The Legacy of Manila-Mt. Lebanon Lodge No.

1
(Delivered by MW Reynato S. Puno, PGM, GMH, on October 10, 2001 at the Manila Hotel on the occasion of the Centennial Anniversary of Manila-Mt. Lebanon Lodge No. 1)

I join the universe of Freemasonry in congratulating Manila-Mt. Lebanon Lodge No. 1 on the occasion of its centennial year. 100 years is a long stretch of time and just to be a witness to that eternity is enough reason to allow our cup of joy to overflow. But Manila-Mt. Lebanon Lodge No. 1 is not a mere witness to the vignettes of our life as a nation; it participated in the light and darkness that colored our history. The history of man shows the dominance first of the Romans and the period known as the Pax Romana, then the dominance of the British and the period known as the Pax Britannica, and of course, the last century, the 20th century was dominated by the Americans and we now have the age known as the Pax Americana. The early 1900s was a defining time in Philippine history. After three centuries, the Philippines was able to free itself from the cruel claws of Spanish tyranny thru the heroism of Filipino Masons led by Rizal, Bonifacio, Del Pilar, etc. Winning the war against Spain was difficult enough but just as difficult were the problems of peace after the war. After 300 years, it was not easy to dredge from canals of consciousness of Filipinos the bad influence of Spanish colonialism. And so the year 1900 was a crossroad for the Filipinos. They were beset by a smorgasbord of hard choices - - - all the isms were beckoning us, democracy on one hand, and all the brands of totalitarianism on the other, communism, militarism, nazism, etc. It was at this difficult time when Freemasonry of the American variety manifested in our landscape and showcased to the Filipinos the virtues of American democracy. Eventually, the Filipino people embraced the democratic way of life. And, it was Manila Lodge, then number 342, that opened the eyes of Filipinos to the importance of Freemasonry to the life of individuals and to the destiny of freedom loving nations. The records will show that it was on October 10, 1901 that the historic charter of Manila Lodge No. 342 was signed by Grand
1

Master William G. Wells of the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of California. On November 14, 1901, the lodge was constituted and held its first meeting. It elected as its first WM, Bro. Harry Eugene Stafford. In a few years time, and under the leadership of Manila Lodge No. 342, the Grand Lodge was formed. Three lodges Manila Lodge No. 342, Cavite Lodge No. 350 and Corregidor Lodge No. 386 formed its nucleus. They held a convention and elected Bro. Harry Eugene Stafford as the First Grand Master. Todate, Manila-Mt. Lebanon Lodge No. 1 has produced sixteen (16) Grand Masters among its members. We also owe to this lodge the seats of Freemasonry in this country, the Grand Lodge Temple and the Scottish Rite Temple. Arguably, if there is a blue lodge that has directed the destiny of Masonry in the Philippines, it is none other than Manila-Mt. Lebanon Lodge No. 1. The one hundred years of Manila-Mt. Lebanon Lodge No. 1 cannot but provoke us to take a philosophical pause. It drives us to decipher what is special about the brethren of Manila-Mt. Lebanon Lodge No. 1. That desire may bring us to a confrontation with questions, which divided even the mega minds of antiquity. This centennial affair, however, demands that we make an intellectual offering even some half-formed, tentative thoughts for the journey to greatness of Manila-Mt. Lebanon Lodge No. 1 has yet to reach its final chapter. Well aware I am standing on thin ice, let me make some submissions. Firstly, Manila-Mt. Lebanon Lodge No. 1 was the result of the gestation of a sublime idea, the idea of starting a fraternity of men fired by the ideals of Brotherly Love, Relief and Truth. Perhaps in this year 2001, anno domini, when we can take freedom for granted because we breath it from the freshness of the morning till the weariness of the evening tide, the birth pains suffered by its founders can hardly be appreciated. In 1900, however, when the Filipinos just broke the 300 year chain of Spanish colonialism, when the Filipino mind was just emerging from the dungeon of ignorance, it was nothing less than a Herculean endeavor for the founders of Manila-Mt. Lebanon Lodge No. 1 to help plant the seeds of Justice, Liberty and Fraternity in the stony Philippine soil. And I stress in scarlet, that a mere sixteen brethren had the red badge of courage to sign the petition for dispensation that would form the embryo of Manila-Mt. Lebanon Lodge No. 1. Yes, that is the first message of the brethren of Manila-Mt. Lebanon No. 1 to us - - - that it takes only a handful of dedicated souls to be catalysts of meaningful change. Today, I cannot overemphasize the need for Masons to overcome the terrorism of number for Masons may never find themselves

enjoying the comfort of the majority in this land. Masonry teaches us to make good men better and this difficult mandate will destine Masons to be in the permanent minority. Those who founded Manila-Mt. Lebanon Lodge No. 1demonstrated to us that in the struggle of light against darkness, it matters little to be in the minority, for in Masonic geometry we are inspired by the hypothesis that he who stands for righteousness can be considered as the majority of one. This Masonic geometry is validated by the story of Gideon in the Holy Scriptures. Gideon was faced by an enemy composed of 135,000 soldiers. He has only 32,000 men. Instead of being discouraged by lack of number, Gideon even put his men to a test in order to reduce their number. First, all the men who were afraid of the big number of the enemies were ordered to go home. 22,000 left and only 10,000 stayed. Second, those who stayed were told to drink water. 9,700 drank water by lapping the water as the dogs do. They were told to go home. Only 300 men drank water from their hands. Gideon told them to stay and to fight their enemy composed of 135,000 soldiers. Thus, a tiny minority of 300 fought with faith in their hearts, with the unflinching belief that God would make them prevail and true to their faith, they prevailed. Like Gideon, the sixteen founders of Manila-Mt. Lebanon Lodge No. 1 proved that sublime ideals can be fought and won by men regardless of number. Second, Manila-Mt. Lebanon Lodge No. 1 tells us the kind of achievement that will stand holocausts of history. Two days ago, the first war of the 21st century exploded. Afghanistan was bombarded with the most modern technologies of death by a broad coalition of nations led by the mightiest military power on earth, the United States, allegedly for harboring terrorists. Last September 11, if you will remember, terrorists using commercial jets leveled the World Trade Center in New York and heavily damaged the pentagon headquarters in Washington in suicide attacks. The damage wrought on the United States, undisputedly the greatest nation on this planet, is mind-boggling. Over the next two years, its financial cost is expected to cross more than a trillion dollars. In a worst case scenario, the fear is that it may kickstart recession in the United States and bring about the eventual meltdown of the global economy. More appalling than the dollars and cents damage, is the death of more than 5,000 people in the venues of violence. The death of thousands of innocent bystanders has caused rage to mushroom all over the world and this rage, if allowed to run riot, can trigger mans Final War. I was in Munich, Germany when the tragedy struck the United States. Together with 140 delegates all over the world, I was attending a

symposium on Intellectual Property sponsored by the European Patent Union. In the midst of the symposium, the shocking announcement was made that United States was under attack. There was a rush to the giant TV outside the hall where we saw CNN playing and replaying the treacherous attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. A lot of delegates let go their unbridled emotions and shed rivers of tears. I returned to our hotel unable to make heads or tails out of the incredible assault. Everyday thereafter, I watched the CNN and the BBC for the latest news and I bought every English paper that chronicled the event. Even until now, after seeing a run and re-run of the images of the daring deeds, I feel dense and I could only sense an insignificant speck of the situation. But even the speck conveys to us in a most audible tone the messagethat the most imposing physical structure that can be built by the hands of man cannot withstand the misunderstanding of men. We cannot imagine the tons of steel and concrete that were used to build and strengthen the World Trade Center and make it invincible to the elements. Yet, in a matter of minutes, that lofty, seemingly indestructible engineering wonder was levelled down by unreasoning rage. The destruction of the World Trade Center reminds us of the ship Titanic. After its consummate construction, it was touted as unsinkable. In its first voyage, it hit an iceberg and the unsinkable sunk deep to the bottom of the sea. Manila-Mt. Lebanon Lodge No. 1 is no Titanic, it is not the World Trade Center but its office of a few square centimeters has survived 100 years. If it has survived 100 years, it is because the brethren of said Lodge have built a temple beyond destruction, a temple not made with hands, eternal in the Heavens. How faithful they are to the counsel of our wise men that Masonry should build invisible temples in the hearts of men. And these invisible temples built in the hearts of men will never perish for their cornerstone is Love, the most enduring of all virtues. Let me say without any fear of contradiction that the acts of benevolence and charity done by Manila-Mt. Lebanon Lodge No. 1 cannot be matched in our jurisdiction and these are acts that are imperishable because Love will always remain the centerpiece of any tapestry of time. Third. I respectfully submit that Manila-Mt. Lebanon Lodge No. 1 reached its 100 years because it served as an instrument to unite people of different races, and of disparate beliefs. During the three centuries that the Philippines was colonized by Spain, the Filipinos were treated as lowlifes and were discriminated. This was the status of brown Filipinos in 1901 when Manila Lodge No. 342 started its Masonic labor in our country. Indeed, even this Lodge was bugged by the virus of discrimination. The records will show that of its sixteen original founders, only one was a

Filipino (Bro. Manuel Camus), while all others were Americans. It took several years before it accepted non-whites and it took 63 years for a Filipino to become its first Worshipful Master in the person of Bro. Romeo Malimban who ascended the Oriental Chair. History, however, is witness to the fact that soon Manila-Mt. Lebanon Lodge No. 1 became a Lodge where membership is not determined by the color of ones epidermis, a Lodge whose door is open to men of different religious creeds. I relate this transformation of Manila-Mt. Lebanon Lodge No. 1 because events will show that even while modern man has started crossing the threshold of the 21st century, he has to survive the bumps of bigotry especially the bigotry caused by the pigmentation of ones skin and the bigotry triggered by religious diversity. If you give the current war on terrorism being waged by the US against Afghanistan a 20-20 vision, you will find that part of its primitive roots is the irreconcilability of warring religious beliefs. The Christian Cross and the Muslim Crescent have been engaged in the bloodiest of wars since time immemorial and today the warning is out that the embers of this hatred still smoulder bright in the hearts of their followers. Perhaps the most perceptive political guru today is Professor Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard University. In his seminal book entitled Clash of Civilization that gave us a new lens to understand global politics, he prophesied with precision that the world that will emerge in the 21st century is a multi-polar, multi-civilizational world. He predicted that there will be a reconfiguration of global politics and a primordial cause would be the growing tension between Islam and the West. Let me quote Prof. Huntington: Some Westerners, including President Bill Clinton, have argued that the West does not have problems with Islam but only with violent Islamist extremist. Fourteen hundred years of history demonstrate otherwise. The relations between Islam and Christianity, both Orthodox and Western, have often been stormy. Each has been the others Other. The twentieth-century conflict between liberal democracy and Marxist-Leninism is only a fleeting and superficial historical phenomenon compared to the continuing and deeply conflictual relation between Islam and Christianity. At times, peaceful coexistence has prevailed; more often the relation has been one of intense rivalry and varying degrees of hot war. Their historical dynamics, John Esposito comments, . . . often found the two communities in competition, and locked at times in deadly

combat, for power, land, and souls. Across the centuries the fortunes of the two religions have risen and fallen in a sequence of momentous surges, pauses, and countersurges. The causes of this ongoing pattern of conflict lie not in transitory phenomena such as twelfth-century Christian passion or twentieth-century Muslim fundamentalism. They flow from the nature of the two religions and the civilizations based on them. Conflict was, on the one hand, a product of difference, particularly the Muslim concept of Islam as a way of life transcending and uniting religion and politics versus the Western Christian concept of the separate realms of God and Caesar. The conflict also stemmed, however, from their similarities. Both are monotheistic religions, which, unlike polytheistic ones, cannot easily assimilate additional deities, and which see the world in dualistic, us-and-them terms. Both are universalistic, claiming to be the one true faith to which all humans can adhere. Both are missionary religions believing that their adherents have an obligation to convert non-believers to that one true faith. From its origins Islam expanded by conquest and when the opportunity existed Christianity did also. The parallel concepts of jihad and crusade not only resemble each other but also distinguish these two faiths from other major world religions. Islam and Christianity, along with Judaism, also have teleological views of history in contrast to the cyclical or static views prevalent in other civilizations. The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilizations whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power. The problem for Islam is not the CIA nor the U.S Department of Defense. It is the West, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the universality of their culture and believe that their superior, if declining, power imposes on them the obligation to extend that culture throughout the world. These are the basic ingredients that fuel conflict between Islam and the West.

The fear of Prof. Huntington is fast turning out to be a terrible reality. The war on terrorism, unless reigned by reason, can recklessly run along religious lines that can easily ignite the biggest bloodbath in the history of man. Lest we overlook, the Islamic resurgence involves 1/5 or more of humanity. Facts and figures show that Muslims constituted 18% of the worlds population in 1980 and it is predicted that they will form 20% of humanity in 2000 and 30% in year 2025. Statistics also show that between 1965 and 1990, the total number of people on earth increased from 3.3 billion to 5.3 billion, thus registering an annual growth rate of 1.85%. In Muslim countries, however, growth rates were almost always over 2%, often exceeded 2.5% and at times over 3%. These figures show that the West will be confronting a world increasingly populated by Muslims fired by a resurgent Islam. All these demonstrate beyond per adventure of doubt that we live in a world that is less secure, a world divided, with people torn by differences, differences caused by the intolerance of culture and by the bigotry of religious beliefs. The chronicles of Manila-Mt. Lebanon Lodge No. 1 show that it was able to elongate its life to 100 years because it was able to successfully set aside all these differences. One of the changeless thesis of Masonry is harmony and our altar wherein is set all the books of faith of religion teaches us how to manage conflicts of opinion. Masonry tells us that the time for harmony cannot be postponed. As well explained by the Scottish Rite Committee on Masonic Education and Research, viz: Time will eventually heal all wounds. Time will eventually resolve all conflicts into nothingness. When our lives shall have pass on; when our civilization shall have met its inevitable decline and fall; when our earth shall have shifted into another Ice Age; or when our Solar System shall have ceased to be what value are all those things that we are presently disputing or warring about? If they will be of no moment a thousand years from now, why cannot we so regard it now, and resolve the matter with kindness and for the improved happiness of all concerned. I have spoken too long and I guess that even the 100-year anniversary of this Lodge is no excuse to deliver a 100-page message. Let me now conclude by saying that the world today demands more Lodges of the kind of Manila-Mt. Lebanon Lodge No. 1. Manila-Mt. Lebanon Lodge No. 1 is a creature of the 20th century, a century characterized by historians

as a century of bloody massacres and wars. The two world wars were fought in this century. World War I resulted in the death of 15 million people. World War II had a casualty of 50 million people. Some 100 million people were murdered in pogroms and purges from Stalins gulag archipelago to Pol Pots killing fields in Kampuchea. The world has yet to know the number of those who died from the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, Chechnya and East Timor, as well as the deaths from the little reported wars across Africa. To me, it is not a mere happenstance of history that ManilaMt. Lebanon Lodge No. 1 is celebrating its 100 years when the world is fighting another war - - - the war against terrorism. It gives us the subliminal message that this Lodge has yet a great job to do, and that it cannot rest on its past glory. Indeed, for the ultimate aim of Freemasonry is to enthrone in the hearts of men the sovereignty of selflessness over selfishness. For if there is one tyranny that has terrorized men, it is the tyranny of selfishness. If you come to think of it, selfishness has created the worst of political, economic and spiritual tyrants. It is for this reason that Masonry seeks to purge men of all the sediments of selfishness in their hearts by subduing their sensual nature, by purifying their mental processes and by losing their old imperfect lives in order to gain perfection. This is an endless task, a task that can only be finished when time shall be no more. As food for thought, let me ask you: Have you ever wondered why of all Lodges, it is Manila Lodge No. 1 and Mt. Lebanon Lodge No. 80 that combined and fused together? Have you ever wondered how Mt. Lebanon can be transplanted in the asphalt of Manila? Lebanon, taken from the Hebrew word Libnah, meaning white, is a country that played a prominent role in biblical history. In the Old Testament alone, it was mentioned no less than sixty times. Lebanon is famous for its dense forest cover and the quantity and quality of its timber, thus the renowned cedars of Lebanon. King Solomon obtained cedar trees, fir trees and algum trees out of Lebanon from Hiram, King of Tyre (II Chron. 2:8) which he used in the building of the First Temple at Jerusalem. Cedar trees from Lebanon were also used in the construction of the Second Temple (Ezra 3:7). The palace of Solomon is referred to as the house of the forest of Lebanon (1 king 7:2). You can therefore see the symbolic significance of the cedars of Lebanon to Masonry, to the imperishable temples, which Masons seek to build in the hearts and minds of men. With Manila-Mt. Lebanon Lodge No. 1 we have a Mt. Lebanon in Manila. In other words, we have all the cedars, all the materials to build that temple not made with hands in Manila. This is the challenge to the members of Manila-Mt. Lebanon Lodge No. 1 today and I know it is a challenge that they will overcome.

Happy centennial celebration to all of you.

REYNATO S. PUNO October 10, 2001