Blaspheming Don Juan's legacy
IN MY age of innocence, Don Juan Nepomuceno made the supreme representation of all things good and holy.
In all my four years at the Mater Boni Consilii Seminary (MBCS), there was never a day that we did not pray for Don Juan and his wife Dona Nena, whether in the recitation of the rosary, in novenas, or in the Holy Mass.
That time, Don Juan was benefactor to up to 50 seminarians, coming not only from Angeles City but throughout Pampanga and Tarlac. Don Juan paid for the tuition, board and lodging of these papari and gave them allowances. In many instances, the families of the poorest among them were also provided for by the Don.
To this day, I rue my misfortune of not being one among those so much blessed with the generosity of Don Juan.
Even after they left MBCS, many of these ex-seminarians continued being scholars of Don Juan at the family-owned Holy Angel College. Just goes to show the depth of the man’s philanthropy.
Aside from sending young boys to study for the priesthood, Don Juan extended unquantified and unqualified support to MBCS itself.
One of the most awaited events among seminarians was the Christmas caroling at the home of Don Juan. We practically fought to be included among the carolers not only for the sumptuous feast Dona Nena always prepared and the to-go giveaways of Hersheys, Baby Ruths, grapes and American apples – exclusively from Clark Air Base that time, but for the honor of kissing the hands of the holy couple. It was as if our young lips touched heaven itself.
Holiness as though permeated the ground upon which Don Juan and Dona Nena stood. The couple did indeed make “a cofradia of two” as the book on their life was most appropriately titled.
Philanthropy Don Juan lived. Philanthropy Don Juan left as legacy. Alack, a not too lasting legacy. Given the current of issues obtaining in the Angeles Electric Corp. (AEC), the flagship company of the Don Juan Nepomuceno family.
Profitability – at all cost, it would seem – has most apparently taken over philanthropy as the core value of the Nepomuceno family. How else explain the unexplained and unreasoned sudden astronomical rise of AEC power rates? This, at the most frequent times of power outages in the AEC service areas!
Raking in the money in exchange for the worst services does not even make honest profitability. It is immoderate greed – to paraphrase Romulo Neri, or is it Jun Lozada at the NBN-ZTE scam hearings? – if not plain thievery to put it simply.
Amid the mounting complaints of poor services and arbitrary increase in the cost of electricity hurled against AEC, what would have Don Juan done?
Christian charity imbued in him his sense of philanthropy. With that as given, Don Juan would not have allowed the AEC to come to this sorry situation of being the object of so much denunciation, of defamation, even of damnation.
No way that Don Juan would have allowed anything that had to do with him and his family tainted with even an iota of avarice. For that would have totally negated everything about him.
Last time I paid my bills at the AEC offices at Nepo Mart – before it almost doubled – I took notice of the prominently displayed framed sepia photo of Don Juan and Dona Nena. Seeing them in their beatific best, I nearly made the sign of the cross as though I were in a sacred presence.
With the scheme of things at AEC now, that picture is not worth the office where it is displayed. It’s like making a memorial to the Virgin in a brothel. Sacrilegious.
In all my four years at the Mater Boni Consilii Seminary (MBCS), there was never a day that we did not pray for Don Juan and his wife Dona Nena, whether in the recitation of the rosary, in novenas, or in the Holy Mass.
That time, Don Juan was benefactor to up to 50 seminarians, coming not only from Angeles City but throughout Pampanga and Tarlac. Don Juan paid for the tuition, board and lodging of these papari and gave them allowances. In many instances, the families of the poorest among them were also provided for by the Don.
To this day, I rue my misfortune of not being one among those so much blessed with the generosity of Don Juan.
Even after they left MBCS, many of these ex-seminarians continued being scholars of Don Juan at the family-owned Holy Angel College. Just goes to show the depth of the man’s philanthropy.
Aside from sending young boys to study for the priesthood, Don Juan extended unquantified and unqualified support to MBCS itself.
One of the most awaited events among seminarians was the Christmas caroling at the home of Don Juan. We practically fought to be included among the carolers not only for the sumptuous feast Dona Nena always prepared and the to-go giveaways of Hersheys, Baby Ruths, grapes and American apples – exclusively from Clark Air Base that time, but for the honor of kissing the hands of the holy couple. It was as if our young lips touched heaven itself.
Holiness as though permeated the ground upon which Don Juan and Dona Nena stood. The couple did indeed make “a cofradia of two” as the book on their life was most appropriately titled.
Philanthropy Don Juan lived. Philanthropy Don Juan left as legacy. Alack, a not too lasting legacy. Given the current of issues obtaining in the Angeles Electric Corp. (AEC), the flagship company of the Don Juan Nepomuceno family.
Profitability – at all cost, it would seem – has most apparently taken over philanthropy as the core value of the Nepomuceno family. How else explain the unexplained and unreasoned sudden astronomical rise of AEC power rates? This, at the most frequent times of power outages in the AEC service areas!
Raking in the money in exchange for the worst services does not even make honest profitability. It is immoderate greed – to paraphrase Romulo Neri, or is it Jun Lozada at the NBN-ZTE scam hearings? – if not plain thievery to put it simply.
Amid the mounting complaints of poor services and arbitrary increase in the cost of electricity hurled against AEC, what would have Don Juan done?
Christian charity imbued in him his sense of philanthropy. With that as given, Don Juan would not have allowed the AEC to come to this sorry situation of being the object of so much denunciation, of defamation, even of damnation.
No way that Don Juan would have allowed anything that had to do with him and his family tainted with even an iota of avarice. For that would have totally negated everything about him.
Last time I paid my bills at the AEC offices at Nepo Mart – before it almost doubled – I took notice of the prominently displayed framed sepia photo of Don Juan and Dona Nena. Seeing them in their beatific best, I nearly made the sign of the cross as though I were in a sacred presence.
With the scheme of things at AEC now, that picture is not worth the office where it is displayed. It’s like making a memorial to the Virgin in a brothel. Sacrilegious.
posted by A.Caesar Z. Lacson at 8:40 AM
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