Rizal’s vertebra, Aguinaldo’s appendix

IN A rejoinder to my column on relics, Jaime Licauco asked in his column space whether he, having touched the late and much beloved John Paul II, could be considered a third-class relic. A first-class relic is a piece from a saint’s body, like a head or a strand of hair.

Second-class relics are articles that have been in direct physical contact with a saint like a pair of worn shoes. Third-class relics are objects that have been touched by a first-class relic, so I guess Licauco would qualify—provided he never washed the part of his body that was in contact with JPII, who is now on the express road to sainthood.

I could qualify as a third-class relic myself having touched a number of first-class relics in my years as a Benedictine monk, but my most memorable encounter was with a divinity from another faith. Years ago, battling a bad case of writer’s block, I came across the Dalai Lama in the stairwell of the London School of Oriental and African Studies.

Like most unexpected encounters it was awkward. I stood by, speechless, as he descended the steps to the lobby, then he stopped, looked at me, and went back. He offered his hand and I shook it to the horror of the retainers who later told me we are not to touch the Dalai Lama. How was I to know that part of Tibetan protocol? I found out later that the closest I should get were the ends of silk ribbons attached to a stick he waved around crowds, but that looked like the device we use in the Philippines to drive flies away from a dining table.

What was I to do? Dalai Lama or not, you do not refuse a hand extended in friendship. Our hands touching reminded me of a detail of Michaelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling where God’s finger touches that of Adam as he brings him to life. The same image is refashioned in the movie “E.T.” when the alien touches the earthling. No cameras to record my split-second encounter with the Dalai Lama, nothing to post on Facebook except a happy memory. Those who came up to me asking “What did he say to you?” were disappointed that all I heard was a grunt when I pressed his palm. But what was priceless was seeing those eyes twinkle, the lips forming the benign smile known throughout the world. These groupies then pressed their hands and other parts of their body with some affliction on the hand that touched the Dalai Lama some of them reminding me: “Do not wash that hand, ever!” That night before I cooked dinner, I faced my dilemma by washing my hand and keeping the memory.

As a historian interested in the individuals who figure in the birth of the nation, I seek out secular or historical relics. These may be historical sites, shrines or monuments marked with those heavy cast iron markers installed by the National Historical Commission, or the shrines it maintains to keep the memory of our heroes alive: there are the three Rizal Shrines—one in Fort Santiago, another in Calamba and the third in Dapitan; Emilio Aguinaldo’s house in Kawit; the Barasoain Church; the original house where Apolinario Mabini died, which has been moved from a number of riverside locations before it found a permanent home in the Mabini Campus of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines. Teodoro Agoncillo told me once that historians should always try to visit the site where an event occurred because these provide many clues that lead to an understanding of the past. That’s why I have been to places history would rather ignore, like the convent and churchyard in Cabanatuan where Antonio Luna was assassinated by presidential guards from Cavite, or Mt. Hulog in the Maragondon range where it is believed Andres Bonifacio was executed. In Manila you have the Luneta where Jose Rizal was executed in 1896, the same Bagumbayan or “New Town” outside Intramuros where Fathers Gomez, Burgos and Zamora were executed in 1872.

For those who want to see some first-class relics of our heroes this June here are the main ones. In the Rizal Shrine in Fort Santiago, a room of relics boasts of articles of clothing worn by the hero, including one of the overcoats he wore in Europe. In the center is a reliquary with a piece of bone, separated from the rest of the remains now buried under the Rizal monument. It is supposed to be part of a vertebra, and is chipped where the fatal bullet struck Rizal. In the Aguinaldo Shrine in Kawit, Cavite, is a medicine cabinet filled with empty blue bottles of eye drops. Inside this cabinet is a bottle that contains the pickled remains of the general’s appendix. Beside it is another bottle with a bit of gauze, a reminder of the towel that the surgeon forgot inside Aguinaldo during the appendectomy. Fortunately, there were no malpractice suits then. One doctor, commenting that a towel left inside is negligible, asked, “Imagine if it was a scalpel?” In the Mabini Shrine in Tanauan City, Batangas, you find Mabini’s coffin on display, and a lock of hair and some pieces of scalp taken from the Sublime Paralytic when his body was exhumed in 1980. It was determined then that his paralysis was due to polio, not syphilis as earlier rumored.

Once in front of Juan Luna’s grave in San Agustin, one of my students asked, “You mean to say Luna was a real person?” (Totoong tao pala si Luna?)

Relics are gruesome to most, but they remind many of us who forget that saints, heroes and even sinners, were human like you and me.

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