Post-Rizal Day remembrance: The boy Rizal: A phenomenon! /Fr. Reuter, Emy Y. Arcellana

Fancy a nine-year-old boy imposing on himself a routine so rigid, the average adult would find it extremely challenging to follow. Rizal was such a boy.

When he was in Biñan studying Latin — yes, at nine years — his daily program was amazingly regular and methodical for a boy of his age. He would hear mass at four in the morning — if there was mass at that unholy hour — or study in his room if mass was said later. From mass, he would come home for breakfast, go to class, come home at ten, rest, eat his lunch, study again, be off to school at two-thirty and come home at five. He would then play for a short period, study his lessons, make sketches and then take his supper.

It was a rare day Rizal veered from this schedule, and yet most boys his age would have nothing in their heads except the thought of eating or playing. But already at nine, Rizal had realized the value of time. Already, he had come to believe earnestly that time wasted was time irretrievably lost. Rizal as a child was too precocious to engage in pranks.

It was as though Rizal had an uncanny awareness that he had not long to live, for in childhood and early adolescence, he tried his hand at a considerable number of serious things. At eight, he had composed his first poem, and had by that time a smattering of Latin and Spanish. At nine, he was taking painting and drawing lessons, and showing remarkable promise.

He entered the Ateneo when he was eleven, and here again he showed he was as versatile as he was methodical: he mastered Greek and fencing with equal facility. He continued to paint and to draw. He started his first lessons in sculpture and to his poems he added a short story (leyenda) and a dialogue.

As though being versatile and methodical were not enough, Rizal had to excel in almost anything he did.

His diligence was born of a deep sense of purpose and also of a sense of obligation towards his parents, heightened by what his education was costing them and by the disgrace and injustice they were suffering under the Spanish authorities. To illustrate: Rizal’s mother was in prison during his period of study at the Ateneo. She was there on false charges and kept in solitary confinement. The news of her impending release had elated Rizal so much that he began to win prize after prize in the quarterly examinations. This was in his third year at the Ateneo. On another occasion, close to the end of the school year, he won five medals and these more than anything else made him happy because as he said, …“With them I can repay my father somewhat for his sacrifices.”

The picture of Rizal as a student would not be complete without mention of his scientific and independent turn of mind. Though reared as a Catholic, he had a freer, less hampered mind than most of his colleagues. The why and the wherefore of things were constant questions to him. Although he had the imagination of a poet, he had the detachment of a scientist.

It was this rational nature, manifested even during his student days in his interest in philosophy, physics and the natural sciences, that caused him to ask the why and the wherefore of Spanish tyranny and domination in the Philippines. Because of this faculty of reasoning things out to their logical end, Rizal concluded that the era of cruelty and injustice should end, and that he had a role to play to bring about the cessation of his countrymen’s sufferings.

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The above essay is a reprint from my third and latest book “Turning Back the Pages”. Other essays on Rizal are “A Student Boarder in Spain,” “Where’s the ‘Fili’ Original?,” “Intimations of an Early Death” and “Spanish Ambivalence on Rizal’s Execution”. If you wish to read more on Rizal, the book is available at the National Book Store and its branches and at the Solidaridad Book Shop in Ermita.

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I first learned of Fr. James Reuter’s demise from theater icon Cecile Guidote Alvarez. Since then, so much has been written about him that I can only add he was one of God’s greatest gifts to the Filipinos.

Emy Yuvienco Arcellana’s passing deeply saddens me. A dear friend I truly admired, she was the only summa cum laude (in political science) in 1948, yet was unassuming. Her husband Francisco Arcellana, a National Artist for Literature, was my colleague during my early years in the Chronicle, and he, too, was modest to a fault.

Emy wrote books about her husband’s works and one titled “The Social and Political Thought of Claro M. Recto” which I commented on in a column. Emy was particularly proud of her sons, the brilliant writer Juaniyo and the outstanding surgeon Francisco, Jr. I wrote up a piano performance of Emy’s grandson who must have inherited his musicality from her, as did Dr. Arcellana who is also a talented pianist. Emy always invited me to any “happening” in the family.

We shall miss Emy who illuminated our lives, mine especially.