The Holy Week, Good Friday in particular, is one of the most sacred times in the Philippines, the only predominantly Catholic country in Southeast Asia. At 3:00 p.m. of Holy Friday, Jesus Christ died for the sins of mankind, according to the belief of Catholics.

But first, a caveat. In the usual course of things, the second paragraph of VisitPinas posts contains a photo. This is one of those rare instances when the first paragraph is not followed by a photo, but by a warning: graphic images below. Do not proceed if you abhor blood, even in photos.

This is also one of the rare instances when we grappled whether to include the photos because of the blood. Really, we asked ourselves, how would a photo of a bloodied person be consistent with VisitPinas’ advocacy of advancing what is beautiful about the Philippines?

This is among the many instances in VisitPinas that we didn’t expect the subject to fall on our laps (or more properly, to fall in front of the long convoy of vehicles stuck in standstill traffic because of the procession of bloodied penitents in Tarlac City). We were on our way to Baguio City, passing Tarlac City to get to MacArthur Highway. We didn’t expect them there because we thought they could only be seen in Pampanga, together with the penitents who allow themselves to be nailed, with real nail through their palms, on the cross.

And yet there were so many of these penitents in Tarlac City, their faces covered in cloth, backs shirtless and bloodied by the constant strikes of whips. They do the whipping on their own, holding a rope with strips of bamboo at the end. For every step — and that’s for every step — they swing the bamboo-studded end of the whip alternately to the left and right, resulting to both sides of the back to be equally swollen. And bloodied.

It’s painful to watch. Not as painful as watching the suffering suffered by Christ in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ, but painful enough for us to cringe every time we hear the bamboo end strike the back. You could hear the “whack, whack” even with the windows closed. You could see the drips of blood sticking to the sides of the car on the road.

Rows of self-flagellants pass by the cars on standstill traffic. It’s like a torture for those who are not ready for such a scene. We had to ask why do they have to do that? What do you think?