"Men die for a faith..."

Western ideas have acted not merely as explosives but as solvents. They have undermined the traditional beliefs and philosophies of Asia but have not succeeded in proposing any view of life or scale of values acceptable to the majority of Asians. In place of the old faiths, they have substituted merely doubts. This is not to be wondered at since the liberal West, because of its rejection of Christianity, is itself without a faith of its own. Indeed, it no longer has even a consistent rational basis for the rights and freedoms which it professes to defend and teach. With unconscious but suicidal contradiction, it calls upon Asia to accept the inviolability of the human person, the sovereignty inherent in the people, the sanctity of treaties, the rule of law, and at the same time casts doubts or heaps derision on the Christian faith and the rational philosophy without which these principles cease to be valid or even intelligible. That is why you cannot blame Asian liberals who have learned liberalism from a dechristianized and doubting Europe for refusing to die in defense of liberalism. Why should they, indeed? Men die for a faith ; they will not die for a doubt.

― Fr. Horacio Luis de la Costa y Villamayor, S.J. 

Riding the Whirlwind, Social Order II|6 
St. Louis, June 1952

The Progress of Medicine (3rd panel) by Carlos "Botong" V. Francisco
Oil on canvas. 1953. National Museum of the Philippines.

Jewels of the Pauper

          There is a thought that comes to me sometimes (the old captain said) as I sit by my window in the evening, listening to the young men's guitars, and watching the shadows deepen on the long low hills, the hills of my native land.
          You know, we are a remarkably poor people: poor, not only in material goods, but even in the riches of the spirit. I doubt whether we can claim to possess a truly national literature. No Shakespeare, no Cervantes has yet been born among us to touch with immortality that in our landscape, in our customs, in our history which is most vital, most original, most ourselves. If we must needs give currency to our thoughts, we are forced to mint them in the coinage of a foreign tongue; for we do not even have a common language.
          But as poor as we are, we yet have something. This pauper among the nations of the earth hides two jewels in her rags. One of them is our music. We are sundered one from another by eighty-seven dialects; we are one people when we sing. The kundimans of Bulacan awaken an answering chord in the lutes of Leyte. Somewhere in the rugged north, a peasant woman croons her child to sleep; and the Visayan listening remembers the cane fields of his childhood, and his mother singing the selfsame song.
          We are again one people when we pray. This is our other treasure: our Faith. It gives, somehow, to our little uneventful days a kind of splendor: as though they had been touched by a King. And did you ever notice how they are always mingling, our religion and our music? All the basic rites of human life ― the harvest and the seed-time, the wedding, birth and death ― are among us drenched with the fragrance of incense and the coolness of music.
          These are the bonds that bind us together; these are the soul that makes us one. And as long as there remains in these islands one mother to sing Nena's Lullaby, one boat to put out to sea with the immemorial rowing song, one priest to stand at the altar and offer God to God, this nation may be conquered, trampled upon, enslaved, but it cannot perish. Like the sun that dies every evening, it will rise again from the dead.

― Fr. Horacio Luis de la Costa y Villamayor, S.J.

1943

El Ciego (The Blind Man) by Fernando Amorsolo
Oil on panel. 1929.

"Down..."

Down every century, God has pursued wayward man and won him with eternal love...
          Down the vastly-looming forests, the tangled glades, the turbulent mountain torrents where Adam and Eve and their children roamed and hid and hunted...
          Down the pillared dimness, richly-veiled of temples, down strange, incense haunted corridors, down richly-lighted shrines of devil-gods...
          Down the Numidian-marbled banquet halls, the wine-splashed floors, the purple orgies, the myrtled bacchanalian feasts of Nero... 
         Down Broadway - blare of horns - blinding electrics, ermine wraps, silk hats, door checks ― "Extra! Gangsters..― languid waltzes, dizzy jazz ― youth and beauty...
          Down cloistered walks of sunset, vaguely rustling with the garments of passing nuns, softly charged with the lily breath of prayer...
          Down everywhere, down immemorial years, down all the alleys of the world and all the pebbled garden paths of stars... And always, it is God who wins. Always, when the soul at last sinks wearied out, stripped of all its vanities, its shattered pride, its dinted indifference, always the victor lays aside His blinding armor and draws aside the veil of eternal love; always, in accents of infinite tenderness, come those words that only God can utter:

         "Rise, clasp my hand, and come."

― Horacio Luis de la Costa y Villamayor, A.B. 1935

The Hound of Heaven

March 1932

(Read the whole essay HERE!)

Study (Man Between Two Trees) by R.H. Ives Gammell
Oil on paper. Undated. Childs Gallery, Boston.