John 4: 31-38

We are met to praise God for the existence of a human educational institution -the Ateneo de Naga University - that has stood in this City of Naga, for 70 years. So short a span it is, this life of ours that the work of our own hands can survive us, and become, to its architects, a monument of eternity. And how short a time! ADNU, in whose embrace we now gather, is but a mushroom growth compared with the Holy Rosary Seminary or the USI; yet already we venerate it because it has stood for seventy years.

As we gather in its embrace, how may we look at ADNU at this day -the 70^th foundation anniversary?

I suggest we look at this day, like modern seers or prophets, and interpret the meaning of this 70^th anniversary celebration down three vistas of experience.

The first vista of experience is to consider the special mission ADNU is meant to accomplish for Bicol.

What was the Philippines 70 years ago?

The scars of war and four years of Japanese occupation had taken a fearful toll. Over 100,000 Filipinos died during the US liberation of Manila. Gen Dwight Eisenhower, after surveying the destruction of Manila, said:"With the exception of Warsaw in Poland, this (Manila) is the worst destruction I have ever seen," Over a million Filipinos died during that war.

More than the material destruction, the scars of hostilities were even worse: still fresh and epitomized by the revolutionary threat of the influential Communist Party, the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP), especially when its military arm, the Hukba/ahap ( Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon), later renamed Hukbong Magpapa/aya ng Bayan became a major political force in the country. Naga, at that time, was like a legendary phoenix rising from death to a new life. Resilient citizens, even then as it is now, peopled Naga. They could sense rising from the ashes the quickening life of rebirth. In this rebirth, social institutions, particularly educational institutions would be needed to accompany, support and guide the Bicolanos meet the demands of growth and development. Where are those educational institutions in Bicol seventy years ago?

Another important detail then was growing realization of the crucial importance of more catholic schools in the region. There were two considerations that ground the urgency of this pastoral concern. First the Silliman University had established a branch in Legazpi and was engaged aggressively in attracting the Bicolano youth to the Protestant faith. In fact seven years after ADNU was founded, the First Plenary Council of the Philippines decreed that every parish able to do so, was required to establish a parochial school. The Archbishop saw the need to go beyond the parish and wanted to have educational institutions of higher level to provide the youth of Bicol with solid Catholic foundation, to become the leaders. Thus was born the mission of ADNU. Let me quote from the paper of Fr. Joel Tabora : “Ateneo de Naga was founded on the initiative of Msgr. Pedro Santos. In the context of Protestant proselytizing through Silliman University, he saw the need for more Catholic schools in his diocese, which was at that time the whole of Bicol. He asked the Jesuits to come. He wooed them with promises of land, financial assistance and personal support.”  

When you listen to the winds that suffuse the Campus, you will probably hear the names of the six members of the first community: Fr. Francis Burns, scholastics Greg Horgan, Albert Grau, Nicolas Kunkel, and Hilario Lim.

Seen through this vista of experience, today's 70^th anniversary brings to fore the words of St. John" the Evangelist:"Others have labored, and it is their labors you have inherited."(4:38). You do well, members of the ADNU, to remember that you can expect little reward in this world or in the next, if you, the inheritors of the labors of others, are content to live on your capital. You, in your generation, have to pull your weight, not lie back, like passengers in the boat, and allow the impetus of the past to carry you forward to the next 70 years.

As you celebrate your 70^th anniversary, you do well to look back at the past and take stock of your harvest. But more importantly let these festivities of 2010 be to leave you in a mood of effort and vigilance, not of dull complacency.

                     A second vista of experience is to look at this celebration as the journey in time of ADNU. Its point of departure was best chronicled:" Our Ateneo de Naga began with the opening of classes on the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, June 5, 1940, just ten months after the first conversations between Bishop Santos and Fr, Hurley ... After the Catholic Academy was turned over to the Jesuit s, the 5 pioneering Jesuits and 20 lay persons formerly of the Catholic Academy welcomed

the 650 students. There were five sections in the first year, three in
second, two in third, and two in fourth." (cf. Fr.Tabora).

From that small beginning's, Ateneo de Naga has grown: it is now a relatively large university of six colleges, a graduate school, a thriving high school, institutionally and program accredited by PAA5CU in the colleges and high school, recognized and respected in Bikol, the 'Philippines and the Asian region. With 375 members of various faculties and 226 auxiliary staff members, and 6,422 students, ADNU has truly gone a long way!

As we stand at the threshold of your zo" year of foundation, how do these impressive developments square with the original inspiration of your founding Fathers? Your celebration should include are-visiting the original inspiration of the Jesuit pioneers of ADNU with the distinct purpose of finding out how this founding vision is realized in the "outcomes of institutional services and manifested in the "prior commitments "of the members of the ADNU family.

In this connection, it is instructive to mention here the Parable of Chasing Rabbits. It is a beautiful story first discovered in the writings of one of the Desert Fathers. In the story, one monk meets another monk and asks him why, all of a sudden, so many monks are leaving the monastery. The other monk answered that it's just like a pack of dogs chasing a rabbit. One dog catches sight of the rabbit and starts chasing it through the fields, barking and yelping all the way.

And soon, all the dogs join because they see and hear the first dog chasing the rabbit. 50 the whole pack goes off, across the countryside in pursuit of the rabbit. But only one of the dogs has really seen the rabbit. After a while the other dogs get tired and one by one they drop out, because they do not really see the rabbit. And only one dog continues the pursuit because only he has seen and understood what he is chasing.

The second monk concluded his story by saying that's the way it is in religious life, too. A lot of monks go off following the Lord, but only one or two really see the Lord and understand what it is that they are following. The others follow along because of the group, or because it seems good things to do. But they never really see the Lord. So when things get difficult or boring, they wander away and follow the Lord no longer.

In the case of an institution, the "rabbit" is the vision which is crucial. It provides the members of the Institution the compass by which its every step is directed throughout your stay with ADNU. The 70^th foundation is meant not only to thank the Lord for the blessings of the past. It also serves the purpose of providing an opportunity to re-visit the constitutive values which have, over the years, proven as expression of the vision.

There is a third vista of experience through which to look at this 70^th foundation anniversary: that is, using the more technological analogy, looking at this Anniversary as computer print-outs of images which today's computers turn out every now and then. Rolls and d rolls of paper come out of the printers and the bigger the images the more difficult it is sometimes to recognize what picture or what image is there. It is quite often that one hears from people of my generation: "Why it's just a lot of dots!" And, of course, that is right! Only when we step back and hold it far away from us to see the whole of it do we discover it from the beautiful picture that it really is.

In the same way, the seventy years of existence of ADNU is composed of multitudinous lives that lived in the shadow of this institution, and drew from it strength that went with them on their journey through life. I immediately remember the late Sen. Raul Roco and many others whose life of service to the country is a source of pride for their Alma
Mater.

I am, at this point disturbed, when I go over the list of graduates from our best Catholic universities, including yours, who acquire notoriety as politically corrupt while they occupy positions of responsibility in public service. It makes me wonder -and I am sure - most of us, what happened to the Catholic values learned at our Catholic Institutions of higher learning? How explain this unintended effect of our educational system? Why the cleavage between what is expected of the educated and properly formed and what is actually done?

John Henry Newman felt that the aim of university education is not to fit students for this or that particular profession or career, to equip them with theory that will later on find useful applications to this or that form of practice. For him it is to transform their minds, so that the student becomes a different kind of individual, one able to engage fruitfully in conversation and debate, one who has the capacity for exercising judgment, for bringing insights and arguments from a variety of disciplines to bear on particular complex issues. This is the capacity that Aquinas takes to be the expression of prudence. This is my personal view to be the purpose of a university. I feel not many today in education would buy this. But it seems to me that this rejection has something to do with the dichotomy between what is learned and what is done. I believe that when a university education is independent of religion, it results in an aesthetic distaste for behavior unworthy of such mind, and this aesthetic distaste masquerades as, and is confused with, moral revulsion. But our graduates all went through the study of doctrines, morals and worship. Their education then has not been without religion. Perhaps this concern is at the heart of the uneasiness felt by contemporary Catholic University educators in relation to the moral behavior of some of our graduates especially those in politics. On this particular point I hear an echo of the verse which saint murmured to saint (St Ignatius to St. Francis Xavier) in the crowded classrooms of Paris:"How is a man the better for it, if he gains the whole world at the expense of his own soul?"

Let me thank you for the joy of being able to join you today. My dear Fathers, administrators, professors and students: today is a time to say "Thanks". Even more the time to say "ADNU, we love you!" Most of us remember the scene in the musical "Fiddler on the Roof" where the long suffering wife finally confronts her husband and gets him to face the key question, "Do you love me?" Today, more than even before, I say love ADNU!

Congratulations!