It is dawn on Good Friday. Singing drifts up through our window from the road 22 stories below. When I peer down, I see hundreds of people with candles beginning their Holy Week pilgrimage to Antipolo. The heat, the distance, and for some the bare feet, will make this a long, painful trek. In other areas of the country, people are slashing themselves with whips, and men are gearing up to be crucified.
Holy Week traditions, including self-imposed suffering, have occurred in the Philippines for many years. Faith healer, Artemio Anoza started reenacting crucifixions in 1962, and according to Google, dozens of Filipinos volunteer to be crucified each year.
This begs the question–Why?
As I spent time researching and discussing Holy Week practices, it became clear that there are four things Filipinos hope to achieve by undergoing sacrificial rituals during Holy Week: (1) to convince God to do something (2) to personally change; (3) to express gratitude to God; (4) to erase wrongdoing.
Convince God to do what we want
For centuries people have tried to entice God to do things by hurting themselves. In the Philippines, this is practiced during Holy Week in different forms such as whipping and crucifixion.
One Reuters article1 quotes Danilo Ramos, who has been crucified 23 times, as saying, “I will do it as long as my body will allow me. I hope God will see my sacrifice and take good care of my family.”
In another Reuters article2, it says, “Poor people in the province began the custom [crucifixion] as a way of seeking forgiveness, cures for illness and the fulfillment of other wishes…”
Often these practices take place because of a vow or panata that someone makes. By making a panata, a person promises God that if He will perform a miracle such as healing for themselves or a family member, they will make a pilgrimage, whip themselves, or be crucified for a certain number of years.
The important question to ask ourselves is this: Do reciting extra prayers, self-inflicting pain, and enduring crucifixion insure that God will do what we ask?
The Apostle Paul didn’t think so. Paul wrote, “in every situation by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”3 It is a simple formula: pray, ask, express gratitude.
How do we become the person we want to be?
Another reason people give for enacting painful rituals is that they want to change, to become a better person. It is admirable to want to become a better person, to quit drugs, to quit gambling, to be a faithful husband, etc. But, do performing rituals, making sacrifices, and undergoing pain really transform us?
The Apostle Paul would say that these activities do not transform our character.
Paul says that if we want to change, our minds and hearts must change: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”4
How does God want us to thank Him?
A third reason people perform Holy Week rituals is that they want to express gratitude to God for something He did for them, or for one of their family members, in the past. Perhaps they promised God (made a panata) if He did whatever they asked for they would pay Him back with a sacrifice of suffering for a number of years.
An article5 reports that painter Ruben Enaje, 54 has been crucified each year for the last 29 years to give thanks after he survived a fall from a building.
Is this the kind of thanks God wants? Nowhere in the Bible does it say that God wants us to suffer physical pain to express our gratitude. The Bible says: My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.6 Jesus tells us: “Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me.”7
How can we erase our mistakes?
Finally, practitioners of these rituals want to be clean. An April 2015 article entitled Filipino Devotees Nailed To Cross In Crucifixion Re-Enactment states: “After these penances some people feel they have paid for their sins and the activities of the week have made them clean. Now they are able to face God. Devotees undergo the crucifixions in the belief that such extreme sacrifices are a way to atone for their sins, attain miracle cures for illnesses or give thanks to God.”
Although this deep desire to get right with God is something we can admire, performing Holy Week rituals of suffering make it seem like we are saying that Jesus’ suffering on the cross was not enough to provide the complete package of what we want or need. Is that true?
Minutes before He died, Jesus himself said, “It is finished.” The Greek word that we translate in English as “finished” is tetelestai, an accounting term that means “paid in full.” When Jesus said, “It is finished”, He was declaring the debt owed to His Father was wiped away completely and forever. Years later, Peter the apostle attested to the fact that nothing was needed to add to Christ’s suffering in order to pay for sins, Peter wrote, “Christ suffered once for sins.”
Once. It is finished. We don’t need to do more.
Is the real problem that we are too proud to accept the free gift of forgiveness from God completely paid for by Jesus?
The Christian faith is based upon the foundation that we cannot pay for our own sins, and Jesus has already paid for them completely. Further efforts are useless. What we must do is believe what the Bible tells us: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.”
Footnotes
- article entitled Filipinos Nailed to Cross in Easter Ritual Frowned on by Church, (Erik de Castro, 2014)
- April 18, 2017 https://www.reuters.com/…crucifixion/catholics-in-the-philippines-re-enact-crucifixion.
- Philippians 4:6
- Romans 12: 2
- Associated Press 2015
- Psalm 51: 17
- John 14:21
