A few relatives have taken the time to preserve his memory and their family memorabilia but this is not what I mean. Once, I tried to explain to one of them that it seems very little is known about his association with freemasonry. His Jesuit tutors have said as much that he would be lost to them when he went to study in Spain. At that time, the age of reason was raging in Europe and the Spaniards (unknown to most of us) were in the forefront of the movement which also came to be known as the Age of Enlightenment. Filipinos may have revolted against Spain but there was another Spain from whom Filipinos learned the lessons of freedom and self-determination.
I know his relatives, personally being related to them by affinity – my brother is married to Rizal’s great grandniece. I have had a chance to talk to his grandnieces but to most of them I sensed that their relationship to Rizal was family rather than understanding him as an exemplar of Filipino heroism. You will not hear any of them (at least those I meet echoing his revolutionary ideas, certainly not his anti-clericalism). There is a reason for this. The Rizals, or more accurately the Mercados, were staunch Catholics. They were so terrorized then, they passed it on to future generations that he recanted his apostasy before his execution, something that avid Rizalists have worked so hard to disprove. Once I talked to a great grandniece who would not even hear of his ever having been a freemason despite his own admission in his letters.
They tell stories from generation to generation about his execution but are not quite up to why he was executed. They are not even sure whether members of the family were allowed to witness the execution. Some say they were not and those who witnessed it anyway did so surreptitiously, hiding in the crowds so they did not catch the attention of authorities. After Rizal’s death the Spanish friars drove out the family from Calamba. Today, tourists who visit his birthplace ask why the family had not come back to reclaim his heritage, after all the Philippines is now free and independent. It would be nice they say if the Rizals came back and continued his legacy – what he stood for and why.
This may not be easy if the initiative were to come from his descendants. After his execution, the Rizals or Mercados determined to live in peace and stay away from clashing with authority, whether ecclesiastical or political. They went back to their ordinary lives, missing a loved one but understandably wanting to stay away from harm. They may have had his books, his bowler hat, his clothes but little of his ideas or his rebelliousness.
Those who took up the torch were other Filipinos, who although not related to him, picked up the pieces of his fallen ideas and preserved them for posterity. They see themselves as his heirs and descendants and perfectly willing to retrace those steps, to fight again if need be for the same ideals. On top of their list is rationalism, that we may be able to learn to use our reason as God ordained it from creation, instead of blindly following the purveyors of ‘faith’ and its hypocrisies.
Before he died at the age of 98, mathematician-logician-philosopher-humanist Bertrand Russell said, "If we must die, let us die sober, and not drunk with lies." To me, in my simplicity, as a great admirer of Jose Rizal, I believe he died sober; but those in power who had him executed at the age of 30, and those who concocted his retraction story, were the ones drunk with lies.
I defy anyone who believes Jose Rizal, the first great humanist the Philippines has ever produced, died a coward engrossed in childish fairy tales.
And why do I say Rizal was a great humanist? What else do you call a man who was committed to the application of reason and science and to solving human problems of the here and the now?
What else do you call a man who deplored efforts to denigrate human intelligence, who did not seek to explain the world in supernatural terms, and who did not look outside nature for salvation? A man who wanted to leave this world one day a better place than he found it.
What else do you call a man who valued scientific discoveries that have contributed to the betterment of human existence? Who was concerned with securing justice and fairness by eliminating discrimination and intolerance in society?
What else do you call a man who attempted to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, ethnicity and who worked for the spread of common human decency?
What else do you call a man who believed that developing his creative talents to the fullest constituted the greatest happiness in life for the here and the now? What else do you call a man who believed in the cultivation of moral excellence, respected the rights of others, believe in human integrity, and was open to critical and rational way of thinking?
What else do you call man who was concerned with the moral education of children? Who wanted to nourish them with the passion for reason, love, and compassion? What else do you call a man who rejected the theologies of despair, the ideologies of violence, and the sacraments of mediocrity? And finally, what do you call a man who believed in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in place of dogma, truth instead of sacred lies, joy rather than guilt and sin, tolerance in place of fear, love instead of hate, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness, and reason rather than blind faith?
Jose Rizal, indeed, believed in the fullest realization of the best and noblest that anyone is capable of as a human being, He was the greatest of Filipino humanists. And he died intellectually sober, not drunk with religious lies.
To Jose Rizal, wherever you are, more than all the angels in heaven, I have the greatest love for you as a fellow human being, and I have the highest respect for you as a fellow Filipino.