Semana Santa or Holy Week in Pampanga, a province in Central Luzon, the first Luzon province under the Spanish colonial rule and once the capital of the Philippines, is a week like no other.

While Catholics make Christ’s passion and death the focus of their Lenten practices, their expressions of faith are so fervent and sometimes exaggerated. They transform the province into a real Calvary replete with solemn praying and fasting, non-stop and weeklong singing of the pasyon, faith healing rituals, bloody flagellation, genuine crucifixion, elaborate staging of the resurrection and finally, like a catharsis, blowing up the traitor disciple Judas into bits and pieces.

Is this a religious spectacle? An excessive impersonation of Christ’s pain and victory? An indigenized, if not deviant, version of Catholic devotion?

It is all. Lent in Pampanga happens on an eerie landscape. In the last 11 years, it is held amid a gray terrain of volcanic ash and sand from Mt. Pinatubo’s eruptions and lahar flows since 1991. The volcano, towering more than 1,400 feet, looms from the west of the province. Presaged by Ash Wednesday, Lent in Pampanga officially begins with the blessing of the palms on Palm Sunday masses held in all dioceses in this largely Catholic province.

The Augustinians, later the Dominicans, spread the faith in Luzon from Pampanga, established the first printing press in Lubao town and built not less than 30 churches, one of which is now a national treasure in Betis, Guagua.

On the second Sunday of April, when fresh, green palms are festooned with red ribbons of crepe paper, stampitas and sampaguita garlands (to grace the doors or altars), residents in Bacolor reenact the entry of Christ into Nazareth. The priest, acting the part of Jesus, greets the singing throng and, while riding on a horse saddled with a red rug, leads them to the half-buried San Guillermo Church.

On the same day, hundreds of villagers return to the town that they left in mass exodus in 1995 to escape the rampages of lahar. Holy Week animates Bacolor, considered the Athens of Pampanga for the many poets, playwrights and public leaders it nurtured.

Tinajero village is especially bustling with life as visiting residents, now housed in resettlement sites, celebrate also the feast of their patron, St. Francis. Fr. Nestor Tayag, then the town’s parish priest, said, “Like Christ’s rising, we rise from the ashes of Pinatubo.”

Throughout the province on the same day, all chapels are readied for the traditional pabasa. The pasyon, metered verses on Christ’s life, is sung in age-old melodies blaring from a sound system for the faithful to hear and contemplate upon. The singing ends before Good Friday, capped by a puni where sponsors give a feast of ice cream or noodle soup.

In Candaba in the east, old women sing the pasyon the way their grandmothers did in an unhurried, poignant way. Holy Angel University’s Juan Nepomuceno Center for Kapampangan Studies in Angeles City runs the unabridged video documentation of Candaba pasyon during Holy Week.

Monday sees devotees bearing huge wooden crosses on their route to major churches. One of them, faith healer Fatima of Masantol town, passes the old MacArthur Highway. Some flagellants begin whipping their backs, a process called tabaran, as early as Monday.

In the mountainous village of Planas in Porac, faith healer Catalina Abuque, an Aeta, spends the first three days of Holy Week treating sick people. By Tuesday, Pedro Yutuc begins making dozens of panabad, glass shards fitted into a layer of red cement laid on wood pad and used for wounding the flagellants’ backs.

In San Pedro Cutud, where he lives, there are more than 3,000 male flagellants. Their grandfathers, fathers and uncles had done the same before them.
Conchita, Yutuc’s wife, puts together the burilyos, whips made from castoff fabrics, braided and then fastened with bamboo sticks that are five inches long and 15 centimeters in diameter.

In San Pedro, where more than 10 men are nailed yearly on the cross as a form of penitence, Ruben Enaje prepares three-inch metal nails by soaking these in alcohol-filled bottles. Long admonished by the Catholic Church to quit the brutal form of atonement, the Kristos bring the bottles to the church, clandestinely leaving these behind the robes of saints’ images. The Kristos and other protagonists and antagonists in Christ’s Via Crucis (Way of the Cross) prepare their costumes and repaint the crosses before Good Friday. Once done, the Kristos pray and fast for three days.

On Holy Wednesday, cross-bearing members of the Nazareno Lourdes Fatima (Nalorfa) will have reached San Pedro Cutud’s Purok Kuwatro, the local Calvary. The hill is made of lahar, the same materials that buried the village in 1995. Clad in white robes, except for their leader Apu who wears the Nazareth gown, they walk about 60 kilometers from Sitio Bono in Matatalaib, Tarlac City, to Cutud.

Flagellants fill the streets, especially at high noon. In a process called salibatbat, they roll on the ground many times, letting the wounds embrace the hot ground. Their stretched bodies form shadows of crosses as they prostrate themselves before the Metropolitan Cathedral in San Fernando City, Pampanga’s capital.

Prisoners at the provincial jail observe Lent. Inmates George Mercado and Dennis Torres recite the rosary in preparation for the flogging done within the high walls of the Spanish mansion-turned-prison.

On Maundy Thursday, devotees hike to the Apo Dolores Sanctuary in Bamban, Tarlac, north of Pampanga. Along the rolling hills, men carry crosses or whip their backs while women utter the mysteries of the rosary and trail them. In that sanctuary secluded in Bamban’s mountain, Apo Dolores, who is in her 60s, talks Christ’s teachings.

Friday is the busiest day of Holy Week. Devotees go on a visita iglesia or a journey to churches to pray the Stations of the Cross.The flagellants converge in Cutud by 6 a.m. The sound of “Tsssk! Tssk!” in one-two rhythm breaks the quiet of the day. The whipping becomes fiercer as penitents make their backs numb to endure the slashes.

If they all lash their backs simultaneously, they could drown the mournful voices of pasyon singers.

Sixty slits, each 10 cm. long, would surely torment anyone. But flagellants only emit a stifled cry or bite their lips. When blood oozes from the slits, they beat the burilyos on their backs again to let more blood spurt.

Between the spectators and the flagellant is a thin veil, the kaparosa, that hides the latter’s identity. He ties this hood with leaves. It is like a crown of anonymity. Flagellation is an all-male ritual, drawing boys as young as 10 who, like the adults, believe in the power of penance to wash off their sins. They also seek divine favors.

Before noon, less than 1,000 unshod, faceless flagellants form rows of single files.

The bloody promenade signals the start of the Via Crucis. Behind them, the man who plays the role of Christ is arrested by centurions. He carries the cross, is disrobed, beaten, tailed by the crying Blessed Mother, Mary Magdalene and Veronica.

At Purok Kuwatro the crowd swells to watch the crucifixion. How this began is not exactly known. Heroshito Sangalang, who holds the unofficial record of being nailed on the cross 15 times, said, “It’s a way of coming close to the sufferings of Christ.”

Since the 1970s, when the nailing departed from what was strictly just being rope-tied on the cross during the 1950s, the crucifixion at Cutud has become a tourist attraction. Visitors watch with awe the spectacle of pain and faith. They howl or hoot when their view is blocked. The Kristos are nailed one after the other and are raised to the cross in batches of three. Many are crucified for not less than 10 minutes.

Only Rolando Ocampo, 45, prefers to be crucified at 3 p.m. when everyone in the audience has left. “I’d like to pray intently. I don’t like to be watched as if what I was doing was only for a show.”

In Porac, flagellation is widely practiced among tricycle drivers like Noli Villapana and Jay Serrano. They retained an old custom: cleansing in the river. Unlike in San Fernando where water tributaries are bulging with lahar, the Pasig-Potrero River in Porac has rejuvenated. Villapana and Serrano end the rite by washing off the blood. Everything is done quietly to respect the dead Christ.

Silence rules on Black Saturday. The norm is to remain indoors to stay out of harm. In 20 towns and two cities, the evening is brilliant. Life-size images of saints, mainly owned by wealthy families, are illuminated in processions, dressed in new clothes and their carosas loaded with flowers. Mater Dolorosa, called Apong Dori, is veiled in black and remains the central image.

Easter Sunday is triumphant as it celebrates Christ’s resurrection from death and ascension to heaven. The salubong or reunion of the Risen Christ and his mother is the high point of the drama held before the mass. A young girl dressed as an angel dangles from a rope for the momentous task of unveiling the Blessed Mother’s black veil.

In Guagua, the salubong is held hours before the dawn of Easter. Minalin town does one thing that is not done elsewhere in the province. At the town plaza and before hundreds of spectators, a life-size, red papier mache of Judas Escariot, fully stuffed with pyrotechnics, explodes before the public. Members of the audience shout: “You deserve it, traitor.”

Father Alvin Manalang notes that a “burst of faith” deepens these Lenten traditions and spectacles.