HE IS MY BROTHER

 

“If I’m killed, I’ll be with Jesus.” (Ninoy Aquino as he told Charles Colson, smiling)

Never have I read a more consequential words Ninoy had uttered than the above quote that was, sad to say, tossed aside and buried in the dustbin of our nation’s history. Only when I dropped by the Booksale local outlet few years ago and picked up a thirty-five-year-old book did I stumble upon, by chance, such rare unsung Ninoy’s quote.

Not surprisingly, rarely has the secular media waxed lyrical about such sort of quote, like Ninoy’s words above, to hit the papers’ front pages and become a crowd-pleasing story by itself simply because of the name: Jesus. It’s a name, in the thick of sensational drama unfolding in the political world, deemed as without rhyme or reason. It’s a name tagged along with mystical religious conversion. A conversion in a life of a person so radical an experience that only the converted, like Ninoy, could have plainly uttered the name of Jesus in public in a natural manner.

In a chance public encounter, Ninoy met on an airplane Charles Colson, a Christian author of the book “Kingdoms in Conflict: An Insider’s Challenging View of Politics, Power, and the Pulpit” that narrated about the Edsa Revolution in a chapter entitled “People Power”  which contained the following excerpts:

BORN AGAIN

“’You’re Mr. Colson,’ [Ninoy] exclaimed. ‘I must talk with you.’ Since we were blocking the aisle I offered him the empty seat next to mine. ‘I can’t believe I am meeting you,’ he said. ‘I wanted to die in prison until I read your book.’

 “Prison had, for [Ninoy] Aquino, the same bewildering effect it has held for so many others. He lost all sense of direction and perspective. He became bitter not only at Marcos [Sr.], but at the world, even at God. He hated everyone and his prison guards goaded him on. They sometimes put the dinner plate on the ground and let a mongrel dog wolf part of it down; then, kicking the dog aside, they gave what was left to Aquino. He lost forty pounds. He suffered two heart attacks. When he was not longing for revenge, he wanted to die.

“His mother, deeply concerned, sent him a book, the memoirs of another prisoner. It was my story – Born Again.”

“At first Aquino looked at it with little appetite. Watergate was poorly understood outside America. [As special counsel to former US President Richard Nixon, Colson pleaded guilty to charges related to Watergate scandal in 1974 and served seven months in prison.] Nonetheless, there were similarities in our careers. So Aquino read the book – and it touched him.

“Aquino began to search for the meaning I had found. A voracious reader, he poured over the Bible and other Christian books. He found great inspiration in a little classic, The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis. He was surprised to discover in reading the works of an early Filipino hero, Jose Rizal, that the same book had motivated his life and struggle for his country.

“One night Aquino knelt in his jail cell and gave his life to Jesus Christ. Overcome with grief for his anger toward God, he begged forgiveness. His viewpoints, his life, most of all his bitterness – all changed. He had a sense that his life had suddenly moved into a different channel with another purpose.”

In today’s personal conversion parlance: Ninoy was born again.

TOTAL SURRENDER

What does it mean to be born again? Taken from Jesus’ words, “No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again from above,” (John 3:3) and put into practice by many Protestants, it is the moment or process of fully accepting faith in Jesus Christ. It is an experience when Jesus and his teachings become real, and the “born again” acquires a personal relationship with God. Colson put in words his own “born again” moment:

“It was that night in the quiet of my room that I made the total surrender,” Colson started off his chat with God, brimming with deeply personal sentiments. He said that right after such total surrender “came the greatest joy of all – the final release, turning it all over to God.” And in the hours that followed, he wound up, “I discovered more strength that I’d ever known before.”

“This was the real mountaintop experience,” Colson rounded out putting the last touches on his conversion experience. “Above and around me the world was filled with joy and love and beauty. For the first time I felt truly free, even as the fortunes of my life seemed at their lowest ebb.”

GRAIN OF WHEAT FALLING TO THE GROUND

Like Ninoy, I am a Catholic, but had my personal conversion experience under a Protestant wing which I wrote in my ATABAY article “The Old Has Passed Away The New Has Come” which I am excerpting below:

“The impact of my initial shock hit me as hard as a heavy vault containing my vain treasures: good curriculum vitae, thriving career, stable job, fine family, beautiful wife, promising kids, decent community standing, and rosy future. In contrast with such ocean-deep personal showpieces stamped with p-r-i-d-e, my skin-deep intimacy with God then was a parachute style of relationship stamped with a when-all-is-well-who-needs-God escape clause.

“My torment in living through each stage of my crisis cast an image of the proverbial grain of wheat falling to the ground and dying – dying to my prideful self. What would I need the vault of treasures for when I was staring eyeball-to-eyeball with death prospect?

“I felt like falling into an abyss, groping for anything I could get hold of. All of a sudden, a hand, seemingly dropped from the clouds, reached out to me. It was a hand of a Born-Again Christian friend, Louie. What followed was a seven-year spiritual journey with my friend and his community abounding in spiritual growth and maturity: prayer, fellowship, worship, discipleship, cover-to-cover Bible personal reading, quiet times, and spiritual healing sessions, among others.

“Had not our leader Pastor Ernie and his wife Fe taken a mission task in a foreign land, our spiritual journey could have trodden a path, far and wide.”

HE IS MY BROTHER

Today, as a result of the recent fiercely divisive electoral process, we have turned into a deeply divided nation. The fierce divisiveness has reared its ugly head, to a large extent, in the realm of entertainment business: “Maid in Malacanang” crowd on one side; “Katips,” the other side.

Marking the direful day he was assassinated, both sides, amid such divisiveness, did spare no effort in flipping through Ninoy’s legacy.

On one side, Rigoberto Tiglao depicted an orthodox view in his column in The Manila Times “This Is A Hero?” Tiglao popped the question and ventured a guess: “Did [Ninoy] mainly see it as an opportunity to succeed Ferdinand E. Marcos well worth the risk of returning to Manila? […] seem to point to [such] motivation.”

On the other side, Randy David asserted a quintessential view in his Inquirer column:

“Ninoy Aquino’s assassination triggered a national outrage […] His martyrdom to the cause of democracy was immediately recognized and was undisputed […] people’s memory and appreciation of his heroism remained stable […]”

Ninoy, on one side, is an opportunist; on the other side, a hero. On my side, he is my brother.

Head still photo courtesy of Ylanite Koppens at pexelsdotcom