The Great, The Incomparable Miguel A. Bernad, S.J.

February 16, 2007 at 12:11 am (Authors, Books, Publishers)
Tags: Ateneo, memories

In your masses and prayers, please remember

MIGUEL A. BERNAD, S. J.

May 8, 1917  -  March 15, 2009

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Freshman year at the Ateneo, I don’t know what I’m doing, I think I might be in love but maybe I’m just infatuated by someone’s really hot bod, who knows. I’m studying in my father’s alma mater, which only two years earlier opened its doors to women, and I’ve signed up for a course by a Jesuit priest who was also my father’s teacher, who in fact taught him Shakespeare and was the reason my father was inspired to play Hamlet and could recite verse to my mother when he was courting her in New York, in the 1950s.

It’s twenty years after my father has left school, and now here I am. I too have signed up for Shakespeare, and there’s only one person teaching it at the Ateneo, and it’s Miguel A. Bernad, S.J. I’m curious to see this man who my father talked about in such glowing terms. He’s just come back from studying in Oxford or Cambridge, I’m not sure which, and he’s in front of the classroom, a small man with dark glasses who can never look us quite in the eye, but from the moment he declaims:

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York

I’m hooked, I’m hooked, I’m hooked. Later, he will act other scenes from Shakespeare (thankfully he does not expect the students to assist in these re-enactments; he is quite capable of acting all the parts himself, and once he even very dramatically pushed over a chair and really I fell in love with this teacher at that moment), and the language, the language, the language pours into my very soul.

His latest letter to me is dated 30 January 2007. He’s lived many years in Mindanao, in the city of Cagayan de Oro. He flew to Manila to officiate at my father’s funeral mass, years ago. Then he flew back to Mindanao. I have not seen him in 13 years. I think he must be in his 80s now. For many years he was the editor of a journal called Kinaadman. He was kind enough to review my book, Mayor of the Roses. Every year we exchange Christmas cards. I tell him I’m trying to write a novel and he says good luck, but don’t abandon my stories, I have shown “real talent” there.

Here are a list of his latest books. If someone reading this blog knows how to order them, please let me know:

2006
Unusual and Ordinary: Biographical Sketches of Some Philippine Jesuits
Publisher: Jesuit Communications Foundation

2004
The Great Island: Studies in the Exploration and Evangelization of Mindanao
Publisher: Ateneo de Manila University Press

2004
The Native Sky: Studies in the Life and Writings of Jose Rizal
Publisher: Ateneo de Manila Office of Research and PUblications

2003
The Golden World and the Darkness: Shakespeare Plays and Their Performance
Publisher: La Salle University Press

(Belatedly adding a blog post by Manila critic Isagani Cruz)