Why Should Dr. Jose P.

Rizal Be Our National Hero

Every now and then, we are constantly searching for someone to inspire us and save us from irks of our daily lives. Profoundly, today we are in need of people who are deeply concerned on the resolution of our countrys predicament. Sometimes, we are just about dreaming of a person who will defend our rights, justice and equality, just possessing special powers to love our country unfathomably just like Dr. Jose P. Rizal. There is no doubt, that people cannot just assimilate their actions, without true leaders which are necessary. And it is a true leader that can have perspective, objective and integrity, until he becomes HERO. It is correct that Dr. Jose Rizal is a true leader. But who really is a true leader? A true leader is a person who enables people to work together towards common goods and goals and in some way to achieve some different objectives that will satisfy their needs. Leadership is a way of living in which basic life strategies and principles reinforce one another. History has established

many leaders, and their stories are mostly concerned of taking great risks, even their lives. Even before the outbreak of the revolution against Spain in 1896, many instances can be cited to prove that Rizals countrymen here and abroad recognized his leadership. In the early part of 1889, he was unanimously elected by the Filipino in Barcelona and Madrid as honorary president of the La Solidaridad. Some months later, in Paris, he organized and became chief of the Indios Bravos. In January, 1891, Rizal was again unanimously chosen Responsable (chief) of the SpanishFilipino association. He was also the founder and moving spirit in the founding of the La Liga Filipina in Manila on July 3, 1892. History tells us that the revolutionary society known as the Katipunan likewise acknowledged Rizals leadership and greatness by making him its Honorary President and by using his family name Rizal as the password for the third degree members. We should be exultant because the greatest man of the Malay race was born in our country, not just a leader but a true hero.

A hero, according to Everest Dictionary, is simply just a person admired for his achievements and qualities. Also, a person of distinguished valor or enterprise in danger, or fortitude in suffering. And finally, a man honored after death by public worship, because of exceptional service to mankind. There are so many bizarre stories regarding the different famous men who at once become a hero. Dr. Rizal has been the most posthumously recreated as a hero of the Philippine Republic. Oftentimes, he has been given a new personality and a childhood that may bear him a little resemblance to his real one. It should also be stressed out, that Dr. Rizals refusal to align himself with the revolutionary forces and his vehement condemnation of the said movement. Instead, he dreamt of a peaceful reform of the government and his fellow Filipinos. Without doubt, we can say that Rizal was a revolutionist, one who wanted change. Not that he wanted to fight Spain, but just to have certain reforms in government, in the church, in the way the Filipinos were being treated by those in authority.

He was a revolutionist at heart, but no one of the radical type. In this sense we can say that he was a reformist. He would appeal first to the Spaniards sense of wrong and right, exhaust all means, before perhaps resorting to actual violence. But reforms were truly, desperately needed. There is no definite answer, either the revolution was wrong or Dr. Rizal was wrong, and yet it cannot disown him as a great person. Either by means of large, which has also been chosen to ignore this apparent contradiction. We ask the question: Why should Dr. Jose P. Rizal be our national hero? Simply because he is a person admired for his achievements and qualities. Moreover, no Filipino has yet been born who could equal or surpass Rizal as a person of distinguished valor or enterprise in danger, or fortitude in suffering. But what are the achievements and qualities of Dr. Rizal to articulate him as our national hero? In my own analysis, Dr. Rizals greatest achievement is the conception of his two novels, the Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. These two

novels deeply cultivated the mind and heart of the Filipinos in its mere form and intent. The Noli is a book of feeling and deep emotion; the Fili is a book of thought. The Noli exposed the evils of society; hence the title was translated to the English as The Social Cancer. The Fili exposed the evils of people in government and church; thus, the translation is The Reign of the Greed. In the Noli, the ridiculous actions of the unworthy government officials and unholy priests made us laugh in derision. In the Fili, the misfortunes of the Filipinos in the hands of the cruel and abusive Spanish made us cry. The Noli, therefore is a novel of society wile the Fili is a novel of politics. In my opinion, Dr. Rizals posthumously becoming a hero is admittedly selected by the different historians. I do not scrutinize every component of Dr. Rizals myth nor to discuss at its length on ways all authors have done on some different significant studies of the national hero or the revolutionary period. In this way, I conclude that the two novels are his greatest achievement because it generates the revolutionary heart of the Filipinos.

To be a hero requires a great foundation of character. Dr. Rizals qualities form part as a criterion of becoming a national hero. What are the qualities of Dr. Rizal that made him distinct from others? Rafael Palma wrote:
What is most admirable in Rizal is his complete self-denial, his complete abandonment of his personal interests in order to think only of those of his country. He could have been whatever he wished to be, considering his natural endowments; he could have earned considerable sums of money from his profession; he could have lived relatively rich, happy, prosperous, had he not dedicated himself to public matters. But in him the voice of the species was stronger than the voice of personal progress or of private fortune, and he preferred to live far from his family and to sacrifice his personal affections for an ideal he had dreamed of. He heeded not his brother, not even his parents, being whom he respected and venerated so much, in order to follow the road his conscience had traced for him

Dr. Frank C. Laubach, an American biographer of Rizal, spoke of the heros courage in the following words:

His consuming life purpose was the secret of his moral courage. Physical courage, it is true, was one of his inherited traits. But that high courage to die loving his murderers, which he at last achieved, - that cannot be inherited. It must be forged out in the fires of suffering and temptation. As we read through his life, we can see how the moral sinew and fiber grew year by year as he faced new perils and was forced to make fearful decisions. It required courage to write his two great novels, telling nothing that no other man had ventured to say before, standing almost alone against the most powerful interests in his country and in Spain, and knowing full well that despotism would strike back. He had reached another loftier plateau of heroism when he wrote those letters in Hongkong, To be opened after my death, and sailed into the trap in Manila without any illusions. Then in his Dapitan exile, when he was tempted to escape, and said No, not once but hundreds of times for tour long years, and when, on the way to Cuba, Pedro Roxas pleaded with him to step off the oat of Singapore upon British territory and save his life, what inner struggle it must have caused him to answer over and over again, No, no, no! When the sentence of death and the fateful morning of his execution brought the final test, December 30,

1896, he walked with perfect calm to the firing line as though by his own choice, the only heroic figure in that sordid scene.

Truly, Dr. Rizal was a man of courage, integrity and magnanimity. Dr. Rizals greatness is not bound at his times. There are so many legacies that he left to the Filipinos nowadays, especially to the youth. The doctrines of Jose Rizal are not for one epoch but for all epochs. They are as valid today as they were yesterday. In El Flibusterismo, Father Florentino said:
Where are the young who will consecrate their golden hours, their illusions, and their enthusiasm to the welfare of their native land? Where are the young who will generously pour out their blood to wash away so much shame, so much crime, so much abomination? Pure and spotless must the victim be that the sacrifice may be acceptable! Where are you, youth, who will embody in yourselves the vigor of life that has left our veins, the purity of ideas that has been contaminated in our brains, the fire of enthusiasm that has been

quenched in our hearts? We await you, O youth! Come for we await you!

These last words of Father Florentino truly embody Dr. Rizals real feelings. It is a crying out, a plea to the youth of the land to do something, to act, for the sake of the country. These last words express Dr. Rizals motives and nationalistic thoughts. These legacies that Dr. Rizal left to the Filipinos, especially to the youth are based on his acts, words and convictions. We have magnified Dr. Rizals role to such extent that we should not lose our sense of proportion and not to relegate the contributions of the subordinate position of other great men and the historical events in which they took part. Now and then we come across some Filipinos who venture the opinion that Andres Bonifacio, and not Jose Rizal deserves to be acknowledged and canonized as our first national hero. They maintain that Rizal never held a gun, a rifle, or a sword in fighting for the liberty and independence of our country in the battlefield. They further assert that while the foremost national

heroes of other countries are soldier-generals, like George Washington of the United States of the America, Napoleon I and Joan of Arc of France, Simon Bolivar of Venezuela, Iose de San Martin of Argentina, Bernardo OHiggins of Chile, Jimmu tenno of Japan, etc., our greatest hero was a pacifist and a civilian whose weapon was his quill. However, some of our fellow people in exercising their good sense, independent judgment, and unusual discernment, have not followed the examples of other nations in selecting and acknowledging a military leader for their greatest hero. Our greatest Rizal served his cause with the pen, demonstrating that the pen is as mighty as the sword to redeem people from their political slavery. It is true that in our case the sword of Bonifacio was after all needed to shake off the yoke of a foreign power; but the revolution prepared by Bonifacio was only the effect, the consequence of the spiritual redemption wrought by the pen of Rizal. Hence, not only in chronological order but also in point of importance the previous work of Rizal seems to us superior to that of Bonifacio, because although that of Bonifacio was of immediate results, that of

Rizal will have more durable and permanent effects. As Napoleon I, a great conqueror and ruler, said: There are only two powers in the world, the sword and the pen; and in the end the former is always conquered by the latter. Although Dr. Rizal, was already a revered figure and become a hero just because of his bequests so after his declared martyrdom, that it cannot just be denied that his primacy among our heroes was partly the result of the concerned sponsorship. This sponsorship has taken two mere forms, to which on the other hand, that of encouraging, which is Rizals faction. The other is that of minimizing the very importance of other heroes or even vilifying them. Those are definitely fallacious. Also at this point, I want to express my opinion to that of controversial extraction of Rizal. It must be understood that what Rizal retracted were his errors in religion and attacks against the Church, not his political convictions. Nonetheless, Rizals retraction does not affect his character as a hero; neither does it invalidate his views on political freedom and social

welfare, as duly expressed on his writings, especially on Noli and Fili. Catholicism and patriotism go hand in hand together. By retracting his religious errors and returning to the fold of Catholicism, Rizal emerged a greater man. It takes genuine moral courage for any man to recognize his mistakes and to correct the wrong things he has done. There is no question that Dr. Rizal had the most qualifications of supreme greatness, which is why he became undoubtedly our National Hero. History and a light life of Rizal being a hero cannot just be sufficed of his duly patriotism. Rizal was a martyr, and to any evidence that supports and contradicts, the solid proof lies on Dr. Rizals rejection to obscurantism and bigotry. Dr. Rizals part of becoming a hero was his dramatic death, which captured the imagination of our people. Still, we must accept the facts that his formal designation as our national hero was also a component of his elevation in his present preeminence so far above all other heroes were abetted and encouraged by the concerned authority.

Dr. Rizal became a hero not just because of the different basis which the historians promote. A part of the confirmation by calling Dr. Rizal the greatest Filipino, a Physician, a Writer and Hero and because of his struggle adjusts for the betterment of conditions under the Spanish rule was convicted and then vindicated. It was quite clear, that because of Dr. Rizals martyrdom, and his struggle for the enhancement of condition under the Spanish Regime. We must have to take the different acts of the different concerned. Not later, not tomorrow, because there is no more appropriate point of time than NOW. Certainly, Dr. Rizal is already a hero in the eye of the Filipino people even before the American came. They duly accepted Dr. Rizal as the official hero of the honorable Filipinos. Unfortunately, however, there are still some Filipinos who entertain the belief that our Rizal is a made-to-order national hero, and that the maker or manufacturer in this case were the Americans.

History tells us that Rizal symbolized not only Ideal and Inspiration, but also something real and material Action. His greatest claim to being first in our political history is that he was the real founder of Philippine nationalism. At his death, he bequeathed to us Filipinos his yearning for liberty while also giving us the necessary background of sacrifice. We can say that Rizal was a model toward which Philippine life may aspire. And in the words of scholar Trinidad H. Pardo de Tavera,
The appearance of Rizal announced that the Filipino race was able to give birth to individuals endowed with the highest attributes, who could be considered an honor to the human race.

Polytechnic University of the Philippines Sta. Mesa, Manila

Final Essay in Rizals Life, Works and Writing (HS101)

Submitted by: Flores, Charlie S.P.

Submitted to: Prof. Buhay