Father Miguel A. Bernad, SJ
(The Late Father Miguel A. Bernad, SJ)
My professor, Arlene J. Yandug, the new editor of Kinaadman, and I were chatting as we headed out to the University’s main gate. I was telling her that I miss Father Bernad’s presence in the campus after reading one of his recent books entitled The Immortal Sea. This book is published by the Xavier University Press. The copy I have is a special one in a sense that it has the author’s autograph on its first page. I do not own this copy though; I borrowed it from Rhobert Maestre, a faculty of XU’s English Department.
During our chat, she mentioned that Father Bernad decided and requested to be reassigned to Xavier University after all the years of doing lectures as visiting professor in many universities abroad and teaching at the Ateneo de Manila University for 30 years. In trying to give a reply to her interesting statement, I thought to myself what reasons could there be behind his decision to be transferred to XU, and finally I shared my opinion to her saying that it is but a commonplace gesture of people especially during their old years to go home. She seemed to agree with me marked by her affirming smile.
But our chat has to end when the motorela’s dying engine finally stopped in front of us and the drivers’ invitation became clear and audible amidst the hubbub brought by the incoming rain. She had to go to Cogon to fetch her umbrella; and so we parted ways. But I could not help but think more about the matter.
I think the Kinaadman Journal (he edited for more than 3 decades, I suppose) betrays the meaning of his request to be assigned to Xavier University. The contents of Kinaadman should tell enough that he longed or missed Mindanao.
To help us understand Father Bernad’s longing or missing Mindanao, the fiction of Jaime An Lim, The Homing Mandarin might help. In this story, the main character (an old man) as related by the narrator (the old man’s son), desires fervently to go home to China, his natal and home town. I share the opinion of An Lim about people getting old and missing home.
This view is also shared by Leonard Casper expressed in his article, Back Azimuth Filipino Writers Abroad. Casper said that in the works of Filipino writers abroad, there is this sense of trying to be connected or reconnected to the Philippines, to their homeland. Thereby saying that as a person who had gone and lived in other places, intends to go home at least through their works, if not physically. In other words, in the case of Bernad, it can be assumed that (ADMU) Manila and other places such as Taiwan, Yale University among others were giving him a transient feeling, a feeling that he knows in his heart temporary and thus thinking that someday he would leave them and go back home.
It would be safe to assume therefore that Father Bernad considered XU and Cagayan de Oro as home. CDO is near Ozamiz, where he was from. Both cities are in Mindanao, the land of his heart. Mindanao, his home, the reason, I suppose, why he requested to be transferred.
