Think about it
Rizal in our time
By Jun Velasco
“He that will be great among you, let him serve.”—Jesus Christ
IT’s almost June, the month of love and marital bliss, although the sign of the times shows many marriages are beating their paths to faithlessness and divorce.
In these fabled isles, there’s no doubt that in this month of June we recall a great love story, one of the greatest love affairs for La Patria.
Today, we pause to pay homage to a great Filipino lover, not in the sensual sense, in fact, we know and love him being the greatest Filipino that ever lived, our national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal on his l50th birthday on June l9.
Our first encounter with Jose Rizal — that all-too familiar name and his saga, his extraordinary life and impossible-to-match deeds and achievements for himself, for country and the global community – was during our boyhood, that was joyfully spent in Barangay Malued in Dagupan.
We were introduced to the hero by our Lolo or Lake Peles Martinez, tatay of our beloved nanay. We remember vividly (we, together with Usec Dante, were lake’s favourite apos, we like to think) – how we would be all ears to the tall Spanish mestizo every sundown.
Lake was unusually knowledgeable and enthusiastic in recounting our national heroes’ detailed exploits. We thought history teachers were like him. It was like watching an action movie ala Zorro or the Count of Monte Cristo, the latter being a favourite novel of the hero when he was l3.
So, even before we learned about the lives of great men in school, Lake had told us them all, Rizal, Bonifacio, Aguinaldo, the Del Pilars, the Luna brothers, Mabini, Jacinto, Melchora Aquino, and many others. Lake was a walking encyclopedia who also knew a lot about the American greats — Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, fiction characters like Superman, Captain Marvel, and others.
His favourite or his foremost hero was, of course, Rizal. By the way, we first heard of the aphorism “the pen is mightier the sword” from Lake Peles quoting some man, was it Napoleon? Lake advised us to “be a writer when you grow up” though we had no idea whatsoever about the writing career.
What first caught our interest about the boy Rizal was his losing one of his slippers in the river while he was boating. Forthwith he threw the other one probably with a fisherman passing by in mind.
Rizal’s boyhood already showed the makings of a great man, a national, if not, an international hero. The deep melancholia that gripped him whenever he’d leave the house in Calamba for his high school studies in Binan and later Manila showed a love-lavished kid. His was a world of boundless love from family and vice versa and later, country. But the young hero faced the music with a lump in his throat albeit with fear and foreboding, but biting the bullet, so to speak, just the same. Rather than sought the comfort of friends and other means of panacea, he faced his anguish with utter courage and resolution.
How he said goodbye to romantic love in favor of country had marked him a man of destiny. Had he lived today, many believe he would surely be on the forefront of the crusade against injustice, a cause he had championed with his whole life, which eventually caused his death. We all know that he died so that Filipinos would live decently and prosper.
He would have continued to fight the colonizers and the imperialists, especially the economic imperialists who devour and continue to devour the vitals of our nation; he would have slammed their local lackeys, the corrupt and abusive politicians, who were no different from those he fought during his time.
Rizal would have led a movement to decapitate corrupt officials, maybe not physically, but in the realm of debate and the courts of law.
If he were around today, would he run for president or senator or governor of some province? We don’t think so. He was of very fine character to take part in a political circus or a contest known for its dirty tactics. He probably would remain a selfless revolutionary blasting the conscience of government with razor-sharp words that would bleed even hearts of stone.
If in the superstitious days, he brought down the corrupt establishment with his pen, it should be easy for him to do so now where a conscientious section of the media would join his cause. The battleground would favour the man of intellect, backed by millions of allies who have been waiting for a leader even at this time.
When we were inducted as chapter commander of the Knights of Rizal in Quezon City a few years back, we told our brothers that our first Rizal teacher was our grandpa whom we described as a Spanish mestizo. That’s fine, they said, because many Spaniards apart from those who plotted to destroy him loved Rizal.
What exactly drove Rizal to such heights of patriotism that can’t be matched to this day? We say, it’s his boundless love for country and humanity so that God and the Muses couldn’t look the other way when he works.
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