by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ
My wife and I wanted to include a trip to Vigan in our
itinerary for our two-week vacation in the Philippines. But there were so many tasks we wanted to
accomplish during that short period, and the July weather was quite
unpredictable, that up to the last minute we weren’t really sure if we could make
that trip.
Fortunately, on the day after celebrating with my mom her
83rd birthday in Pangasinan (which was the primary reason for our trip to the
Philippines), the sky was clear and there was time in our hands to make an
overnight journey to Vigan.
Although we were in the same car en route to the same place,
my wife and I were actually going to two different places, to two different
Vigans (so to speak). She wanted to see
the Vigan of the present – the old town that has become a city which attracts
thousands upon thousands of tourists every year. I wanted to revisit the Vigan of the past –
the Vigan that had shaped my life as a young man, and that continues to shape
my life in ways I can only barely be aware of.
On the way to Vigan, we couldn’t resist dropping by the
Basilica of our Lady of Charity in Agoo, La Union and complementing our Ilocos
trip with a taste of genuine Ilocano food at Makkan’s Restaurant. So, by the time we left Agoo for Vigan, it
was getting dark and, to my dismay, a heavy rain had begun to fall. I would have lost my way were it not for the
help of Google Maps. There were two
“bypasses” I had to take (one in Candon, and another in Vigan) which never
existed before. The heavy rain made visibility
even lower.
We finally arrived in Vigan shortly before 9 PM. And as soon as we checked in at the Ciudad
Fernandina Hotel, my wife and I took an excited walk along Calle Crisologo
which has become an alley of al fresco restaurants and souvenir stores slightly
reminiscent of the ones we frequented in Rome while we were assigned
there.
The following day, we woke up early despite sleeping late
the night before, in order to see as much of Vigan as we could. We toured the old streets of Vigan aboard a
calesa driven by a middle-aged Ilocana who gave us the names of the streets and
buildings we saw and even added a brief history of each. We drove to nearby Bantay to visit the St.
Augustine Parish Church and its famed belfry.
All throughout our trip, our eyes were looking at the same things from
two rather different perspectives. Mine
were always in search of sights that would remind me of the past: the Vigan Plaza where my best friends at that
time (the late Father Bong Lamprea, Father Hurley Solfelix, Reymil Roa, Dr.
Perpy Macaranas) and I spent many Thursday and Sunday afternoons enjoying a
bite of freshly-fried "empanaditas"; a restaurant named “Cool Spot”
where we spent time endlessly talking about all kinds of things over bottles of
beer, and at whose old upright piano Perpy and I took turns playing the songs
we loved then…. My heart beat faster as
our calesa approached the place where the restaurant used to stand. It felt heavy on my chest when I saw that the
restaurant was no longer there.
My best friends and I used to enjoy having a bowl of
“sinanglaw” after our drinks and conversations at Cool Spot. I asked around for a place where I could have
that local soup all over again. Everyone
referred me to a place called “First Sinanglaw.” We went there and I dedicated my first
spoonful of the soup to the late Father Bong Lamprea, who introduced that
Ilocano delicacy to us many July afternoons ago.
We passed by the streets where the houses of our family
friends while we were students at ICST were located (the Bautistas, Herreras
and Montemayors of Vigan; the Paz family of Bantay), and I remembered their
many kindnesses.
But the highlight of our trip was, for me, our visit to my
old alma mater, the Immaculate Conception School of Theology. I messaged the Rector (Father Nick Vaquilar,
who was a graduate student in Rome when I served as Consul there from 2003 to
2009) that I wanted to visit him.
Unfortunately, he replied that he was then in Manila. But he was kind enough to ask the Procurator,
Father Willie Jones Ducusin, to meet and tour us around instead. (Incidentally, I also had the privilege of
previously meeting Father Jones when he and his colleagues visited our embassy
in Madrid sometime in July 2017 while I was the Consul General there.)
Father Jones showed us the seminary chapel where my seminary
batchmates and I spent many mornings and evenings attending Mass, praying and
meditating. He showed us the classrooms,
and as we passed by them, I couldn’t help remembering the priests who used to
serve as our professors and formators at that time: Father Bernard Raas, SVD, and his always
well-organized and logically presented lectures in Liturgy; Father Friedrich Scharpf, SVD, and his
meticulously detailed lectures in Church History and Scriptures; Father Joseph
Taschner, SVD, and his apparently bland but substantively rich lectures in
Moral Theology; Father Ludwig Feldkaemper, SVD, and his very scholarly lectures
in Scriptures; Father Dominador Flores, SVD, and his laidback but very effective
approach as Prefect of Discipline; and Father Mike Padua, SVD, our Rector and
Homiletics Professor, who effortlessly gained everyone’s respect with his firm
but gentle style as the Seminary’s top administrator.
I also remembered Father (now Archbishop) Ernie Salgado’s
highly erudite but unpretentiously delivered lectures in Moral Theology, and
his efforts to liven up his classes with his occasional magic tricks. He would, for instance, arrange his fingers
in a way that would make his thumb suddenly appear as though it were cut in
half. An outstanding but ever
self-effacing professor and formator, Father Ernie became a Bishop, and later
an Archbishop, as we always knew he would one day be, even then.
I remembered Father (now Bishop) Jack Jose’s lectures in Canon
Law, which were always delivered with the ordered structure and clarity that
one finds only among the best of civil and canon lawyers. He also did an excellent job as ICST’s
first-ever diocesan Rector.
I remembered Father Butch Maynigo, our deeply admired and
widely respected erstwhile Rector at San Pablo Seminary, who spent a year or
two teaching Theology at ICST. A brilliant theologian whose feet were
nevertheless firmly rooted in the real world, he always made the effort to
present highfalutin ideas in easily comprehensible terms. And he unfailingly
made sure that there was a part of his lecture where its pastoral consequences
and applications could be discussed. He
was also fond of complementing his lectures with the ideas of popular spiritual
writers such as Henri Nouwen, and of existentialist philosophers like Martin
Heidegger.
Slightly at the other end of the spectrum opposite Father
Butch was his good friend, Father Victor Sison.
The most titled Professor on ICST’s faculty at that time (and certainly
one of the most brilliant), Father Vic made no effort to bring down his ideas
from their abode in the stratosphere to the surface of Mother Earth. I suppose
he assumed (and rightly so, I now realize) that if you had reached far enough
to be a student at ICST, you should be able to keep up with the level of his
lectures, including the altitude of his theological vocabulary. He discussed the ideas of Karl Rahner, Yves
Congar, Hans Urs Von Balthasar et al. as casually as though he were discussing
the latest news in the daily paper. He was already a legend even then, because
aside from learning excellent theology from his lectures, your vocabulary also
expanded without your knowing it.
And how could I forget Father Tom Akkara, SVD, and his
insightful and engaging lectures? Father
Tom was a vey likeable fellow, but he
had this naughty habit of teasingly warning us about the dangers of smoking
just when we were enjoying our cigarettes during the hour or so between the end
of supper and the start of night prayers, when we were allowed to openly smoke
within the seminary premises. Being the
descendants of Adam and Eve that we all were, his warnings made the taste and
smell of cigarette smoke even more pleasurable to some of us.
I also remembered the seminary's administrative staff led by
ICST's long-time Registrar, Ms. Estela Oliva, and her husband, Mr. Santos Ben
de Peralta. They made the unusual move
of inviting our entire class of more than twenty future priests to be their
child's baptismal godfathers. Up to now,
I have yet to meet someone with as many priest-godfathers as Kumadre Estela's
and Kumpadre Ben's child.
From the classrooms, Father Jones brought us to the front of
the Wehrle Memorial Hall (which we then simply referred to as “the aula”). I recalled that in that hall, Bishop William Antonio, Father Gerry Perez
and I were once tasked (as students) to deliver our respective lectures during
the annual ICST academic symposium which, that year, focused on Liberation
Theology. I also remembered the
presentation I was invited to give there many years later when the Ateneo de
Manila University Press published my doctoral dissertation in sociology as a
book under the title “Leaving the Priesthood:
A Close Reading of Priestly Departures.”
Finally, from the seminary grounds, I had the chance to look
up and see my old bedroom as a senior theology student at ICST. I remembered the many afternoons and nights I
spent on my desk writing editorials, essays and poems for “Know” (the
seminary’s official newsletter that I used to edit and which, I recently
learned with elation, is still in circulation up to now); and for “Word Alive”
(the official newsletter of the John Paul I Biblical Center which Father Ludwig
Feldkaemper asked me to serve as editor of in those days). At night, from my bedroom, before going to
bed, I could cast a glance at the huge white statue of Our Lady of the
Immaculate Conception that stood (and still stands) in front of ICST’s Main
Building.
As I looked at her statue anew during our visit, I wondered
if our Lady still remembered the prayers I said then, the secrets I shared with
her, the hidden dreams I asked her to bless…. Our Lady’s statue did not
move. (And I was not expecting a
miracle.) But something in my heart
answered me that, indeed, She had been -- and She continues to be -- a quiet
but real part of the journeys I’ve been making since I graduated from ICST
thirty-six long years ago.
My wife and I ended our trip equally grateful for the
opportunity to visit our two Vigans. She
had taken hundreds of pictures of the place with her mobile phone, enough for
her to reminisce on for many years. I
left Vigan, thankful for the knowledge that, although its landscape has changed
enormously, much of the Vigan that I knew is still there, hidden quietly behind
the new structures that now clothe and adorn it.
Copyright © 2023 Emmanuel R. Fernandez
