Fr. Julian Hernando: First-Class Jesuit

On Christmas Day of 2014, the Jesuits of Sacred Heart School-Ateneo de Cebu celebrated Mass together with the staff of the community, three Chinese candidates to the Society, and the family of one of our priests. Father Superior Manny Uy presided over the liturgy. Instead of giving a homily, he asked us, the congregation, to give our thoughts and reflections on the past year. I expected the younger ones among us to be the first to share, particularly the Chinese candidates. When they remained quiet, I looked at James, my co-regent, hoping he would break the ice. Nothing.

Then there was some movement from the middle of the chapel, in the chair directly under the brightest light. One of the most unassuming Jesuits I know struggled to sit up straight. Fr. Julian Hernando used to be one of the fittest and more athletic priests in the Cebu Jesuit community. But age and sickness had caught up with him. Not only had his body become weaker, but he had noticeably been much more quiet the past few years.

His spirit, however, remained strong. Our eyes turned toward him as he cleared his throat. In his typical, straight-faced manner, he shared how he had been in the Society for a long, long time. And throughout these years, he’s learned only one thing: “It’s all about doing God’s will.” Though he did not provide much context for what he said, everyone present, it seemed, understood.

It takes time, and some effort, but understanding a simple man like Fr. Hernando is not too tedious a task. He made an impression on me upon my arrival in Cebu for the regency years of my formation. We were headed out to dinner, so I did not have time to change from my traveling clothes: I was wearing a shirt, walking shorts, and sneakers. He, on the other hand, looked like he was going to meet some dignitary in his well-pressed polo barong and dress pants, matched with formal leather shoes. In one hand, he held a walking stick—as slim and discreet as its owner—and with his other hand he reached out to shake mine. It was a firm grip, the sort you’d remember after a number of years. His face was stern and his eyebrows intimidating. One would have to strain a bit to see him smile, but he was smiling. And looking through the huge frames of his thick eyeglasses were eagle-like eyes, those which seemed to be always focused on something. And yet, strangely enough, those were the same eyes which welcomed a stranger home.

I would learn, in the two years of my stay in SHS-AdC, that people would regard Fr. Hernando with the same ambivalence I had toward him when we first met. It was not unusual for the newer members of the school community to hesitate when dealing with him. Maybe his direct and no-nonsense way of working would come off as coldness for them. Or maybe it was the way he interacted or talked to others. Even if he spoke in his native Spanish, he was never the loquacious type; he never said more than what was needed. If he was thrifty with words, he was more so with money. He wasn’t stingy, but he saw the value of money. If he was strict with the resources of the Jesuit community or the school, where he served as treasurer for close to three decades, it was because he wanted to spend it in the right way at the right time.

But for the many who have lingered long enough to see beyond the formal and seemingly emotionless exterior, Fr. Hernando is a kindhearted soul. It’s amazing how his colleagues at the Treasurer’s Office speak of him not only with fondness but with deep love. To his staff, he played many roles: a boss, a friend, and a father, someone whom they could trust with their personal problems and someone who would go the extra mile for them whenever needed. Since he valued his work, he also had high standards for his staff. Thus, he would not let any mistake go uncorrected. But when he did correct, he would do so in a gentle, caring, yet firm way—the way the best fathers do. And like a good father who would pride himself in the achievements of his children, it would not be unusual to hear Fr. Hernando compliment his staff for a job well done. “Very good and perfect,” he would always say.

Fr. Julian would say something similar whenever he appreciated something not only done well but beautifully. Whenever he would talk highly about his favorite Real Madrid football team, or the special flooring of the then-new Magis Eagles Arena, or even the achievements of some SHS-AdC alumni, he would always remark, “First class, first class.” Though the expression means something of high culture and refined quality, for Fr. Hernando it means something different. Something becomes “first class” only when it has passed the standards of magis, which are the standards of Christ.

St. Francis Xavier would have to be the first-class Jesuit for Fr. Julian. It was through the great missionary saint that Fr. Julian was moved to follow Christ as a Jesuit. His vocation has always had a dual character: a love for the Society of Jesus and a desire to be missioned. Through Xavier, he discovered this “spontaneous desire to bring God and the faith” to others, especially those who did not know God.

Thus, even during his first years as a novice at Loyola in 1945, he already offered himself for the China mission, desiring to continue Xavier’s apostolic dreams. The zeal to be assigned to the missions was something shared by many in his juniorate, stoking the flame for service that was already lit in his heart. In 1949, his second year as a junior, with one letter from the socius to the Provincial, fifty of them were sent to the missions: twenty to Central America and thirty to China. Everyone received that letter with grateful hearts, even if that meant having to leave behind family and the comforts of home. As for Fr. Hernando, that letter was heaven on earth: it was his ticket to the first-class mission of bringing Christ to the Chinese.

On November 11, 1949, Fr. Julian bid farewell to his native land and boarded the plane from Madrid to Manila with five other Jesuits (all of whom persevered in the Society, he would always share with much pride). He was supposed to go to the Mission of Wuhu, Anhwei, but since China was off-limits to new missionaries, he was sent to study Mandarin first at Chabanel Hall in Mandaluyong, Philippines. This house for studies was formerly a concentration camp for both the Americans and the Japanese, and thus it was not that conducive for studies. The Jesuits would jokingly refer to it as “Chabanel Hell.” According to Fr. Julian, the heat made living there very, very difficult. A number left the Society while studying in Chabanel, yet many stayed and endured, driven by the same missionary spirit which led them there. After two years of language studies, he proceeded with philosophy until 1955, still in Chabanel.

He spent a year as a regent in Taiwan at a time of fervent missionary work by the Jesuits in the country. There he helped out in the parish work of Chutung, taught English, and practiced Mandarin. Most memorable among his experiences in Taiwan was working with the youth apostolate, where he was instrumental in converting ten of them to the Christian faith. Apart from being a consoling and inspiring touchstone experience for him, it also opened up in him a special desire to serve the youth.

Fr. Julian went back to the Philippines to study in the theologate Bellarmine College-Zikawei in Baguio City. Studying theology was another first-class experience for him. The change in environment—with the cool mountain weather surely a welcome feature—was a source of new life for him. He regards his years in theology as the most important in his formation simply because he was closer to his goal of becoming a priest. He was ordained a deacon in Baguio on February 2, 1959, and a priest in Taiwan on April 5, 1959. He had his Tertianship a year after in Hiroshima, Japan, where he met then-Provincial Fr. Arrupe, who struck him as “very calm, very kind, and very committed to life.”

Having finished his Jesuit formation, Fr. Hernando still found the doors of China closed to the Gospel, and so he spent the 1960s in St. Aloysius Gonzaga Technical School at Hsinchu, Taiwan, as prefect of discipline, athletic moderator, minister, prefect of the boarders, and teacher of English and religion. It was during his time as prefect of studies that the technical school became recognized by the industry for its high standards and excellent graduates.

In 1971, he asked for a year of “aggiornamento” at the East Asian Pastoral Institute. At the end of his course there, he was invited to take a post, which then Father General Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, SJ described in a 1995 letter to Fr. Julian on the occasion of his golden jubilee as a Jesuit as a “turning point” in Fr. Julian’s Jesuit life. His Provincial invited him to be the student counselor at what was known then as Sacred Heart School for Boys (SHS-Boys) for one school year. At the end of that year, however, the Provincial “remained quiet,” and so Fr. Julian stayed on like any obedient Jesuit. He would later look back at that moment in his Jesuit life and describe it as the “best decision” he had made—because that one year lasted forty-four years!

What would make someone last more than four decades in one assignment? Well, if there’s one person fit for that test of endurance, it would be someone like Fr. Hernando. His austerity, self-discipline, and dedication to work and prayer are a perfect formula for any disciple to persevere in the vineyard of Christ. It helps, too, that the vineyard to which he was missioned to, Cebu, was one populated by coworkers whom he describes as very “loving and caring.” Of course, it helped that every day he was serving the youth who, since his days in Taiwan, had held a special place in his heart. He has been assigned to so many jobs in Sacred Heart, and yet he is remembered most by the roles that brought him close to the young Chinese-Filipino students: guidance counselor, religion teacher, Days with the Lord moderator (he gave retreats, in one form or another, to over 150 groups and over 6,000 individuals), and athletics coordinator. (It deserves mention too that he was the coach of the SHS-Boys football team that went undefeated in one championship season in the ‘70s. Because of this and his invaluable help in developing the sports program of the school, during his eighty-eighth birthday, SHS-AdC formally named the oval and football field the Fr. Julian Hernando, SJ Athletic Field.)

But underlying all these factors is the reality that Fr. Julian has found in Sacred Heart School-Ateneo de Cebu a home where his restless missionary heart could finally settle. Not many are privy to how Fr. Julian has struggled to come to terms with old age and sickness these past few years. For a tireless worker like him, probably nothing can be as frustrating as knowing there is still much fruit to be harvested, and yet realizing that he does not have the strength nor the energy of his younger years. His struggle must have been similar to St. Francis Xavier having the Chinese mainland in sight from the island of Sancian, and yet failing to realize his dream of converting the peoples of China as he succumbed to illness.

Though Xavier died without setting foot in China, the Jesuits after him and inspired by him—Fr. Hernando included—have found creative and meaningful ways to bring Christ to the Chinese, whether on the mainland or to the many Chinese-Filipino communities around the globe. Though currently reassigned to the Jesuit Health and Wellness Center in Ateneo de Manila, the many works that Fr. Julian started and inspired are being continued by a highly dedicated and extremely hardworking group of both Jesuits and laypeople in SHS-AdC. Fr. Julian has always held fast to the fidelity of God in his life and now, more than ever, the steadfastness of His love is present, even if his current state of life demands that Fr. Julian be absent from much of the activity of Jesuit apostolic life. Fr. Hernando’s prophetic words during that Christmas Mass could never be more apt: “It’s all about doing God’s will.” However, it was God Himself who made sure His will was done in the lives of these two holy Jesuit saints: Francis Xavier and Julian Hernando—first-class servants for a first-class God.