Good Friday in Maloban, part 2

M. had offered to take us to see the flagellantes. These are men who have their backs sliced with blades and then walk through the streets, beating themselves with whips made of small rods or leather straps. They do this to identity with the sufferings of Christ, and she told me that isn't a machismo thing. They are genuinely devout, and people along their route give them raw eggs for sustenance and water buckets to dip their faces in as an offering for them.

This is one of the flagellantes. Most of them had their faces covered as a sign of humility so that others wouldn't know about the sacrifice that they were making.

I hadn't realized that we'd stopped beside one of the stations of the Cross, but he stopped there and crossed himself and knelt for a minute before getting up and continuing on his way.

We would occasionally see a temporary altar set up along the way, and women would be singing in Tagalog into a microphone. I found out that they were singing a Catholic Easter Missal about the life of Christ. They do this all day on Good Friday. Note the infant Jesus dressed in a Superman outfit. :)

This was a bloody scene. We tried to step back out of their way as much as possible when they were coming by, but it was hard to get back very far sometimes. This is a zoomed shot, but they weren't more than a few feet from us rather often. Ben's t-shirt was splattered with blood.

We saw only one man carrying a cross, but there were about 30 or more flagellentes in this neighborhood.

Some might question why we took our boys to see something so bloody. (I had my doubts about whether this was a good idea or not.) We gave it careful thought, and we talked to them ahead of time about what we were going to see and why the flagellantes do what they do. We told them that these Catholic believers in Jesus share many of our beliefs, and though we don't think that this kind of self punishment is necessary because Jesus paid for our sins on the Cross, these are devout men who want to understand Christ's sufferings better and want to do this because of their desire to love Christ.

It wasn't a gloomy or scary atmosphere, despite the goriness of this, and they didn't seem distressed by it, though Evan looked away and told us that he didn't like it, and we told him that was totally fine, and we didn't love to see this either.