“Benedicamus Domino!” Part 1

Monday, 5:30 a.m.

The early morning air is cool, and everything is quiet. I’m still in bed, probably dreaming about finally meeting my crush or being able to dunk the ball in the seminary’s basketball court.

It’s a sweet dream either way.

And then I start to hear this tiny, faraway sound of metal banging on metal. The sound grows louder and quickens. The sweet dream gives way to the violent sound of reality. It’s the seminary bell—and with one final ring, the sound lingers as if to say, “Rise and shine, motherfuckers.”

Amid the collective groaning and rustling of bedsheets, the beadle shouts from his bed in the dormitory, “Benedicamus Domino!” 

To which the whole community will reply, “Deo Gratias!” 

“Let us praise the Lord!” 

“And give Him thanks!”

With eyes half-closed, we’d fix our beds—badly, more often than not—and head to the bathroom downstairs to brush our teeth, wash our faces, and get dressed for the morning prayer and Mass.

The bell is the heart that kept seminary life going. It told us when to pray, eat, play, and sleep. And because of it, we didn’t need to own a watch to know what the next activity was.

6:00 a.m.

Dressed in our clerical shirt, black pants, and leather shoes, we’d drag our feet to the chapel and on to our respective places on the pew. There, we’d take out a prayer book commonly called the Breviary and start the morning prayer led by two seminarians at the front. 

The Breviary is a collection of prayers that we said throughout the day, typically the morning, evening, and night prayers. It’s a hefty hardbound book around three inches thick and usually fitted with a black faux leather cover with a zipper closure. And once you open it, you’ll find prayers printed on fine and fairly thin paper. But flip the pages toward the end, and you’ll discover the good stuff: graffiti.

Super Clark. Bad day JLA. Enervated dead. Rownail. Poison. The list goes on.

Written in ink, these kids ensured their immortality by scribbling their signature lines on almost everyone’s breviaries. No breviary was safe. No breviary was sacred.

We’d hear Mass after the morning prayer. I always found it peaceful hearing Mass in the seminary. Everything is quiet, solemn, and I usually loved listening to the sermons. Some of the most memorable ones came from guest priests like Frs. Adams and Alex. Well, okay, I only remember what Fr. Adams said about working hard and not relying on luck because “Lady Luck is too old.” But the feeling of being inspired to do something good with my life remains fresh to me. Since I went out of the seminary, I rarely had the same feeling of solace and inspiration I had hearing Mass there almost every day for four years.

Of course, we’d always find ways to engage in some shenanigans during Mass or prayers. 

Case in point: my classmate Nick. He is this tall, bulky dude who, despite being friendly and outgoing, isn’t the sort of guy you’d want to mess around with.

And then there’s D’Arcy, one of the smallest guys in our class who’s blessed with a wicked sense of humor.

One time, Nick did the reading during prayer. As he went up the lectern and began to read, D’Arcy turned around and made eye contact with Lex, another one of our classmates and one of D’Arcy’s partners in crime. Lex knew what he was up to—D’Arcy was making fun of Nick and was trying to bait Lex into laughing. Lex was having none of it although he probably struggled to keep the laughter in. But it was too late.

All this time, Nick was looking at them. He gave them a knowing look, telling them that he was going to kick their asses when we returned to the dormitory.

Not soon after the prayer concluded, Nick headed for the chapel door and waited for Lex and D’Arcy to go out. But Kirk, another one of our classmates, came to their rescue. While not as tall as Nick, Kirk could stand up to him, and probably the only person who had the balls to do so in our class. So, no asses got kicked that day and Lex brushed his teeth in peace at the bathroom with Kirk watching his back.

6:30 a.m.

From our formal wear, we’d strip to our house clothes and slippers. We’d then head to our assigned areas in the seminary to do some light house cleaning.

Everyone gets assigned to a different area of the seminary every so often. That’s unless you’re already a senior and are friends with the opus senior, the guy responsible for the cleaning assignments.

My first assignment was at the chapel corridor with Pius, a senior. He never joined me to clean except on Saturdays, which I didn’t mind, because he’d do the hard work of polishing the floor with his banos. He’d work up a sweat doing so, and because he was a stocky guy, I suspected he took care of polishing the floor to lose a few pounds.

When I finally became a senior, I finally got to choose my cleaning assignment. As gross as it sounds, I loved being assigned to the community bathroom. I asked to be assigned there several times not because I loved the smell of piss and unflushed crap, but because it meant I got to take a bath in the morning. We had long days, and it wasn’t fun feeling sticky and smelly throughout the day.

On Saturdays though, we clean after breakfast—for a good reason. That’s when we do our general house cleaning that typically involves a more thorough cleaning like polishing floors and scrubbing bathroom tiles and ground work where we did our gardening around the seminary complex.

Back when I was a freshman, my father mailed me a typewritten note that contained a 500-Peso bill. Along with his advice that I spend the money on stuff I enjoy, he also reminded me to never look at housework as something beneath me, which I never did. To this day, I’ve taken to heart both pieces of advice. I may not be so much of a neat freak, but I can scrub, wipe, sweep, and polish with the best of them. 

7:00 a.m.

Probably one of the more conventional parts of our day begins with breakfast. Back then, the seminary had a meager budget, which showed up in a lot of things, like the facilities we had and the food that we ate.

A typical breakfast would either be dried fish called bolad, a piece of hotdog, or corned beef paired with egg and rice. One time, a classmate told me that we were going to have pabo for breakfast. I never had turkey before and for breakfast at that, so I was excited. Turned out we were going to have pa bolad bolad la or just dried fish as usual. 

We were served milk for breakfast for a period of time after a parent complained about the lack of enough nutrition in our food. Milk was such a precious commodity in the community that someone roundhouse-kicked a fellow seminarian over the issue of milk. Unsurprisingly, everyone started calling the kid Gatas—Milk—after the incident.

Now fueled for the rest of the morning, we’d go to class.

Life in the seminary is a lot like being in Hogwarts, especially when it comes to studying. We learned how to write and speak in Latin, but not for casting spells. We did it to improve our language skills with the added benefit of impressing girls on the side. Ego amo te—I love you. Or just to be gross in a different language, agricola arat vaccam (the farmer plows the cow.) We were the de facto experts in Ars Latina who carpe diem-ed and once upon a time believed in vox populi vox Dei and spoke it verbatim just to feed our young and tiny egos.

Education has always been a big deal in the seminary. The priests and our teachers told us we were cream of the crop and we were a class of deep thinkers. But they never told us whatever crop that was and they weren’t aware of the subjects we devoted our deep thinking to.

In my case, the end pages of my notebooks pretty much summarized the stuff I thought of. There were poor attempts at poetry, even poorer attempts at writing song lyrics for my band, and tons and tons of sketches of basketball players and sneakers. I wish I still had those notebooks just so I could cringe at myself and go back to Earth when I’m having those occasional illusions of grandeur.

Shit like this:

12:00 p.m. 

While breakfasts are typically a somber affair, lunchtime is louder and more lively as we’d have warmed up by then. From our classrooms, we’d line up at the social hall before proceeding to the refectory where we’d have our lunch that usually consists of rice, some type of meat, and vegetables. Like our cleaning assignments, we also have table assignments at the refectory. I loved being assigned with folks who are picky or don’t eat vegetables because I’d ask for their share. I particularly liked pako, a type of fern cooked in coconut milk. I don’t remember complaining about the food. Or if I did, I must’ve done so rarely. As a growing child being given limited portions of food except for rice, you’ll have to take whatever you can to fuel your body.

12:30 p.m.

Much of seminary life is about routine. Everything has its time. And if there’s one routine that I still hold sacred to this day, it’s siesta. After lunch, we get about 15 to 30 minutes of nap time or a moment to slow down and relax before we start the second half of our day. Everybody has to be on their beds, lie still, and be quiet. Of course, some do sneak about or just spend the time chatting with the neighboring bed in hushed tones. 

But as with breaking most rules, the goal is to never get caught. 

In our class after siesta, our teacher noticed that Nick was missing. So she sent someone to look for him who eventually found him taking a bath in the community bathroom. It turned out that a priest caught him taking a bath during siesta and ordered him to keep doing so until the priest told him to stop. The priest then left and eventually forgot about him. Rumor has it that his fingers are still wrinkly to this day because of that long and luxurious bathtime.

To some, the half-hour siesta isn’t enough. They’d stay in bed for as long as possible and wait at the last minute to get ready for the afternoon class. It got so bad by the time I was a senior that our prefect of discipline began shooting the laggards with a BB gun modeled after an AK-47. But they were quick learners—as soon as they heard the sound of the gun being cocked, they’d get out of bed right away.

After siesta was a quick prep for class. We’d usually just brush our teeth, wash our faces, and change into our uniforms.

Seven hours gone, nine more to go.

This post is part of a weekly series about my life at the Seminario de Jesus Nazareno in Borongan, Eastern Samar called “Seminary Days 1996-2000”. See you next week!