We recently celebrated Dr. Jose Rizal’s 142nd Birthday. The Order of the knights of Rizal of Zamboanga City Chapter in coordination with the city government of Zamboanga lead the commemorative program of activities lined up to pay homage to the National Filipino Hero.

As an avid consumer of biographies, I realized that Rizal’s greatness was not only because he had great influence on the political, social, and cultural landscape of the Philippines during his life and after his death. Rizal had any manifestations but among his great contributions perhaps are his stunningly creative views on political life and society which have continuing relevance today, as much as they did during the violent and cataclysmic period of the late 19th century. He was the archetypal leader with all the qualities desirable in a twenty-first century Asian Leader. Rizal’s life was that of an exemplary leader, the oral dimensions of whose leadership are to be emulated. Like other great moral leaders of Asia, such as Mahatma Gandhi, Rizal’s place in history is secure. The great Napoleon Bonaparte once said of himself: "My destiny is the opposite of other men’s…Other men are lowered by their downfall, my own raises me to infinite heights." This was equally true of Rizal who, however, was unlike Napoleon in that he was never obsessed with his place in history.

Rizal’s importance and reputation, naturally, have transcended his time and place. In a message of the H.E. Dato Seri Dr. Mahathir Bin Mohammad, Prime Minister of Malaysia, referred to Rizal as an "Outstanding man" whose "entire life was dedicated to promoting enlightenment and the liberation of his fellow men." President Fidel V. Ramos, in his message said that as "we move into the 21st century, the liberation spirit and ideals of Rizal are as timely and relevant as they were at the end of the 19th century. From him. Let us draw the same sense of shared destiny, the same spirit of Asian brotherhood and internationalism as we seek enduring peace and prosperity under the new economic and political order in the Asia-Pacific region." Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim called Rizal a"universal hero" who lived and died "for ideals which transcended ethics, cultural and religious boundaries" and who should be remembered "as a man of extraordinary vision who more than a century ago had already personified the Asian Renaissance." This universal man "who embodied the excellence of the Malay race," as President Ramos described Rizal, was worthy of study and emulation.

A contemporary of Gandhi. Tagore and Sun Yat-san, Rizal was a man of enormous courage, constantly flirting with death if not wishing for it. The life of this poet, humanist and patriot ended when he was executed by a Spanish squad one hundred six years ago on a cold December day at 7:30 a.m. Rizal’s life was summarily and reasonably cut short, but in those 35 years were compressed many lifetimes of creativity, hard work and dedication. His two immortal works, NOLI ME TANGERE and EL FILIBUSTERISMO fanned the flames of the Philippine Revolutionary era of 1896-98 the earliest national upheaval against a Western colonial power in Asia.

Rizal had also made his imprint in the intellectual circles of Europe. Today he is an institution to many people and a legend to a few faithful disciples. In life and in death, Rizal has remained the single most illustrious son of the modern Philippines and one of the noblest men of culture that Southeast Asia has ever produced. So far, four generations of Filipinos have virtually grown up with him. They have shared, and have been identified with, his achievements, his changing fortunes, his struggles and his ultimate redemption.

Rizal the man and the Rizal legend are closely intertwined. The man, belonging to that rare breed of the Renaissance aptly called homo universalis, contributed to the development of the legend, and the legend in time gave form, substance, and meaning to the man. Rizal combined all the elements that make for a leading national hero and a legend that transcends time and place.

As we will see from a reading of his life, Rizal was a unique personality, with his rich and varied cultural background, his superior values, and the lofty ideals which he lived by. He was a product of the interplay between the socio-cultural forces at work and between Western science and traditional values. In Rizal’s time, no institution of learning in the Philippines could satisfy the inner intellectual yearnings of gifted Filipinos. They had to literally go out to learn. For the young Filipinos, like Rizal, the most attractive element of the western world were the rights of man, education and culture – education not only for the emancipation of his people from the quagmire of ignorance and superstition but also as part of a new cultural outlook for the breaking up of the traditional resistance to change and modernization.

His balanced humanistic and scientific studies in the key intellectual centers of Europe trained him to translate facts and insights into ideas and then moving words and action. He committed himself to sound scientific inquiry and the spirit of nationalism to advance reforms, to destroy the myth of Malay cultural inferiority as evidenced by his annotations of Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, to cultivate a common language and to expose Spanish misrule in the archipelagic Philippines.