On Good Friday an angry mob gathers outside Ramil Mengillo’s house, yelling, pounding on his door, threatening to burn him out.

When he finally appears, the mob grabs him, tears his clothes away, whips, beats and binds him to a heavy cross, which he’s then forced to carry five miles along a dusty road to the center of San Fernando. All of this before six in the morning.

It’s what the mob has done every year on Good Friday since 1986, when Ramil, a construction worker by trade, fell from a three-story billboard to a concrete parking lot below. He wasn’t expected to live, but did. His doctors called it a miracle, and newspapers throughout the country carried the story. Priests in that region of the Philippines said there was no doubt he’d been “touched by the hand of God,” something the people of San Fernando never forgot.

Atop a specially prepared ‘Calvary’ in the center of the city, Ramil is pushed to the ground and stretched over the cross. As four inch spikes are driven through his hands and feet, he cries out in agony, again when the cross is hoisted upright. For most of the day he hangs festering beneath the Philippine sun. As his blood spatters the ground, spectators dab their handkerchiefs in it, touching it to their faces and lips.

As always, they are pleased to see him suffer. They spit on him, bite him, curse him, offer him vinegar when he complains of thirst, laugh when it makes him sick. And Ramil wouldn’t have it any other way.

He does it for them, for all mankind, penance for sins the world has accumulated since the last time he was crucified. It’s the least he can do after receiving his miracle. The mob hopes to taste redemption in his blood, prays his pain will grant them salvation for another year. He is their lamb to slaughter, removed from the cross minutes before death.

When it’s over, Ramil remains inside his house for several days. The mob stops to check on him. They bathe him, treat and dress his wounds, offer him food and drink. When the children in his neighborhood play too close to his house they are admonished and sent away. “Ramil must have his rest.”

Later, when they see him in his garden picking chayote, they call over the fence, “How are you doing today, Ramil? Is everything well?”

Ramil looks up and smiles, waves to them with a hand wrapped in bandages white as snow. As always, the chayote tastes richer now that salvation is restored to San Fernando again.