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Fr Reuter's Legacy?
Sorry, it's gone!

Today, 20 July, from south of Manila I traveled 100 km to the campus of Ateneo de Manila University at Loyola Heights to look for Fr Reuter's Legacy. (When you're 90 years old like he became on 21 May 2006, you would be thinking of legacy, wouldn't you? By then, it would be too late: You should have thought of your legacy when you were still young.) In case you don't know him, he truly is an American Jesuit and more Filipino than the legion belonging to the loud crowd of Filipino patriots, more Filipino than the numberless noisy Filipino nationalists who are like the three infamous monkeys: See nothing good, hear nothing good, speak nothing good about the Filipino.

Filipino nationalists should learn from Fr Reuter, he who is not a nationalist! If you want to learn, listen to those not of your own kind – I’m speaking as a teacher. No, the Atenean Fr Reuter is not a nationalist: he is an internationalist – the difference lies in the inter, the among: the nationalist likes to act out while the internationalist likes to interact. As did the most famous Atenean of them all, the Philippines’ national hero, Dr Jose Rizal. The Ateneo taught Rizal what was best: love of fellowman, ad majorem dei gloriam, for the greater glory of God.

At the Ateneo campus, I asked two ladies, at different places, and the second, the receptionist at the Manila Observatory, kindly called someone at the Jesuit Communication office where I could find Fr Reuter’s Legacy. She told me she was told that they had run out of copies. Even St Paul had run out of copies. That was St Paul College – Fr Reuter’s book titled Legacy had been sold out! I was sad because I came for nothing and I was glad because I learned that Legacy, a collection of Fr Reuter’s plays and testimonies on his priest-ship and person-hood, is a bestseller in its own right. Legacy was a birthday gift to Fr Reuter by (extended) family, friends, admirers and advocates of this Jesuit teacher. An excellent legacy in itself.

What you would leave behind is your legacy. The image shown here is that of Sheaffer "The Signature Pen" since 1913. It is a photograph by Stompy which he titles 'Sheaffer Legacy 2 in stand' (flickr.com/). To me, the legacy is not the pen itself but the writing occasioned by the pen or, more importantly, the writer.

I went to Ateneo to buy a copy so that I can write a review of it and publish it in the Internet, in one of my blogsites, Lumos Reviews, located at this site:

http://lumosreviews.blogspot.com. I offer Lumos Reviews as a free service to book publishers here and abroad. But since the publishers have run out of copies, it meant that Legacy didn’t need any help from me as a reviewer.

I still want to buy a copy anyway. Because I know a good book is hard to find.

21 July 2006