Let me be very honest about what this paper hopes to say on “the spirituality of the Ninoy-and Cory leadership” – the topic assigned. I must confess that I am largely ignorant of the vast amount of literature that has developed of late on the theme of leadership. It will have to be somebody knowledgeable this area who can take my remarks and put them in proper focus, in the precise context of leadership.
What I can contribute is something on the spiritual vision which I believe underlies the Ninoy/Cory leadership, as it has impacted on the history of the last three decades in our country. That vision, of course, has a design for the society and nation it tries to bring to realization in our land. But that vision also includes what we might call incarnate embodiment of what leadership must be offered so that that society can be authentically realized. More concretely, what we must do, what is asked of us, if that society, so conceived and so constructed, can arise and endure.
FAITH IS COURAGE … AND HOPE
Mrs. Cory Aquino was the first Asian and the first woman, to receive the prestigious honorary doctorate in Political Sciences from the University of the Sacred Heart in Milan (Italy) In October 1995, when she had delivered her doctoral address, one of the authorities of the university commented,
The event was an unusual one, standing out among occasions of a similar nature. Mrs. Aquino’s address was not a mere academic dissertation, of solemn and elevated discourse. It was first of all an authentic testimony of faith, a deeply moving one. Mrs. Aquino touched all by being an authentic witness. Even in a Catholic University like ours, rarely do we hear such an impressive personal profession of both ethical and religious commitment.
The Italian press gave marked attention to the same awarding rites and one national daily, Avvenire, gave the event almost an entire page with the heading, “CORY, GOD’S REVOLUTIONARY”. The paper said:
“Faith is courage.” That is, Corazon Aquino. Meeting a person, one rarely has the perception of coming face-to-face with an embodiment of incarnate values, but this happened yesterday . . . at Milan, with those who were able to see and listen to the former Philippine President.
Perhaps this spontaneous response to Mrs. Aquino’s person, her presence, her words, give us some sort of lead as to what the “spiritual dimensions” of Ninoy’s and her leadership have been, above all. Let us be fortright about this, even if this may not sound politically correct here at a seminar of this sort. We are speaking of the FAITH DIMENSION in her, and Ninoy’s leadership. She has been quite unambiguous on this point, and even the most hurried reading of the two books of speeches which she herself has selected, IN THE NAME OF DEMOCRACY AND PRAYER, and INSPIRATION AND IMAGES, makes this wholly evident. Most revealing, doubtless, of all, is what in a way is her most personal book, NINOY AND CORY, put together for the inauguration of the Aquino Center in Tarlac: pictures and texts are personally chosen (she says), and her introduction asks readers to “take time to explain to your young relatives and friends the meaning of Ninoy’s ultimate sacrifice” The pictures intend “to impress upon you the importance of prayer in our lives specially in times of trial and adversity.”
In “Honor and Pain, Courage and Faith,” the address she delivered on receiving her first honorary doctoral degree (19 May 1984) from Mt St Vincent College in New York, she focused on faith and prayer, and the courage that derives from them. Ninoy and she were empowered not only to weather the storms which encompassed their lives, to endure them with resignation; they were given a “blazing and serene hope” in the midst of darkness. “For me (she said) “this blazing and serene hope is founded on Faith in the One who died for love and rose again and who has always been a part of my life.” “This afternoon you honor me for courage that is accompanied by and founded on faith.” Ninoy was a son of his people, and she its daughter. “We are what we have been able to become because we were nurtured in a Faith that begets courage blazing with hope among a people so often tested by tribulation. And how often I have seen courage and hope blazing out of the Faith of my people especially in our darkest hours. . . . Even as I accept this honor, I think of my people struggling once again with courage and blazing with hope in their hour of tribulation.”
These words were spoken two years before EDSA Uno. Without the least ambiguity she attributes to Faith and Prayer the Courage and Hope that have shaped them to “what we have been able to become.” Her husband – many times – spoke of the process which “created” the Ninoy who led our people to freedom – the process: imprisonment, suffering and loneliness, brokenness and even despair, the total powerlessness and privation to which he had been reduced and in which and through which he was given the “poverty and purity of spirit”, the entrustment of self to God’s will, the committing of self to God’s purposes, – and the peace, the clarity and courage which came from that. This was his formation to leadership – and when Cory’s time came to lead, the same process (if somewhat differently realized in her and experienced by her) empowered her to walk before her people as they struggled to win redemption for themselves. Their leadership, in a true sense, was given to Ninoy and Cory. For Ninoy, what was given him was a different kind of leadership from that which he himself first sought. For Cory, leadership was really thrust upon her, but there had been the process which enabled her to move into it. When we speak of the “spiritual dimensions” of Ninoy/Cory leadership, we must make sure the “formation to leadership” which their histories, and – in their own belief – God worked out for them, is seen as necessary and essential preludes.
“POWER IN WEAKNESS”
It may not be generally known that in 1986, when Mrs. Aquino was already at Malacañang, Mr. David Puttnam, its producer, and Mr. Roland Joffe, its director, brought the epic movie, THE MISSION, to Manila, so they could show it to her, and so that she might allow the two of them to make a film based on Ninoy’s life, on the Ninoy story as an amazing “living out again” of the Jesus story. The story of a calling, in Ninoy’s case, from the ways of the world, to the ultimate sacrifice. Puttnam saw the Ninoy story as a renewed revelation of the very core of Christian spirituality. A man who (if we may use the words of Ignatius of Loyola, whose Spiritual Exercises and its “Two Standards” Puttnam had, surprisingly enough, never read) . . . a man who, at the seeming height of his political career, “with every diligence seeks honors, power and the credit of a great name upon the earth”, is brought down instead, and through the humiliation, torture and despair of captivity in the hands of an enemy, and then through prayer in the midst of seeming perdition and defeat, finds Jesus and what for him is the message of Jesus. In human brokenness he lays aside his search for worldly glory, and places himself within God’s will and purpose, seeking now only to further God’s leading of his people, discovering Jesus’ personal love for him, uniting his suffering with Christ’s suffering and learning that life’s deepest meaning is found in self-giving, in self-sacrificing love, love even unto suffering, love even unto death – that his people might live. In doing this, later he will bring forth an awakening of hope in his people, create in their hearts new purpose and new resolve, instill a new courage. And through his death, in them and with them, new life will come for them.
This story, in fact, draws its meaning from the life, death and victory of Jesus. “God’s power in human weakness: that weakness of God which is stronger than all the might of man.” Puttnam -- from whom I heard this – saw in Ninoy Aquino’s suffering, death and ultimate triumph an amazing re-living of “the Christ paradigm.” Puttnam wanted to contrast this with the Marcos story and its reverse dynamic: from power to perdition.
Those of you who are familiar with the Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola will see here the meditation on the Two Standards, and the climactic “Third Way of Being Humble” given in more Pauline terms. A witness perhaps that Ignatius’ point is faithfully that of the Gospel itself. -- Theologians see in this story-line the very heart of the redemptive labor of Jesus -- the “law of the Cross”, lived out in the lives of Jesus’ followers: the baseline of the Christian mystery itself.
This thesis, if you will, of how in the Christian scheme-of-things, a person is shaped to be God’s instrument for his purposes, is not something one reads into the Ninoy/Cory story through some pious hermeneutic. There are at least two addresses of Mrs. Aquino which take this thesis up as their main focus, the first, “Ninoy’s Friend,” which in some ways is my favorite President Cory speech, given at Sto Domingo church on 21 August 1988, and the second, perhaps the most “theological” of her major talks, “Remembering Ninoy: our Freedom founded on his sacrifice,” given also at Santo Domingo Church, in 1993 on the tenth anniversary of Ninoy’s death, when she was no longer President.
Mrs. Aquino – following some of Ninoy’s own texts - takes the pauline perspective, even the pauline language, to argue that Ninoy’s sacrifice was an exercise of “power-in-weakness”, of God’s power operative within human weakness, within non-violent struggle, -- a power which is, she said, “the greatest power on the face of the earth.”
Principle without power has moved mankind further in four years – from EDSA to the Soviet coup – than power of any other kind had advanced the interests of mankind in 4,000 years, making democracy the only acceptable form of political organization, and people power the most promising form of action in the political field.
And it is not surprising, when you consider where it all started. For principle without power hung on a cross on a hill in Jerusalem, but in dying gave life to the dead and rising destroyed the dominion of darkness.
God chose the simple to confound the wise, the weak to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world, the despised things – the things that are not – to nullify the things that are so that no one may boast before him . . . His power is made perfect in weakness. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
These are quotations from Mrs. Aquino, but Ninoy says the same thing more than once. Both of them find this principle a basic conviction.
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