Dapitan, 1 September Dapitan, 1 September 18921892

Rizal’s first letter to Fr. Pastells

Rizal thanks Fr. Pastells for his gift of a book by Sarda

Rizal said he would repay Fr. Pastells if Rizal would still be alive and if not, Rizal will say to Fr. Pastells like the Bisayos: Dios magbayad (God Repay You)

Rizal appreciates Fr. Pastells’ advices but it depends upon the criteria to follow them or not.

Rizal said “a thing which in my humble opinion is to offend God and to disdain His most precious gifts.”

Rizal thinks that God is not worthy of one’s consideration and respect.

“Though I am completely ignorant of the acts in my life to which Your Reverence refers nevertheless it does not seem to me so censurable for one to look at his affairs through the prism of his own judgment and self-esteem for God must have given these faculties to him for some purpose.”

Rizal points out the value of self-esteem and own judgement.

With regard to self-esteem, Rizal confessed candidly that he have for a long time asked God very sincerely to deprive him of it, but God who knows better what suits us, has left it to him. Now Rizal understands that a man never should be deprived of this sentiment.

Rizal believed that self-esteem is the greatest good that God has endowed man with for his perfection and purity saving him from many unworthy and base acts when he forgets the precepts he had learned or had inculcated in him.

At the end of the letter, Rizal thanks Fr. Pastells for his prayers and Rizal mentioned that he prays too every now and then but when Rizal prays, he never asks for anything because he believes that he has everything and all that happens to him is God’s will.

Which means that Rizal is contented and resigned.

Manila, 12 October Manila, 12 October 18921892

This letter was from Fr. Pastells to Rizal.

Pastells admired Rizal’s skill in writing but Pastells could not help but exclaim upon reading it.

Pastells thinks that it’s a pity that such an excellent young man had not lavished his talents on the defense of better causes.

Pastells wished that Rizal would have been like the skillful polemicist Sarda who spreads among his compatriots the redeeming ideas of the Catholic religion

Pastells mentioned that a certain Austrian professor who is very friendly with Rizal has already predicted that the Protestants took possession of Rizal shortly after the Free masons.

“If I could erase those premises with the blood of my veins, do not doubt, my dear friend, that I would be the first one who will work with the most ardor to save you from their worst consequences.”

Pastells wanted to save Rizal from the consequences of heresy.

“Foreign heretics sowed in your soul those bad winds from which you are now reaping tempests. And how dark and cloudy is the weather that is glimpsed for you in the future!”

Pastells believed that Rizal is slowly becoming a heretic.

“And bear in mind, my dear Rizal, that in the darkness of this life, we need in addition another lantern to guide us; we need a supernatural light to provide us with light and point to us like a bright beacon the reefs of this life and the port of salvation.”

Pastells emphasizes that we need God to guide us in our lives.

“And believe, my beloved Mr. Rizal, that there is no act of man on earth that is really deserving of eternal life except that which is clothed in the habit of the living faith that by another name is called habitual charity. Faith without charity is dead, and faith and hope in God without the same charity cannot obtain eternal life for you for whose acquisition we have been created in this world. Consequently, this is the will of God, our own sanctification and as its abiding fruit, eternal life.”

“You tell me that sometimes you also pray. Who prays hopes, and who hopes in God, believes in God. If this hope is supernatural, your faith is also supernatural. You say that it does not occur to you to ask for anything. Ask Him for the supernatural gift of faith, of hope, and of charity, and of the ultimate perseverance in these virtues, and thus the will of God will be done in you”

Pastells is sharing the wonders of God to Rizal.

Pastells sent a little golden booklet, Kempis’ Imitation of Christ

“Read it often, especially when you find yourself desolate or upset; and believe me that to whatever page you may turn by chance, you will see there indicated the remedy for your ills; be guided by the light of this lantern”

There Rizal will peace, not the peace of the godless but the peace of the children of God.

“Count me as your sincere friend, especially at the present hour when you are sucking the bitter cup of deportation. You know how dear you are to your friend and former director of the congregation.”

That was Fr. Pastells’ closing remarks of the letter to Rizal.

Dapitan, 11 November Dapitan, 11 November 18921892

This was the second letter of Rizal to Pastells.

Before answering the letter of Pastells, Rizal thanked him for the booklet that he gave Rizal.

Rizal mentioned that he liked it.

Rizal said that he would pick phrases from Pastells’ letter that have impressed him and comment on it with due respect

Rizal commented on this "What a pity that such an excellent young man had not lavished his talents on the defense of better causes!”

Rizal’s comment was “It is very possible that there may be better ones than those I have embraced, but my cause is good and this is enough for me. I do not regret neither the humbleness of my cause nor the meagerness of its rewards but the little talent that God has given me to serve it. If instead of weak cane I had been solid molave, better service I would be able to render.”

“I accept the cause of my country in the firm belief that God who has made me a Filipino would know how to forgive me for the mistakes that I commit, considering our difficult situation and the defective education that from birth we receive. Moreover, I do not aspire either for eternal fame or eternal renown; I do not aspire to equal others whose conditions, faculties, and circumstances could be and are in effect different from mine. My sole wish is to do what is possible, what is in my hands, the most necessary. I have glimpsed a little light and I believe that it is my duty to teach it to my countrymen.”

“As to being a Protestant... If Your Reverence knew what I had lost for not accepting Protestantism, you would not say such a thing.”

Rizal had a good reason to convert into a protestant.

“What is my misfortune compared with that of many others? I know too well that there are better trees that provide better shade, but in the midst of the gloom that reigns in my country I do not look for the shade, I prefer light.”

This was Rizal’s comment to Pastells phrase "If with the blood of my veins I could erase those premises, etc., etc…

Pastells said "And what dark and cloudy weather is glimpsed for his future!”

Rizal commented “Let the tempest be welcome if it will produce something good, the advancement of my native land, if it can attract the favorable attention of Mother Spain to her eight million subjects who entrust their future to her!”

“All religions pretend to hold the truth. What religions do I say? Each man, the most ignorant, the most giddy, pretends to be right.”

Rizal thinks that all religions have the same meaning and purpose after hearing so many convictions and meeting intelligent, honest, and studious men.

“From my way of thinking I infer that no one can judge the beliefs of others taking his own for the norm.” “And if it is very difficult to place one's self in the same point of view of others in the material world, how much more difficult it is in the moral that is complex and hidden?”

Rizal believes that you can’t judge the believes of others.

At the closing of the letter Rizal mention that “I shall inform you that I am engaged in farming. To what else can one engage in Dapitan? Your Reverence sees an envoy of God planting coffee and cacao! I have bought here from different owners several parcels of abandoned land; I build myself a little house and as the land is a little far, I am intending to ask His Excellency to permit me to live on it in order to farm it better. It is hilly and rocky with some fruit trees which benefit the monkeys of the forests.”

Manila, 8 December Manila, 8 December 18921892

This letter was from Fr. Pastells to Rizal.

At the beginning of the letter, Pastells mentioned that they have different religious point of views.

“please indicate to me in the most concrete way and as fully as possible your manner of thinking concerning religious matters.”

Pastells wants to know what Rizal thinks about religion.

“You assure me that you are not a Protestant and that had it not been for your respect for the religious idea and for holding religion as a matter of convenience or as an art to get along well in this life, you would now be rich, free, and covered with honors.”

Pastells emphasizes Rizal’s point of view in religion.

This is what Pastells is trying to emphasize to Rizal

“it is necessary to conclude by establishing the following bases: 1. The greatest benevolence and profound respect, complete acquiescence and even solidarity with every true idea sincerely conceived and practiced with conviction. 2. Profound hatred, implacable and ceaseless war against all false and erroneous ideas.

. 3. Commiseration towards persons who have sincerely conceived and practiced with conviction false and erroneous doctrines, offering them opportune and even inopportune and efficacious aid whenever an occasion arises in order to banish their errors and make them come out of the mire into which their bad convictions and habits have plunged them. 4. Persecute, isolate, silence, and confuse every erroneous idea maliciously conceived and practiced, especially if it is pernicious so that it will not contaminate society with its harmful purpose.”

“But who with justifiable reason can call himself on this our planet the reflector of that Light? Who?” Rizal asked this on his letter

Pastells answered “Jesus Christ God and true man. By virtue of his human nature he is the legitimate Reflector and by virtue of his nature and divine personality, the same light and splendor of his Eternal Father.”

“But, the following words that I read in your letter make my soul cold: "All religions pretend to possess the truth . To us only mathematical truths that are like plane figures show themselves in that manner; but religious, moral, and political truths are figures of extent and depth.”

Pastells brought up the topic about Jesus Christ.

“The divine mission of Jesus Christ is more than sufficient, most abundantly proven by his miracles, which if they are true, are the most evident testimonies and constitute a kind of irrefutable proofs… Well now, Jesus Christ performed that miracle to prove his divine mission. Already on another occasion he had said to the Jews: If you do not wish to believe me, believe my works”

Rizal said this in his letter “I imagine men engaged in the study of truth like students copying a statue.”

Pastells commented: “Jesus Christ was talking of the resurrection of his own body, through his own virtue…Therefore the example that you adduce of the students copying a statue does not apply; because it does not deal there any statues but of the very original and prototype Jesus Christ, God, and true man”

At the end of the letter, Pastells commented on Rizal’s new place near the plantation “I pity those people for their wretched condition in their muddy places during the planting season.  Please see how all this could be avoided.”

Dapitan, 9 January Dapitan, 9 January 18931893

In this letter, Rizal explains his concept of God.

Rizal examind his beliefs and their foundations, he calls it his “Shipwreck of Faith”

Rizal said that “I believe firmly in the existence of a Creator more than by faith, by reasoning and by necessity.”

“Who is He? What human sounds, what syllables of language can enshrine the name of that Being whose works overwhelm the mind that thinks of them? Who can give Him an adequate name when a little creature hereabouts with an ephemeral power has two or three names, three or four surnames and numerous titles and epithets? We call Him God, but this only recalls the Latin Deus, the Greek Zeus at most.”

“What is He? I would attribute to him all the beautiful and holy qualities that my mind can conceive in infinite degree, if the fear of my ignorance did not restrain me. Someone has said that each man forms his God according to his image and likeness”

This is Rizal’s explanation of God.

“What shall we say of a father who heaps candies and toys on his children, but gives food only to one of them, educates and rears him alone? And what if it so happens that this chosen one refuses to eat while the others die looking for food?”

The children represent the religions.

“for me nature is the only divine book of unquestionable legitimacy, the sole manifestation of the Creator that we have here in this life clear, perennial, living, powerful, capable of overcoming our blunders and errors, incorruptible, one that cannot play false in spite of human caprice, with its laws constant and unchangeable in all places and for all times.”

“Regarding the immortality of the soul and life eternal, how can I believe in the death of my consciousness, when everything around me tells me that nothing is lost but things merely change? If the atom cannot be annihilated, is it possible for my consciousness which rules the atom to be annihilated?”

“Regarding redemption, I have stronger faith in this matter than many of those who perhaps take me for a heretic. I believe in the redemption by the Word which has been decreed from all eternity.  Humanity can fall three or even a thousand times on life's bitter road, but it will always find salvation. And the greater the crisis, the greater the victory will be. In the end humanity will rise again triumphant and glorious, for the work of God cannot perish.”

“Perhaps it will not be so bad a thing if we differ a little bit even as we worship the same Creator.”

Rizal believes in the Creator but not in Jesus.

At the end of the letter, Rizal said he will send Fr. Pastells a small statue of St. Paul in an attitude of prayer.