The power of faith
CNN Correspondent Maria Ressa
MANILA, Philippines (CNN) -- "I'm scared," said 41 year old Ruben Enaje, "sit with me while we wait."
He rubbed his hands, perhaps anticipating the pain of the nails as they are hammered into his palms.
He gestured for me to sit next to him, to help him calm his nerves.
Inside his dimly lit living room, there are several pictures of Jesus Christ on the cross, and the crucifix is at the center of an altar next to him.
Enaje told me he starts retreating inwards a day before, that he begins imagining the moment he once again lays on the cross.
The crowd is outside waiting because this year, the seventeenth year he has been crucified, Enaje plays the role of Jesus Christ, and villagers playing the role of centurions are waiting to arrest him in this violent re-enactment of the Passion and death of Jesus Christ.
It's a gory and brutal festival in barangay Cutud in Pampanga, the Philippines.
Although discouraged by the Catholic Church, at least a dozen men have been crucified here every year since the 1950's and hundreds more tear the flesh on their backs with wooden paddles studded with sharpened glass, then parade the streets flagellating themselves with makeshift cat'o'nine tails tipped with bamboo rods.
Each hit opens and reopens the wounds, and by the time they finish, their flesh has been ripped raw.
Ruben began the ritual in 1989 after he survived a three-story fall without a scratch. He called it a miracle. It was then he vowed to thank God by performing this ritual twenty years in a row.
With three years left, he says the fear doesn't go away.
"When you take a vow," says Enaje, "no matter what they do to you, you withstand the pain.
"When they drive the nail in, the only thought in my head is Jesus Christ. He'll be with me through everything and help me through the pain."
Enaje is a soft-spoken, gentle man, seemingly possessing an inner wisdom.
"God hears my prayers," he says. "When I pray to him, it won't be long and what I ask for will happen."
I ask him if God would want him to hurt himself.
He shakes his head. "God protects me," he says with unshakeable faith.
