Here is a make-believe pulpit sermon of FR* Jose Sison Luzadas, local preacher of a make-believe diocese delivering a make-believe sermon to a make-believe congregation members of the Order of the Knights of Rizal.
*FR means Fellow Rizalist
Reading from the gospel of Dimasalang aka Laong Laan aka Mey Pagasa.
Text taken from part one, paragraph two, of “The Philippines: A Century Hence”. Its equivalent Spanish version “Filipinas: De Cien Anos” that appeared in the 1889 edition of the La Solidaridad, in Barcelona, Spain.
”IN ORDER TO READ THE DESTINY OF THE PEOPLE IT IS NECESSARY TO OPEN THE BOOK OF ITS PAST”
“Lo and behold! I will write a book that will lift the veil that has kept you blind 300 years in a morass of ignorance. I will open your eyes to make you see how the friars in their role as caretakers of the lost souls made you dutiful, obedient and Sunday-religious children of God. You were made o look like their willing victims. Your unquestionable reliance to a Christian god to intervene against the injustices, oppression and tyranny of Spanish Church fathers and state officials is nothing but a bogus ticket to the “Promised Land”. Your lack of education hinders your ability to decide what is right and what is wrong. You will be tempted to imitate borrowed despicable defects of your enemy believing to be the “Better Way”. When all of these sapped your energy to resist, you are inviting colonial mentality and the end of your history and culture. LET THERE BE LIGHT”
Thus ended the sermon. Obviously, the people referred to were the impoverished native Indios who were colonized with no basic rights and freedom by a conjugal partnership of the church and state. Partly to blame of their own undoing, they suffered all forms of degradation until an Indio prophet from Kalamba rising to the occasion appeared and said unto them:
It took one man to translate to the layman’s lingo what ails his motherland. Fortunately, that man was highly educated and a medical doctor specialized in eye diseases. That man was Dr. Jose Rizal. Was this not what we read in the introduction of the NOLI? Was this not what Simoun preached in the FILI to justify revolution?
In retrospect, Rizal banked on high hopes in his novel, the NOLI, on how education to the native inhabitants can be factor preparing them someday at par to enjoy the benefits enjoyed by Espanoles Peninsulares thru gradual and peaceful struggle.
To Rizal, this was the best option available to complete his DIAGNOSIS based on the case history of his ailing motherland. The sequel FILI on the other hand, served as the PROGNOSIS upon which a desperate and concerned doctor out of sheer patriotism wrote his prescription, an RX to Revolution. Well, how about the LA SOLIDARIDAD? “New England Journal of Medicine” is my best bet.
Some pay homage to Rizal as “the prophet and architect” of Spain’s downfall losing her colonial empire in the closing years of the nineteen century as he predicted the emergence of the United States to world power.
There is, however, in congruency if not irony that baffle even today’s generation that the FILI fictionalized revolution led by Simoun was a failure and so was Rizal. Was he not blamed for the failure of the Revolution of 1896 by rejecting the plea of Bonifacio and his Katipuneros, calling the Revolution an absurd idea? Life imitates art or vice versa.
What lessons have we learned from our ugly colonial past? We experienced changing colonial masters but not colonial mentality. Speaking of colonial mentality, one bright-eyed social researcher noted with insatiable interest about the stigma or residue ingrained in our culture that is difficult to shake off. He identified this tendency as “IMSACF”SYNDROME; meaning I aM S(panish)A(merican)C(hinese)F(ilipino). He was amused to find Filipinos claiming to have foreign ancestry when there are no traces visible as Iberian, American or Caucasian features. What a classic case of Ethnic Forgery!
Pura Santillan-Castrence has beautifully crafted words, describing our countrymen who are Sunday-religious Filipinos. They are those who take confession, take communion on Sunday but the rest of the week are involved taking bribes or bribing government officials or engaged in other corrupt practices.
There are Born- again Rizalists” as well as “Born-again-Christians”.They are all “Born-again-Filipinos” who take pride being Filipino again because Pacquiao put the Philippines in the map for winning the World Boxing Title match.
To be a Filipino carries with it responsibility, awareness, pride and vigilance. Without national soul we are a nation of dead race. Yet there is a prevailing notion of self-doubt as to what really constitute a Filipino “in thought and in deed”. How sincere and proud are you as a Filipino? Any regrets?
Jose Sison Luzadas, KGOR
Delray Beach, Florida
*FR means Fellow Rizalist
Reading from the gospel of Dimasalang aka Laong Laan aka Mey Pagasa.
Text taken from part one, paragraph two, of “The Philippines: A Century Hence”. Its equivalent Spanish version “Filipinas: De Cien Anos” that appeared in the 1889 edition of the La Solidaridad, in Barcelona, Spain.
”IN ORDER TO READ THE DESTINY OF THE PEOPLE IT IS NECESSARY TO OPEN THE BOOK OF ITS PAST”
“Lo and behold! I will write a book that will lift the veil that has kept you blind 300 years in a morass of ignorance. I will open your eyes to make you see how the friars in their role as caretakers of the lost souls made you dutiful, obedient and Sunday-religious children of God. You were made o look like their willing victims. Your unquestionable reliance to a Christian god to intervene against the injustices, oppression and tyranny of Spanish Church fathers and state officials is nothing but a bogus ticket to the “Promised Land”. Your lack of education hinders your ability to decide what is right and what is wrong. You will be tempted to imitate borrowed despicable defects of your enemy believing to be the “Better Way”. When all of these sapped your energy to resist, you are inviting colonial mentality and the end of your history and culture. LET THERE BE LIGHT”
Thus ended the sermon. Obviously, the people referred to were the impoverished native Indios who were colonized with no basic rights and freedom by a conjugal partnership of the church and state. Partly to blame of their own undoing, they suffered all forms of degradation until an Indio prophet from Kalamba rising to the occasion appeared and said unto them:
It took one man to translate to the layman’s lingo what ails his motherland. Fortunately, that man was highly educated and a medical doctor specialized in eye diseases. That man was Dr. Jose Rizal. Was this not what we read in the introduction of the NOLI? Was this not what Simoun preached in the FILI to justify revolution?
In retrospect, Rizal banked on high hopes in his novel, the NOLI, on how education to the native inhabitants can be factor preparing them someday at par to enjoy the benefits enjoyed by Espanoles Peninsulares thru gradual and peaceful struggle.
To Rizal, this was the best option available to complete his DIAGNOSIS based on the case history of his ailing motherland. The sequel FILI on the other hand, served as the PROGNOSIS upon which a desperate and concerned doctor out of sheer patriotism wrote his prescription, an RX to Revolution. Well, how about the LA SOLIDARIDAD? “New England Journal of Medicine” is my best bet.
Some pay homage to Rizal as “the prophet and architect” of Spain’s downfall losing her colonial empire in the closing years of the nineteen century as he predicted the emergence of the United States to world power.
There is, however, in congruency if not irony that baffle even today’s generation that the FILI fictionalized revolution led by Simoun was a failure and so was Rizal. Was he not blamed for the failure of the Revolution of 1896 by rejecting the plea of Bonifacio and his Katipuneros, calling the Revolution an absurd idea? Life imitates art or vice versa.
What lessons have we learned from our ugly colonial past? We experienced changing colonial masters but not colonial mentality. Speaking of colonial mentality, one bright-eyed social researcher noted with insatiable interest about the stigma or residue ingrained in our culture that is difficult to shake off. He identified this tendency as “IMSACF”SYNDROME; meaning I aM S(panish)A(merican)C(hinese)F(ilipino). He was amused to find Filipinos claiming to have foreign ancestry when there are no traces visible as Iberian, American or Caucasian features. What a classic case of Ethnic Forgery!
Pura Santillan-Castrence has beautifully crafted words, describing our countrymen who are Sunday-religious Filipinos. They are those who take confession, take communion on Sunday but the rest of the week are involved taking bribes or bribing government officials or engaged in other corrupt practices.
There are Born- again Rizalists” as well as “Born-again-Christians”.They are all “Born-again-Filipinos” who take pride being Filipino again because Pacquiao put the Philippines in the map for winning the World Boxing Title match.
To be a Filipino carries with it responsibility, awareness, pride and vigilance. Without national soul we are a nation of dead race. Yet there is a prevailing notion of self-doubt as to what really constitute a Filipino “in thought and in deed”. How sincere and proud are you as a Filipino? Any regrets?
Jose Sison Luzadas, KGOR
Delray Beach, Florida
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