Life and Works of Rizal

Importance & Relevance of Rizal’s poems and essays of the following terms:
1. Religion and spiritual
2. Social and cultural
3. Education
4. Political
5. Economics

For an introduction, José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda is a celebrated national
hero of the Philippines. He was a polymath who excelled in multiple fields of learning. He could
essay the roles of a diarist, poet, novelist, and correspondent with equal proficiency and craft.
What is even more fascinating is that not only was he a prolific writer, but also a true patriot who
was a passionate advocator of reforms in the Philippines during the Spanish colonial era. To
commemorate this national hero’s contribution to society, the Filipinos celebrate Rizal’s death
anniversary as a Philippine holiday aptly called, the Rizal Day. In 1896, after a military trial,
Rizal was executed and it is believed that this martyr was the spur for the Philippine Revolution.
These are some of Rizal’s “Works” through the years that he lived.
 Sa Aking mga Kabata (written by Rizal at the age of 8, dealing with the theme of love for
one’s language)
 To the Virgin Mary
 Education Gives Luster to the Motherland
 To Josephine
 To the Philippines Youth
 Song of Maria Clara
 A Poem that has No Title
 Kundiman
 Hymn to Labor
 Memories of my Town

Religion and Spiritual

Based on the letters Dr. Rizal wrote, it can be said that his concept of God could be summarized
into three notions. First, he believed that God existed. Second, he believed that God was Plus
Supra. Lastly, he believed that God was the origin of nature; that is, nature was the expression of
God.
As regards the first notion, Dr. Rizal made explicit that he believed that God existed. He was
convinced that a supernatural power behind all of creation had to exist. He says to Fr. Pastells,
"We are entirely in accord in admitting the existence of God: how can I doubt it when I am
convinced of my own existence? Who recognizes the effect recognizes the cause." It was clear
that Dr. Rizal subscribed to the idea of "necessary-contingent beings" where the contingent being
needed other beings for it to exist while the necessary being existed on its own. As such, the
necessary being becomes the origin of contingent beings. This necessary being has been labelled
by many as "God."
As regards the second notion, Dr. Rizal argued that his God was not like the God of the
Catholics, as his God was far above such things. He says to Fr. Pastells, "In the conviction that I
find myself before the Supreme Problem, which confused voices desire to explain to me, I
cannot but answer: 'That may be so; but the God that I surmise is much greater, much better: Plus
Supra!" He thought that a requirement to the Godliness of God was His being above all things,
which meant His being incomprehensible.
Dr. Rizal was clearly not convinced that a sufficient understanding of God that was as powerful
and metaphysical as the Supreme Being could be contained in the consciousness of little mortals
who have no capacity to understand beyond what was in the words of Nietzsche "divined" to
them. Mortals who were so limited could not have possibly comprehended a limitless being. As
such, Dr. Rizal articulated that the only genuine faith was "blind faith." In short, the more people
tried to explain to him what and who God was, the more he got convinced that they did not know
what they were talking about.
What Dr. Rizal meant by "blind faith" was, since it was impossible to comprehend God as He
was Plus Supra, he could have only hinged his belief on the fact that "God was God." As such,
he did not deny nor did he accept the religious explanations of the mortals around him. Blind
faith was more of a disposition of philosophy than of religion. It was a disposition where one did
not accept and deny despite having a personal conviction.
Clearly, Dr. Rizal's philosophic-religious view on God was well-reflected on. It was a product of
competent ratiocination by an "Indio" whom the Spaniards then undermined. He did not content
himself with the teachings he grew up with as a student of Catholic institutions. He explored,
rationalized, and argued. He asked questions about faith and the fundamental teachings of the
Church. He was however careful not to offend the religious sensibilities of his countrymen. To
him, ratiocination was simply a gift from God. To not use it would thus have been offensive to
the Giver.
Rizal saw the many injustices suffered by his fellow Filipinos: they depended on the religious
corporations or on big landowners, for land to till, or for their living; people were afraid of airing
their grievances or of talking or protesting against the friars or the government, in short, there
was no real freedom of the press or speech. Most Filipinos lacked the privilege of education, and
its resultant benefits, or if they did have education, this was the obscurantist kind generally
propagated by the colonialist policy, which not only kept Filipinos in the dark about their rights,
but worse, had molded them into an abject, submissive people ignorant or worse, ashamed of
their own proud heritage, a heritage that existed even before the arrival of the Spaniards.
Finally, Rizal realized that the Philippines had not been consistently represented in the Spanish
parliament. For Rizal, this was the root of the absence of justice in the country, or of their being
deprived of basic rights.

Education
It merits emphasis that Rizal had a special place in his heart for the Philippine youth. Indeed,
when he wrote Education Gives Luster to Motherland, Rizal was 15. But what education was he
talking about? Certainly, Rizal spoke of education in terms of the sciences and arts; but
education was not just a matter of becoming “smart” or of gaining a livelihood. Even at a young
age, as a youth himself, Rizal saw that an education was key to creating a class of Filipinos that
could lead the country to freedom and self-determination.
Education was thus key to knowing oneself. Shakespeare’s famous adage from Hamlet, “To
thyself be true,” rings true. Rizal was part of a larger anti-colonial movement that was beginning
to sweep across Asia at the turn of the 20th century as colonized peoples discovered their own
selves and histories from the ashes and sediment of imperialism. This was not a re-discovery of a
pre-Hispanic past. Rizal felt that there was much that could be learned from the Spanish, and
Western education more generally, but also that it must be adopted and adapted by Filipinos.
Around the same time, Chinese and Japanese intellectuals were coining phrases such as
borrowing “Western tricks to save China from the Westerners,” reflecting the idea of taking
Western learning and applying it to Asian struggles. Rizal was part of such a re-interpretation
that was occurring in the Philippines about what it meant to be Filipino in the modern world.
This movement is not one that has ended, either. In my research, I have seen the Winnipeg
Filipino community work to renegotiate their identity. In newspapers from the 1970s and 1980s,
one can see how a Filipino heritage within Canadian society created tensions and negotiations.
Were the two at odds? By no means, just as a Filipino identity was not incompatible with a
“modern” education, so long as a Filipino foundation was maintained.
Applying Rizal’s writings on education in a modern context in which migration is a reality for
many, education should include a continued and intensified preservation of heritage through an
emphasis on education and openness to critical enquiry. Not only will our youth then be aware of
their cultural identity, which is important in fitting into larger Canadian society, but they will
also be raised as global citizens capable of critical though. Furthermore, beyond knowledge of
one’s heritage, this education should include the means to produce and practice one’s heritage. I
think this was one of Rizal’s major projects in his writing, to emphasize that education and self-
awareness was key to the Philippines’ future self-determination and freedom. And this is what it
means to live in a multicultural society like Canada: not just to be encouraged with empty words,
but aided in this process of heritage preservation – in this case through meaningful education.
Social and Cultural
Jose Rizal is said to have first expressed his sense of nation, and of the Philippines as a nation
separate from Spain, as a young student in Manila. Proof of this, it is said, can be found in two
of his writings. In his poem “To the Philippine Youth”, which he wrote in 1879, when he was 18
years old (and which won a prize from the literary group), Rizal speaks of the Filipino youth as
the “Fair hope of my Motherland”, and of the “Indian land” whose “son” is offered “a shining
crown”, by the “Spaniard… with wise and merciful hand”. Still in this poem, Rizal considered
Spain as a loving and concerned mother to her daughter Filipinas.
In his memoirs as a student, later published as Reminiscences, he spoke of the time spent in his
sophomore year at the Ateneo as being essentially the same as his first year, except that this year,
he felt within himself the stirrings of “patriotic sentiments” and of an “exquisite sensibility”1.
He might have been only referring to the sense that the Philippines, was a colony of Spain, and
as such, the Philippines was a part of Spain. If this were the case, his patriotism was therefore
directed toward Spain for being the Philippines’ mother country. Seen in another light, these
words may have evidenced Rizal’s moment of epiphany, his own portent of a future time when
he would awake to the tragedies that were the lot of his fellow indios, the rightful heirs of the
Filipinas their motherland.
As fate had it, Rizal ultimately awoke to the real state of the Philippines under the hands, not of a
loving Mother Spain, but of an exploitative despot represented by the colonial government in
Manila and the friars who held great influence over the government. His awakening may have
come by way of his own experiences at the university, his family’s experience at the hands of the
religious group that owned their farmland; and perhaps, from the stories about the reformist
movement and the sacrifice of the three priests, collectively known as Gomburza, of ten years
before. This last most likely were from his older brother Paciano, who had been close to Fr. Jose
Burgos, and had been an outspoken critic of abuses during his years in college at the Colegio de
San Jose.
Rizal saw the many injustices suffered by his fellow Filipinos: they depended on the religious
corporations or on big landowners, for land to till, or for their living; people were afraid of airing
their grievances or of talking or protesting against the friars or the government, in short, there
was no real freedom of the press or speech. Most Filipinos lacked the privilege of education, and
its resultant benefits, or if they did have education, this was the obscurantist kind generally
propagated by the colonialist policy, which not only kept Filipinos in the dark about their rights,
but worse, had molded them into an abject, submissive people ignorant or worse, ashamed of
their own proud heritage, a heritage that existed even before the arrival of the Spaniards.
Finally, Rizal realized that the Philippines had not been consistently represented in the Spanish
parliament. For Rizal, this was the root of the absence of justice in the country, or of their being
deprived of basic rights.

Political
RIZAL'S POLITICAL ideas are scattered through his published and unpublished works ; the two
novels, the annotations to Morga, newspaper articles, pamphlets, letters. They occur for the most
part in fragmentary form as partial studies, occasional reflections, obiter dicta: yet they seem to
spring from a fairly consistent body of doctrine which he had worked out in his own mind,
though he never found the time to get the whole of it on paper .Various attempts have been made
to reconstruct this body of doctrine. The most obvious method has been to cull from Rizal's
writings all the "political" passages and to combine them in the manner that seems to make the
most sense to the compiler.
The great weakness of this method is that while the resulting synthesis may be eminently
satisfactory to the one who constructs it, we cannot be at all sure that it would be so to Rizal
himself. For the pieces of this puzzle can be assembled sembled in a number of different ways ;
by simply changing the relationships between them we can make Rizal out to be a radical or a
moderate, a liberal or a conservative, a reformer or a revolutionary. Now he obviously could not
have been all these at once, and so our different econstructions may indeed throw light on our
own political opinions, but not necessarily on those of Rizal.
They will embody more -or less neatly the political philosophy whicliwe imagine or wish Rizal
to have held, not necessarily that which he did hold .It is not enough, then, to pluck the political
ideas scattered through Rizal's work and weave them into a garland the strands of which are of
our own devising. We must look for some clue to the structure which these ideas took in his
mind and the relative values which they had within that structure. Where shall we find it? Our
first instinct is to turn tot he novels. Of all Rizal's works they are unquestionably the most
elaborate and mature .Yet one consideration must give us pause. These are works of fiction, and
in a work of fiction the author speaks for the most part not in his own person but in that of his
characters. With regard to certain passages we may have a strong suspicion that while the face
may be the face of Ibarra or Elias or Padre Florentino, the voice is that of Rizal. But we can
never be quite certain, and Rizal in one of his letters explicitly warns us not to be.

Economics
Today we are commemorating the 120th anniversary of the martyrdom of our national hero, Dr.
Jose Rizal. In the early morning of December 30, 1896, after the Spanish military court found
him guilty of conspiracy, sedition and rebellion, he took the firing squad’s bullets and dropped
dead face up in Bagumbayan. Paeans to his heroism will not bring him back to life. We will do
Rizal more honor remembering not only how he died, but how he lived.
In his most prescient essay, The Philippines A Century Hence, written in 1889 and in his
December 15, 1896, memorandum for use by his counsel, Rizal made the following predictions:
One, “the Philippines will one day declare herself independent”; two, “the great American
Republic with interests in the Pacific…may one day think of acquiring possessions beyond the
seas”; three, “the Philippines will defend with indescribable ardor the liberty she bought at the
cost of so much blood and sacrifice”; four, “Japan will swallow us”; five, “[once liberated] the
Philippines will, perhaps, establish a federal republic”; and six, “[the Philippines] will, perhaps,
enter openly the wide road of progress and will work jointly to strengthen the Mother Country at
home, as well as abroad…”
The lessons learned from those years of colonization were that all those efforts to keep people
uneducated and impoverished, had failed. Nationalism eventually thrived and many of the
predictions of Rizal came true. The country became independent after four centuries of abusive
Spanish rule and ng five decades under the Americans. An example of resoluteness and
determination. A positive virtue indeed.
There is, however, some questioning on whether we are truly independent. The continuing
control of our economy by an elite oligarchy is an example of such dependency. Quoting Rizal in
El Filibusterismo who said, “Why independence if the slaves today become the tyrants of
tomorrow?” they have expressed cynicism about the wide social and income disparities between
a small favored economic and political elite and the rest of the population. And the failure of the
family, our educational system and political leaders to instill national discipline and love of
country.
A number of analysts have pointed out some flaws in our national character that can get into the
way of achieving desired visions such as competitiveness. These include mindsets like lack of
appreciation of importance of adhering to the rule of law and maintaining high standards of
excellence. Prevailing attitudes like “puwede na” or “bahala na” only foster mediocrity in a
global setting where attributes of precision and critical thinking are needed.
The creeping autocracy and our inability to exercise full control over our national sovereignty
require public awareness, courage, and a strong sense of national identity. But being a people
divided and fragmented, a great challenge to governance is being able to help citizens connect
with their communities . There are opportunities lost such as using available communication
technologies – Internet and mobile technology to connect groups, to inform and educate, to
enable all of us citizens to discover the common ties we share. The delays we have faced in our
peace talks are indicators of our lack of resoluteness in taking risks and meeting challenges of
establishing a more peaceful and stable social order. The growing social and income gaps are
symptoms of our inability to forge a common bond with our brothers and sisters in marginalized
communities. How some of us can possibly endure living in a most unequal community
befuddles neighbors who live in more egalitarian societies! We have failed to utilize available
communication technologies in creating innovations that would improve dialogue and close gaps
between our fellow citizens and the world outside. Instead, they have been used to create chaos
and spread fake news. If these statements appear to be indictments of the status quo, it is because
we wish help establish a fairer, kinder society by reminding fellow citizens that our hope for
survival depends on each of us taking responsibility. I am sure that our heroes would not have
been contented to rest on their laurels. Which is what we sometimes do when we are told that our
country is the fastest growing economy. Or, when the Palace pats its back because in 29 days of
war in Marawi, there has not been a single violation of human rights.