The Jesuits

I recall Fr. Meany who was my other Education teacher in grad school. To prove that he practiced the vow of poverty, through his polo barong we'd see an undershirt ridden with a few holes. Another memory: Our class under him was after lunch, a rather sleepy time. One afternoon, he was telling a story when he suddenly clapped loudly. He smiled when he saw me looking startled, as though he'd awakened me.

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Also had Fr. Bernad in college. He was my teacher in Spanish 4, Rizal's works. But luckily for us, he taught the course in English. Or was that unfortunate for us? A very learned man, just the same.

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Fr. O'Shaughnessy was our teacher in Theo. He was a tall man with white hair. His shoulders were hunched, leading one classmate to describe him as a "walking hanger". He was brilliant.

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Though I never had Fr. Joe Cruz for a teacher, he never forgot my name and always made me feel special by that mere fact. Supposedly one of the greatest Filipino Jesuit minds. He was a descendant of Jose Rizal. Though he was a big man, whenever we spoke he really listened as though he had all the time in the world to do so.

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Fr. Reuter. We were introduced once and he was very cordial but that encounter was too brief for him to have remembered us. Just the same, when once we met him again, we approached him. As soon as he saw us, he walked with great pain toward our direction. He had a cane by then and had difficulty walking. A man with a very good and big heart. He walks the talk. He's not just good or doesn't just appear good in his writings or on TV. In real life, he has a lot of compassion for everyone. He writes very simply but strikingly. IN his "At 3 a.m. column" in the Philippine Star last week, for example he wrote:

Once upon a time, long long ago, when I was a young Jesuit, studying Greek in the Juniorate, I had a professor, who was probably the best teacher I ever had. He said to us, once, "The most beautiful thing that you will ever have is what you have right now." And that is true.

He wrote a book called: Realization. His message in the book, was: reality itself is breathlessly beautiful.

His conclusion was: the first virtue is facing reality. And by "first" he meant that - if you don't have this virtue- you will not have any other virtues. And the first vice is the flight from reality, the escape from reality. After that, you develop all the other vices.

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Oftentimes, reality unsettles me. Like this afternoon, a few hours after the car's stalling with my son alone, there was a brownout in the area. Called to mind "Murphy's Law." If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. Will research on that and blog on it next, hopefully. In the meantime, I'll try to bear in mind what Fr. Reuter said. It will be a tough act, no doubt.