“If Jose Rizal’s teachings are emulated, they can guide the destiny of our country.” Thus did Reghis Romero II, supreme commander of the Order of the Knights of Rizal, explain the essence of the recently concluded 50th National Rizal Youth Leadership Institute (NRYLI) at Teachers Camp in Baguio City.
Coming so swiftly on the heels of Christmas and the Slaughter of the Innocents, the annual Rizal Day holiday on Dec. 30 usually passes fleetingly by as just another blessed day off, before we all plunge merrily into the noisy revelries and inebriations of New Year’s Eve.
Celebrating the Feast of the Holy Family this year on Dec. 30 bears added significance for us Filipinos. Today we also commemorate the 116th anniversary of the martyrdom of Dr. Jose P. Rizal who said the prophetic words, “The youth is the hope of our country.”
Jose Rizal had class and charisma. He was a renaissance man who dazzled and insulted an archaic Spanish colonial ruler with his liberalism in modern politics. His symbol: a pen that is mightier than the sword.
History’s intense moments of heroism are about blood and thunder, reckless courage and eerie war cries. Such were the passions that seized control of heroes who fought in the Trojan War, at the storming of the Bastille in France, and in the Indonesian army’s bloody counter-coup against the communists.
It was with an exciting sense of discovery that we accepted Gemma Cruz Araneta’s invitation to attend one rainy evening the launch of José Rizal’s “Haec Est Sibylla Cumana” book.
This year is the 115th anniversary of Rizal’s martyrdom at the hands of the Spanish colonizers. This also effectively marks the anniversary of the end of a four-year hiatus which was one of the happier periods of the hero’s tragic life. Rizal had just returned to the Philippines when, in July of 1892, he was [...]
In connection with the 150th birth anniversary and the 115th death anniversary of José Rizal this year, it is genuinely a scholarly opportunity to delve into how and why JR decided that his villain had to be a Franciscan friar.
Jose Rizal is cool again. Once upon a time, it seemed, he was hopelessly passé. Generations of blind idol worship by old men in funny hats had turned young Filipinos off the pride of the Malay race.
Architect and athlete Emmanuel Miñana is also a graphologist—a person who analyzes handwriting—and his abiding interest has been José Rizal’s scribblings on paper. He has studied specimens of Rizal’s signatures from ages 15, when the National Hero was a gifted student, to 36 years old, when he was about to become a martyr to the [...]
In the first public forum of its kind, Jose Rizal’s astrological birth chart was discussed at the Yuchengco Museum. Astrologer Resti Santiago created a birth chart for the country’s national hero, using an estimated birth time gleaned from researched documents. Santiago proceeded to show how the planetary positions in Rizal’s chart overlaid with the people [...]
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