Remembering Father Viktor Holobrady, SVD

 by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

Describing the late Father Viktor Holobrady as a “terror teacher” would be like describing a tiger as “a large cat.”  It would be a correct description (for tigers do belong to the family of cats), but it would be an understatement of the highest order. Father Holobrady -- the Czechoslovakian missionary-priest of the Society of the Divine Word who served as Rector, Procurator and English grammar teacher of the Mary Help of Christians Minor Seminary in Binmaley, Pangasinan for many decades -- was not your typical “terror teacher.”  The moment Father Holobrady stepped inside the classroom, he transmogrified into Terror itself – in the flesh!

His classes always had a graded recitation portion which never failed to make our small palms sweat and our young hearts palpitate.  For if you gave the wrong answer (or worse, if you did not know the answer) to the questions he asked, you would get both a rebuke and a punishment.  The rebuke would come in the form of a one-word insult:  he would call you “bagoong” (the Filipino word for the native shrimp paste, famous for its good taste and its rather peculiar smell), and he would say this with a look that would make you feel like you were the dumbest boy in the neighborhood.  The punishment, on the other hand, would depend on the gravity of your mistake, and it usually consisted of writing down the correct answer from ten to fifty to a hundred times or even more on a piece of paper.  The whole thing does not look that terrifying to me now, but back then when my classmates and I were young boys aged between eleven and twelve, being called “bagoong” in front of one’s classmates and having to write down the correct answer up to a hundred times were prospects we dreaded each time we stepped inside his classroom. 

            Yet, Fr. Holo (as he was called for short) was a totally different person outside the classroom. He was soft-spoken, he had a shy but warm smile, and despite the fact that he had an imposing height (he was more than six feet tall) and that as the Rector he was actually the highest official of the minor seminary at that time, he was as lovable as one’s favorite grandfather.  In fact, you could joke around with him just before he stepped inside the classroom and he would not mind it at all.  The skin on both his elbows sagged from age, and I remember that some of my classmates used to pull the skin playfully while he waited for the bell to ring for the start of his grammar class.  I don’t remember a time when he took offense at that.  On the contrary, he always laughed when they did it. 

            But the best time to be with Father Holo was on Wednesday nights.  Being the night before Thursday (which was our free day in the minor seminary, in lieu of Saturday), we seminarians were allowed to watch TV, play indoor games or engage in any other form of legitimate recreation every Wednesday night.  In addition, Father Holo’s office was also open for those seminarians who would prefer to sit and read while listening to classical music.  Father Holo himself would be reclining on his grandfather’s chair reading a book, and from the corner of one’s eye one could see him happily waving his pencil like a baton every time he heard a musical phrase that he liked on his record player. 

            On other days, however, Father Holo’s office was a clinic of sorts where one went to for all kinds of medical concerns.  I do not recall hearing that Father Holo ever went to medical or nursing school.  But he was an infirmarian, and an excellent one at that!  He had a cure for anything, from the common cold to ringworm to what have you.  Even those of us who had a difficult time growing taller swore that Father Holo had a cure for that too.  I was not one of those who availed of his much-talked about growth-boosting injections, but many of those who did claimed that it really worked. 

            But the medical procedure that Father Holo was most famous for was the “lavativa” (or the edema, as those who want to sound more medical prefer to call it).  For some reason other than its obvious health benefits, it was widely believed by minor seminarians in those days that one had to undergo the “lavativa” at least once during one’s stay in the minor seminary.  It was an initiation of sorts. Somehow, you were not considered a full-fledged minor seminarian if you had not had it at least once.  

            Nevertheless, Father Holo was not only an excellent infirmarian.  He was also a musician who taught us how to sing all those Latin hymns that we still remember so well up to now; a seasoned seminary formator who helped train many future priests for the Archdiocese of Lingayen-Dagupan; and a dedicated missionary who left his home in Czechoslovakia to spread God’s word in a foreign country several thousand miles away from his own. 

            In 1993, following the Fall of Communism, Czechoslovakia (which used to be a part of the Communist Bloc) was split into two sovereign states:  the Czech Republic and the Republic of Slovakia.  I do not know on which side of the divided Czechoslovakia Father Holo’s birthplace is now located.  But when I visited the Czech Republic for the first time in 2015, I could not get Father Holo out of my mind.  As I walked Prague’s ancient streets and crossed the renowned Charles Bridge, I imagined the young Father Holo walking the same beautiful streets and crossing the same spectacular bridge, and I began to wonder what made him decide to become a priest, to leave his homeland and become a missionary in the Philippines, to spend a large part of his life in Binmaley, Pangasinan teaching English grammar to young seminarians like myself who both feared and loved him at the same time.  And I realized how amazing indeed is the manner in which God makes people’s lives converge, oftentimes in very surprising ways, for reasons that they will begin to understand only so much later.  God, The Divine Weaver, makes the threads of our lives intersect so He could bring to fruition His wonderful designs for us and for humanity as a whole. At the moment, we may not understand what His hands are up to.  But later we shall be given a glimpse of the finished Tapestry, and we shall finally understand the whys and wherefores of our lives’ unexpected interfaces.  As young seminarians, we dreaded Father Holo’s grammar classes.  We feared his rebukes and the punishments he imposed if we did not study our lessons well.  Yet, many years later, we all began to realize how immensely fortunate we were to be the taught the rudiments of English grammar by an exacting teacher who expected nothing less than the best from each of us.  

            Father Holo literally served the Mary Help of Christians Minor Seminary until his health made it impossible for him to continue doing so.  In the early nineties, he suffered a stroke and was brought to a place at the Christ the King Seminary in Quezon City where elderly SVD priests are cared for.  He died shortly afterwards, leaving behind countless priests and ex-seminarians who swear that they owe the better parts of who they are to the formation they received from the unforgettable Father Viktor Holobrady.