Influenced by his parents, Arnulfo Resus was a regular churchgoer, attended Sunday school and mastered the Bible even as a child. Later he himself served as Sunday school teacher and was active in the Christian Youth Fellowship program.
He was the second of four children of a typically middle-class family. His father was a former member of the Philippine Air Force. Arnulfo, called Noli, had a well-ordered childhood. He got excellent grades in school, and was also good at drawing, painting and declamation.
He entered the University of the Philippines in Diliman as a full scholar in geodetic engineering in 1969. There he joined the Kabataang Makabayan and the Student Christian Movement of the Philippines. During the floods that hit Metro Manila and Central Luzon in the early 1970s, he was among the volunteer workers who brought medicines and relief goods to flood victims in Tatalon, Quezon City which was a stone’s throw away from their house.
Resus stayed active with the United Church of Christ in the Philippines, giving talks and organizing youths. He became well known among his church members as a sharp critic of the Marcos government’s increasingly repressive rule. Eventually he transferred to the Philippine Christian University where he started to attract the attention of military intelligence. When martial law was declared in 1972, he went underground and continued to organize for the anti-dictatorship movement. He also became a member of the banned Christians for National Liberation.
In 1974 he was arrested in Quiapo, and badly tortured by those who arrested him. For a while he was held incommunicado inside a dungeon where, as he recounted to his father, he could neither stand, nor sit, nor lie down in the space that was purposely built for such confinement. With the incessant pleadings by his father with friends in the military, Resus was released after eight months; no charges were filed against him.
In late 1975, shortly after his release, Resus married Aida Carlos, a fellow church member who was also an activist. Soon after, the couple left for Northern Luzon as community organizers for the underground. Then In February 1977, his family received the news that he had been killed by government forces in Isabela province. The fate of his wife remained unknown.
The body of Arnulfo Resus was never recovered. On December 27, 1985, he was given posthumous honors by the Student Christian Movement of the Philippines.
