THE PAST THAT BINDS

At first glance it seems that we have nothing in common.



Age?Some of us are in their late fifties, others are in their early fifties,then a couple are in their late forties.



Profession? One is in insurance, one is a retired Marketing man, one is a GM of a holding company,one is a lawyer, one owns his own advertising /design company, one is a consultant and two are priests.



But if you see us in any of our get togethers you wonder why we seem so close to each other in spite of the lack of common ties.



But in truth we do have one thing in common...and that one thing is so strong it has managed to bind us erstwhile strangers into a brotherhood. That "one thing" is a common past...we all once lived in a place called the Juvenate.

The Juvenate was the name given to the Redemptorist minor seminary located on the hills of Barrio Mambugan, Antipolo, Rizal. So we who did not make it to ordination as a Redemptorist priest now call ourselves "ex-Juvenists," and we have stayed in touch these past 4 years through an egroup.

Our length of stay in the Juvenate varies. Some of us like the batch of 1972-73,stayed only one year because after that, the High School was phased out. Many of us who finished our secondary education there stayed for 4 years. Others like myself who reached up to Theology stayed for about 10 years or more.

But what is amazing is that just the mere fact that one lived in the Juvenate makes one feel a sense of belonging with the group, even if one didn't really meet the others in the Juvenate.

A recent example was Gil Abesa, who belonged to the class 1971-73. He returned to the Philippines after staying in Hong Kong for over 10 years. There was a get together at Lipa and he didn't really know the people who were attending because they were already gone from the Juvenate when he entered. But when he showed up for the gathering, he immediately felt at home.

Another case involved a visiting ex-Juvenist from Las Vegas, Ruben Porciuncula. On his way to Pangasinan,he saw the Coco Grill, which he recalled from email exchanges belonged to another ex-Juvenist, Jun Baron. So he dropped by and introduced himself and they hit it off pretty well, even though they had never even met each other before!

I can't really put my finger on what it is about the Juvenate that has bound us now...maybe it's because we all called it our home.

So maybe in some mysterious way we have in fact become one family.