José Rizal was killed on this day. He’s a national hero of the Filipines, a writer and pacifist who has been called a precursor to Gandhi. He was executed for revolution, though he was a pacifist; some say his execution caused the Philippine revolution. I wish I’d known about him earlier. His life is astonishing. The Wikipedia article has some stylistic infelicities, but it’s well worth reading.
He was a universalist in the modern sense of the word, a person who believes in the universal nature of the mystery of god. When he was in prison, he corresponded with a Jesuit and wrote:
No, let us not make God in our image, poor inhabitants that we are of a distant planet lost in infinite space. However brilliant and sublime our intelligence may be, it is scarcely more than a small spark which shines and in an instant is extinguished, and it alone can give us no idea of that blaze, that conflagration, that ocean of light. I believe in revelation, but in that living revelation which surrounds us on every side, in that voice, mighty, eternal, unceasing, incorruptible, clear, distinct, universal as is the being from whom it proceeds, in that revelation which speaks to us and penetrates us from the moment we are born until we die. What books can better reveal to us the goodness of God, his love, his providence, his eternity, his glory, his wisdom? ‘The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork’.”
His last poem, Mi Ultimo Adios, written just before his execution and smuggled out of prison, contains this line:
Voy donde no hay esclavos, verdugos ni opresores,
Donde la fe no mata, donde el que reina es Dios.
It’s been translated:
I’ll go where there are no slaves, hangmen nor oppressors,
Where faith doesn’t kill, where the one who reigns is God.
Another great post!
“The day on which you would see me in the clutches of the friars, do not waste time making petitions or uttering complaints or lamentations — it is useless. Try to put another in my place who may avenge me and make them pay dearly for my misfortune! If I would see a son of mine in the mouth of a shark, I would not try to pull him out — for it is useless and all I would achieve is to destroy him — I would KILL the shark if possible, and if not, I would waylay him!
Well then, suppose that the friars are either sharks or only mudfish. If they are the first, THEY MUST BE KILLED; if they are the second, they should not be feared. I rather think they are dalag and so I am not afraid to fall into their hands. They have to be very many, in order to finish me, and even then they would have to pay for it! With these imprisonments and these vexations the exceedingly soft skin of our countrymen is hardened. Some will fall and desert, it does not matter; others perhaps will hold firm. Life is so pleasant and it is so repugnant to die hanged young and with ideas in the head.
If these ideas seem to you acceptable, communicate them to our countrymen there so that they may show more valor, more abnegation, less fear of death and torture, so as to make our enemies respect us. If they should be banished, better; on the island where they may be sent they communicate their ideas to the people there and they make propaganda. While in prison, they may meditate, like Regidor, on plans of revenge. If they should be hanged, they may be supposed to have died of the sickness of friarous or friarophobia. WE SHALL AVENGE THEM them and with their blood mark our enemies!”"
-Dr. Jose Rizal to Mariano Ponce
Paris, 18th April 1889
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“When the people is gagged; when its dignity, honor, and all its liberties are trampled; when it no longer has any legal recourse against the tyranny of its oppressors; when its complaints, petitions, and groans are not attended to; when it is not permitted even to weep; when even the last hope is wrested from its heart; then..! then..! then..! it has left no other remedy but to take down with delirious hand from the infernal altars the BLOODY and SUICIDAL DAGGER of REVOLUTION!!!”
Dr. Jose Rizal,
To Our Dear Mother Country, Spain, 10 October 1889
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“Oh I tell you that our Catholic religion is no longer a religion of God; no I DENY IT! God ought not to be responsible for such a religion!”
-Dr. Jose Rizal to Ferdinnand Blumentritt
Paris, 15 July 1889
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“I am readying myself for death. I am making arrangements for what I will leave behind and am preparing myself for any eventuality; Laong Laan is my real name. That is why I wish to finish the second volume of Noli at any cost and if it is possible, I do not wish to leave what I have begun without anyone to continue it…
May our compatriots there obey the voice of their heart and devote the precious time of their youth to something great, which is worthy of them. We do not have the good luck of other young men who can dispose of their time and their future.
We have upon as A DUTY; TO REDEEM OUR MOTHER FROM HER CAPTIVITY; our mother is pawned; WE MUST REDEEM HER before we amuse ourselves!”
-Dr. Jose Rizal to Marcelo H. del Pilar
Brussels, 11 June 1890
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“It is a grievous consequence of hatred of the friars that my aged mother, who was so devout and pious, now does not want to believe any more. She says that everything is deceit, the friars have neither faith nor religion. She wants to believe only in God and the Virgin Mary, and nothing more. And like my aged mother so are my sisters, and like them are many women of the Philippines. Look, Spain, look, Catholicism, at the immediate consequence of your policy!”
-Dr. Jose Rizal to Ferdinand Blumentritt
Hong Kong, 31 January 1892
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“We are children, we are the latestborn. But our hearts beats high, and tomorrow we shall be full-grown men who will know how to defend their hearts and homes. We are children, yes but nothing daunts us, neither wave nor storm or thunder. With strong right arm and unclouded brow WE SHALL KNOW HOW TO FIGHT IN THE HOUR OF DANGER. Our hands shall take up in turn those instruments of sovereign reason, the SWORD the pen, the SPADE!”
Dr. Rizal’s “A Talisay de Laong Laan”
Dapitan (circa 1895)
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