Father Peter Michael, SVD: A Latinist in Swineherd's Clothing

 by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ 

              Nowadays, learning a foreign language is so much easier than it used to be.  One does not even have to go to a language school anymore.  One can learn online via computer applications (or apps) that offer grammar e-books and other virtual reading materials, assessment tests, interactive games and even conversation opportunities with fellow online learners.  Moreover, there are countless foreign-language movies and other video clips on the internet that one can watch in order to learn more about the language one wants to study.  

            This was not the case in the mid-1970s when my classmates and I studied Latin under Father Peter Michael, the German-American missionary-priest of the Society of the Divine Word who served as Latin Professor of the Mary Help of Christians Seminary (MHCS) from 1971 to 1976.  Aside from the dearth of learning materials at that time, Latin itself was not an easy language to learn, primarily because it was (and still is) what the field of linguistics calls a “dead language.”  It has no living native speakers.  There is no place in the world where you can sojourn and imbibe the language while interacting with its Latin-speaking inhabitants.  Not even The Vatican can claim to be such a place. 

            To Father Michael’s credit, he tried to make his Latin lessons as easy and as fun-to-learn as he possibly could. He even used teaching methods that were quite advanced.  For instance, he personally created a prototype of sorts of what we now call “infographics.”  To help us etch on our minds the rules of Latin grammar, he drew figures that were accompanied by Latin rhymes which were as easy to memorize as nursery rhymes. He even used different colors in his drawings to help us distinguish one rule from the other. And, best of all, he introduced the rhymes to us by personally reciting them himself at first -- complete with hand and arm gestures, facial expressions, and eye movements that only a “Father Peter Michael” could make.  His method was so effective that, up to now, more than four decades later, my classmates and I can still recite Father Michael’s Latin grammar rhymes at the drop of a hat, and without much effort!  We once spent almost an entire morning in our Facebook chat room playfully exchanging with one another the Latin grammar rhymes we still remembered from our days under Father Michael. 

            Our Latin classes under Father Michael also proved to be particularly useful to me many years later when I had to study Italian to prepare for my first diplomatic assignment in Italy. Although there are many differences between Latin and Italian, the latter happens to be the closest language to Latin among the so-called “Romance languages” (Spanish, French, Portuguese and Romanian, all of which have their origins in Latin).  Somehow, it was easier for me to get a handle on Italian grammar because of its affinity to Latin. 

            Notwithstanding his efforts to make Latin easy and fun-to-learn, Father Michael was by no means an easy teacher.  While teaching, he would be walking around our desks and asking questions at random.  Woe to the student who could not answer his questions correctly!  If his answer exasperated Father Michael, such a student could get a knock on the head from our Latin Professor’s knuckles  – a knock that was neither too soft nor too hard, but just enough to make the correct answer drop from one’s skull (in case it just got stuck there) to the correct part of the brain underneath. Students who were prone to daydreaming during Father Michael’s Latin classes would be jolted out of their reveries; while those who were wide awake but knew they had not studied well enough prayed hard that the bell would ring before those dreaded knuckles had a chance to land on their heads. 

            Father Michael also kept track of our progress by means of regular written quizzes and tests.  Those who did not score well in the quizzes would be required to see him afterwards for special tutorials.  He would patiently explain why your answers were wrong, and tell you what answers you should have given instead. If you still failed the quizzes and the tests despite those tutorials, you would be required to spend your summer vacation taking remedial lessons in Latin.  And if you still did not do well, you would be asked to repeat the course or, if you also happened to fail in other subjects besides Latin, the seminary administration itself would advise you to look for another school. 

            Aside from Latin, Father Michael also taught Greek, German, Religion and American History in the other seminaries he was assigned to before MHCS.  That was how wide-ranging his knowledge was. In addition, Father Michael was a writer who chose to place his pen entirely at the service of God. While teaching Latin at MHCS, he published a book entitled “Traveling Along the Gospel Trail,” a collection of his gospel reflections.  The book did not interest me very much at that time since it was neither a novel nor a collection of short stories.  But, years later, when I got interested in non-fiction writing, I came across Father Michael’s old book again and I could not help admiring his simple but elegant writing style. He went on to write more books, inspiring his readers both by what he wrote and by how well he wrote them.

             Yet, for all his erudition in Latin and Greek, Father Michael was one of the simplest, humblest, and most ascetic men I have ever known.  If my memory serves me right, he only had two sets of shirts and trousers, and one could tell that both sets were regularly overused not only from how they looked but also from how they smelled. As a religious priest, Father Michael could have asked for another set or two.  But he never did, at least not during those two years when he was our Latin professor at MHCS.  He was content with having only two.  That was how simple he was.  In fact, I even heard from some former seminarians of Christ The King Seminary in Quezon City that when Father Michael stayed there in his old age, he used to go around the common bathrooms of the seminary to collect the seminarians’ leftover soap. He put together whatever he managed to collect and used the combined leftover soap when taking a bath, instead of asking for his own supply of bathroom soap.  Indeed, Father Michael was a witness to the truth that you can live with only the barest of possessions yet still have a happy and fulfilled life.  

            The most eloquent manifestation of Father Michael’s humility and simplicity was, of course, the activity he spent most of his time on if he was not teaching Latin or writing his reflections:  raising pigs and selling them to raise money for charity.  He was a swineherd by choice, and a very hands-on one at that.  He maintained a piggery a few meters away from the seminary kitchen, and he personally did all the work that was required -- from feeding the pigs to bathing them to cleaning the pig pens with his own hands. He did not mind getting himself dirtied in the process.  Of course, the running joke among seminarians at that time was that one should never go to Father Michael’s room for the Latin tutorials or go to him for confession if he had just finished tending his pigs, for it would be hard for one’s nose to tell, at that point, the difference between the swineherd and the swine. Father Michael must have been aware of that running joke somehow.  But, I do not think he ever minded it.  Other people’s good opinion, like all other earthly treasures, seemed to be the least of his concerns.  He always came across to me as a man who wished to store up not treasures on earth but treasures in heaven, “where neither moths nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Mt. 6:20). 

            We live in a world that often places more value on “having” rather than on “being.”  We live in a world where a man’s worth is often measured by how much money and possessions he has accumulated, how much power he has acquired, how many honors he has reaped, and how high he has climbed on the ever-slippery pole of worldly success. And, as the Christian existentialist philosopher Gabriel Marcel once correctly observed, “being and having in our society teaches us how to take possession of things, when it should rather initiate us in the art of letting go.  For there is neither freedom nor real life without an apprenticeship in letting go.”  

            Father Peter Michael was a living lesson in the art of letting go. We were fortunate to have lived with him at one point in our young lives, to have seen up close that letting go is indeed the key to living a happy and fulfilled life.  Father Michael lived until the ripe old age of a hundred and four.  We may not be able to live as long as he did.  But our own lives could be happier and more fulfilled if we ourselves learned the art of letting go.