Standing here in an academic convocation transports me back to the year 1983-1987. Just now, I am reliving those glorious 4 years of my life as a young person. That 4-year stay was both fun and transformative for me, and I am sure that the same was the experience of all my batch mates

What was life then, during those years? Those were politically tumultuous years. The Aquino assassination happened in 1983 and the EDSA uprising happened three years after in 1986.  Culturally, we were enjoying the music of Michael Jackson, Olivia Newton John, Wham, Duran Duran, Air Supply, Asin, Rey Valera though I was more of a folk, rock, and country music enthusiast at that time. Economically, life was difficult, more modest, and far simpler for most of us in the C-D-E classes.  Today, most if not all of my batch mates who I am in contact with, are all doing well; but not necessarily without rough patches in our respective journeys.

Today, AD 2022, politically, we see shadows and hear echoes of the 1980s albeit a bit better without the pandemic. The Covid19 contagion is the game changer.  The global pandemic may be of a different nature but it can be equivalent to our years of living dangerously during those 3 years between 1983 and 1986. Both the political unrest of our time and the global pandemic of today made a toll on us economically and socially. But like how we emerged from ours, may this generation emerge from the present schooled and educated by the challenges that we have and still face to this day.

Our theme for this new School Year [and we are still to agree on its final formulation] has to do with rebuilding and restoring life towards fullness -from the theme adopted by the UCCP for the quadrennium. 

“Once upon a time, when there was a drought all over the land,” says one very short story, “all the villages decided to pray for rain. On the day of prayer, all the people gathered, but only one boy came with an umbrella. That is faith.” Now, if we’ll decide to pray for a future better than the present, like the boy in the story who prayed for rain and brought an umbrella, we too must go into prayer with our enrollment papers and school IDs.   

Our being here with our enrollment papers or school IDs? That is faith(!). If that is not faith then I do not know what is. What I would say to you, here and now, is that this faith you have can move mountains (but allow me to talk about mountains later in other occasions). 

Our being here to start the new school year is one important step in rebuilding and restoring our corporate and individual lives even as the Covid19 is still here, and even as the monkeypox and dengue are rearing their ugly heads.  We are here to declare our resolve that no one can separate us from our dreams and our efforts to make our dreams a reality in the near future.

Our being here is a declaration of our triumph against the despondence that befell us in the past two years. We refuse to be dragged deep into despair and hopelessness. We are a people of faith. If we are a people of faith, we are also a people of hope; and our going to school from this day on to the end of our study program is an embodiment of that hope.

Rebuilding global, national, and local communities in the post-pandemic world can be attained in the short term, but for these rebuilding efforts to be sustainable, you always go back to what is basic; and what is basic is an educated population/people.

Jesus Christ preached the new world: a world rebuilt and restored. This new world is the other name for the Kin-dom of God. The Kin-dom of God may be a bigger reality but it has an earthly version or a historical/material component and that is the new world where the full life is inaugurated. Jesus made sure that the ideals of the new world are built into our value system, into our intellectual faculty, and into our spirituality. This was the reason for his teaching ministry. He labored to teach what it means to be a citizen of the new world; how to imbibe faith, integrity, responsibility, excellence, and service. These are the values that we need to build into our being, knowing, and doing to ensure the sustainability of the new world that we intend to create for us, for our children and our children’s children.  This is what UCC offers to you, our students. This is what is unique to UCC education. We also call it APPS@UCC: academic excellence, prophetic presence, and spirituality.

Firstly, academic excellence is substantially and primarily the students’ making. Your own making(!) It is not how big or how ranked your school or university is. It is how you nurture the gift of intellect that you have and we at UCC are capable of mentoring you into making full use of your gifts and unleashing your full potential. Countless are our graduates/alumni who excelled in their respective fields of endeavor. There are so many of them that we cannot name them or count them with all our fingers put together.   

In the language of faith, academic excellence also means the development of our ability to discern the signs of the times. We engage not only figures, or concepts, or mathematical formulas, clinical situations, and various academic languages and jargon. We also engage the social and ecological realities that give our academic work meaning and purpose. This is what we mean when we say, “love God with all your mind.” Being attuned to God, that mind embraces a reality bigger than our theoretical propositions! This is how we define excellence.  Academic excellence in the UCC way is loving God with all our mind.

Secondly, by prophetic presence we mean our presence in the wider community, from the city of Fernando community to our partner communities, and all communes in our ever-shrinking global village; it means our involvement as a school in community affairs from merry-making and festivals to engaging issues and concerns that matter to the welfare and well-being of our wider society. During his earthly ministry, Jesus was present in social gatherings like wedding merriment and even during wakes for the dead; and was similarly present in life and death situations like the stoning of a woman and social upheavals like what happened in the gates of Jerusalem during that first Palm Sunday. It was always a presence that fostered solidarity with people and communities in whatever situation they are in. UCC should join in street dancing as well as in engaging the burning issues of the day; and advocating for justice, truth, and genuine democracy. Schools are, by their very nature, the stewards of what is true, what is beautiful, and what is just [Kaya bawal ang fake news sa UCC. At bawal din ang “pwede-na-ang-tiktok” mentality].

Thirdly, the “S” in the APPS refers to spirituality. “For what shall it profit a person if he/she gains the whole world but losses his/her own soul (Mk 8: 36, KJB).” This is our living heritage as a Christian school. Spirituality is what binds everything. Our rich intellectual and social life is not complete until they are grounded on something spiritual. By spirituality, we mean connecting to higher principles, a higher meaning, or a higher purpose for our educational and professional pursuits. Our name for that as a Christian school is divinity or, more specifically, GOD: the Ultimate reality” and the “Ground of our being.”  Why are we into the low-paying teaching profession, for example, when we can pursue more lucrative or high-paying jobs? That, to me, is spirituality. Self-giving for a higher purpose is spirituality par excellence. Remember that the end of FIRES is “S,” and it means service. Service and spirituality are two sides of the coin.    

Academic excellence, Prophetic Presence, and Spirituality (or APPS@UCC) are our concrete responses to our theme or would-be theme: rebuilding and restoring life towards fullness. This is what we believe would sustain us in our drive towards becoming the school that is responsive to human needs, relevant to our planet’s survival, and competitive in the global market.

May this new school year, 2022-2023 be historic in your march towards academic excellence, citizenship, and career development (which is what prophetic presence is also about), and in your spiritual formation.  May God be your companion, guide, and strength, always.