to Pampanga, this was the person I would most want to meet, but I said it probably would be difficult to talk to him because according to the news, 50,000 visitors were expected to descend on Barrio Cutud, the original crucifixion site.
A former student of mine from Angeles, Pampanga, Riza Lim, agreed to coordinate the filming. She is a businesswoman and a holistic health practitioner who established a wellness center on a hill in Magalang, Pampanga. The hill is planted mainly to mango trees and herbal or medicinal plants.
More solemn
Riza did a splendid coordinating, from getting permits from barangay officials, to finding the mayor and major penitents to be nailed to the cross that Good Friday, April 6. She had suggested that we go to Bacolor, which had a smaller number of penitents and crowd, and which would be more solemn than Barrio Cutud, which had become more touristy.
But we ended up in Barrio Cutud anyway because all the interviews had been arranged there. And Enaje, the most famous of the penitents, was from there.
Our meeting with Enaje and wife Juanita in their very modest home on April 5 (Holy Thursday) answered many of my questions. Riza acted as interpreter for the Danish crew who asked the questions I would have asked.
We learned, for example, that Enaje thought of having himself nailed to the cross after surviving a fall from the third floor of the building he was painting. He suffered no injury at all, not even a scratch on his body.
“All I could think of when I was falling down was to call on God,” Ruben recounted. “I landed on the ground sitting down, as if nothing happened.”
He could not explain why, out of gratitude, he thought of having himself nailed to the cross. “Actually, I was afraid of blood and I had never watched any crucifixion.”
He promised God that he would have himself nailed to the cross nine times.
“Why nine times?” we asked. “Maybe because it was like saying a novena, which was recited nine times,” he replied.
After he was crucified nine times, his wife got seriously ill. He asked God to heal her and as sacrifice, he would have himself nailed nine times more. His wife got well, and he continued to be nailed for the next nine years.
After that, his son developed a tumor, and he promised again to have himself crucified nine times more. Next year will be his last year. He says he will stop the practice.
Aside from having himself nailed on the cross, Ruben also carries on his shoulder the 40½-kilo weight of a wooden cross, all the way to the crucifixion site, one-and-a-half kilometers away.
NOTE:
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