What is Independence Day about?

By Fr. Leo Pabayo

CELEBRATING our Independence Day is meant for us to appreciate the blessing of being an independent nation. However, it is also a time for taking a good looking back at our history and seeing the mistakes that we made that need to be corrected so that we may become more truly free and independent.

Many conflicting thoughts come to my mind about our independence because of my varied readings of our history.

Independence Day is in a sense our celebration of the birthday of our nation. One way of looking at it is that it was the time when we went out of the womb of mother country Spain. Another way of looking at it is that it was when we removed the shackle that kept us in bondage to Mother Spain when the time had come for us to be on our own as a nation.

Spain as a caring mother and Spain as an authoritarian and oppressive father are two characterizations of our history as a nation. Our understanding of our nation therefore depends also on what period of our history we are looking at. There is some truth to each of them but they are far from the whole truth. It is a mistake to settle with any one of them. A well-rounded knowledge of the truth is one that will help us to move forward to greater freedom and independence as a nation.

Part of that history was the short period (45 years) when we became a colony of the United States of America. This was under the “Benevolent Assimilation Policy” of the American President McKinley with Howard Taft as Governor General of the Philippines who catapulted our nation to the modern age.

A familiar scene in our celebration of Independence Day in the past was the reenactment of our first declaration of independence in Kawit, Cavite. One reenactment scene that was carried in the front page of our national dailies several years ago had the movie actor turned senator Bong Revilla of Cavite, garbed in the Katipunan uniform like that of Aguinaldo to reenact the declaration of independence by Aguinaldo.

With Bong Revilla leading the celebration and reenacting the first Independence Day we got a glimpse of what our independent nation has become. Actors and other show business people have come to play real life roles as political leaders in our nation. Show business and celebrity status had come to be popularly accepted as a way now to become a leader in our nation. This had sometimes been for the good of the people like in the case of Vilma Santos and Isko Moreno. There were times, however, when this had not been good for the people.

For next year’s election, we can expect some big changes in the mode of campaigning for votes by the candidates on account of the pandemic. But the political scene however is expected to continue to be characterized by the predominance of the old political families that have recently been referred to as dynasties.

Whatever may turn out to be during next year’s election, what is important now is for us the Filipino People to strive to continue to grow in understanding of ourselves as a nation.

An Independence Day celebration, while looking back to the past, is also a time of taking stock of the present and seeing how well and how far we have progressed toward the ideals of nationhood that we set ourselves to pursue when we declared our independence. Those ideals have been set forth in the preambles of the various Constitutions that we approved. The latest articulation of the basic ideals is in the preamble of the 1987 Constitution.

“We, the sovereign Filipino people, imploring the aid of Almighty God, in order to build a just and human society and establish a Government that shall embody our ideals and aspirations, promote the common good, conserve and develop our patrimony, and secure for ourselves and posterity the blessings of independence…”

On this occasion, we ask ourselves how much we have become of what our Constitution has stipulated, namely, a nation that implores “the aid of Almighty God in order to build a just and humane society… promote the common good” enjoy “the blessings of independence and democracy under the rule of law and a regime of truth, justice, freedom, love, equality and peace.”

Notice that in this preamble we are asking ourselves not so much about how well we have progressed economically or in the enjoyment of the material blessings of creation. These are only secondary and in the service of greater enjoyment of the spiritual values of life like truth, justice, freedom, love, equality peace, etc….

The building of a nation is therefore not only a secular and temporal undertaking but also and more so a spiritual undertaking. Implicit in our Constitution are the spiritual and religious ideals of our nation no matter what religion we belong to. For the Christians among us that constitute the majority of Filipinos, implicit in our Constitution are Gospel values that also include the spiritual values in other religions.