We Have Become Untrue to Ourselves! By Felix B.

Bautista
With all the force and vigor at my command, I contend that we have relaxed our
vigilance, that we have allowed ourselves to deteriorate. I contend that we have lost
our pride in the Philippines, that we no longer consider it a privilege and an honor to
be born a Filipino.
To the Filipino youth, nothing Filipino is good enough any more. Even their Filipino
names no longer suit them. A boy named Juan does not care to be called Juanito
anymore. No, he must be Johnny. A girl named Virginia would get sore if she was
nicknamed Viring or Biang. No, she must be Virgie or Ginny. Roberto has become
Bobbie; Maria, Mary or Marie.
And because they have become so Americanized, because they look down on
everything Filipino, they now regard with contempt all the things that our fathers and
our fathers fathers held dear. They frown on kissing the hands of their elders, saying
that it is unsanitary. They dont care for the Angelus, saying that it is old-fashioned.
They belittle the kundiman, because it is so drippingly sentinmental.
They are what they are today because their elders their parents and their teachers
have allowed them to be such. They are incongruities because they cannot be anything
else! And they cannot be anything else because their elders did not know enough, or
did not care enough to fashion them and to mold them into the Filipino pattern.
This easing of the barriers that would have protected our Filipinism, this has resulted
in something more serious, I refer to the de-Filipinization of our economic life.
Let us face it. Economically speaking, we Filipinos have become strangers in our own
country.
And so, today, we are witnesses to the spectacle of a Philippines inhabited by
Filipinos who do not act and talk like Filipinos. We are witnesses to the pathetic sight
of a Philippines controlled and dominated and run by non-Filipinos.
We have become untrue to ourselves, we have become traitors to the brave Filipinos
who fought and died so that liberty might live in the Philippines. We have betrayed
the trust that Rizal reposed on us, we are not true to the faith that energized Bonifacio,
the faith that made Gregorio del Pilar cheerfully lay down his life at Tirad Pass.



Dirty Hands by John P. Delaney S.J.
Im proud of my dirty hands. Yes, they are dirty. And they are rough and knobby and
calloused. And Im proud of the dirt and the knobs and the callouses. I didnt get them
that way by playing bridge or drinking afternoon tea out of dainty cups, or playing the
well-advertised Good Samaritan at charity balls.
I got them that way by working with them, and Im proud of the work and the dirt.
Why shouldnt I feel proud od the work they do these dirty hands of mine?
My hands are the hands of plumbers, of truckdrivers and street cleaners; of carpenters;
engineers, machinists and workers in steel. They are not pretty hands, they are dirty
and knobby and calloused. But they are strong hands, hands that make so much that
the world must have or die.
Someday, I think, the world should go down on its knees and kiss all the dirty hands
of the working world, as in the days long past, armored knights would kiss the hands
of ladies fair. Im proud of my dirty hands. The world has kissed such hands. The
world will always kiss such hands. Men and women put reverent lips to the hands of
Him who held the hammer and the saw and the plane. His werent pretty hands either
when they chopped trees, dragged rough lumber, and wielded carpenters tools. They
were workingmans hands strong, capable proud hands. And werent pretty hands
when the executioners got through them. They were torn right clean through by ugly
nails, and the blood was running from them, and the edges of the wounds were raw
and dirty and swollen; and the joints were crooked and the fingers were horribly bent
in a mute appeal for love.
They werent pretty hands then, but, O God, they were beautiful those hands of the
Savior. Im proud of those dirty hands, hands of my Savior, hands of God.
And Im proud of my hands too, dirty hands, like the hands of my Savior, the Hands
of my God!









Jewels of the Pauper by Horacio de la Costa, S.J.
There is a thought that comes to me sometimes as I sit by my window in the evening,
listening to the young mens guitars, and watching the shadows deepen on the longs
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 we can claim to possess a truly national
literature. No Shakespeare, no Cervantes has yet been born among us to touch with
immortality that which is in our landscape, in our customs, in our story, that which is
most original, most ourselves. If we must give currency to our thoughts, we are
focused to mint them in the coinage of a foreign tongue; for we do not even have a
common language.
But poor as we are, we yet have something. This pauper among the nations of the
earth hides two jewels in her rages. 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 of lutes of Leyte. Somewhere in
the rugged north, a peasant woman croons her child to sleep; and the Visayan
listening remembers the crane fields of his childhood, and his mother singing the self-
made 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 rite of human life the harvest and the seedtime,
the wedding, birth and death are among us drenched with the fragrance and the
coolness of music.
These are the bonds that bind us together; these are the souls that make us one. And as
long as there remains in these islands one mother to sing Nenas 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, the 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.







The Two Standards by Horacio de la Costa, S.J.
Life is a Warfare: a warfare between two standards: the Standard of Christ and the
Standard of Satan. It is a warfare older than the world, for it began with the revolt of
the angels. It is a warfare wide as the world; it rages in every nation, every city, in the
heart of every man. Satan desires all men to come under his Standard, and to this end
lures them with riches, honors, power, all that ministers to the lust and pride of man.
Christ on the contrary, invites all to fight under His Standard. But He offers no
worldly allurement; only Himself. Only Jesus; only the Son of Man; born an outcast,
raised in poverty, rejected as a teacher, betrayed by His friend, crucified as a criminal.
And therefore His followers shall not be confounded forever; they are certain of
ultimate victory; against them, the gates of Hell cannot prevail. The powers of
darkness shall splinter before their splendid battalions. Battle-scarred but resplendent,
they shall enter into glory with Christ, their king. Two armies, two Standards, two
generals and to every man there comes the imperious cry of command: Choose!
Christ or Satan? Choose! Sanctity or Sin? Choose! Heaven or Hell? And in the choice
he makes, is summed up the life of every man.







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