By the time you read this, the Ignatian Year Festival, celebrating 500 years since St Ignatius was injured by a cannonball, may have ended. It closes formally on 31 July 2022, so perhaps there is still some time. As soon as you receive this new issue, I invite you to click on one link of one of the activities offered that may interest you. In some strange, ironic way, one of the best ways to move forward is to look back. Answer again that ancient question: what was your cannonball moment?

Covid-19 was a collective, communal, global cannonball, sending us to our knees, reminding us of our frailty and our fragility. It tested our resilience and challenged us to find new ways of proceeding, forcing us to the limits of our creativity, imagination, and faith. Yet, in some ways, as the world slowly begins to rise from its knees, we are beginning again.

Fabilioh is beginning again, too.

We lost our footing for a while, as the whole world did, adjusting to a life in lockdown. It wasn’t that there weren’t any stories to tell, that’s for sure. But it did feel like silence or a reverence for life was called for in the face of unspeakable grief. And thus, in our last issue, we focused on the university’s measures to combat Covid-19. For that moment, those were the stories we could tell.

And yet here we are again. There is so much to tell you! So many new stories we want to share with you! Even as the world stopped, life continued, stories continued, and the school continued, albeit in parallel space. Preparing the issues for this year was exciting but also overwhelming, trying to keep up and decide what to feature, what to write about, and how to help our beloved alumni keep in touch with the Ateneo way.

In this issue, we focus on new leaders coming to the helm of our units: alum Lino Rivera is the new Vice-President for Mission Integration. This is a major change in the way the university operates. By centralizing mission under this one office, the university underlines the importance of the work that we do down from the hill, making mission part of both academic and non-academic activities on campus.

We speak with Jervy Robles, the new Headmaster over at the Grade School. Jervy has his work cut out for him as he begins to navigate this new transition for the youngest in our community. Like Lino’s story, his is a vocation story, too. I do believe anyone who comes to the Ateneo and stays in Ateneo has a vocation story.

Read about Dr Jayeel Cornelio, faculty from Development Studies and current Associate Dean for Research and Creative Work, who was the recipient of this year’s TOYM; and hear from beloved faculty member Meng de Guia of the Senior High School, who tells us a personal story of how teaching in this new normal felt like to her. Stories from our faculty remind us of the work ahead, not just for our school but also for the country.

We are undergoing a huge upheaval after the last national elections. Members of our community spoke strongly and courageously about our future and what new leaders would best suit the challenges ahead. A few months after the rubble of the elections, and waiting with bated breath for what is to come, Fabilioh offers two places and spaces for rest and reflection. Any Atenean worth his salt knows Horacio de la Costa's Two Standards. This is a good time in our national history to return to this piece, discern where our hearts lie, and reiterate our commitment to the standard of Christ. It is easy to be disheartened, even afraid and it is good to be reminded, as Fr Karel said, that sometimes, prayer is more than enough.

We find ourselves now in such liminality - even as the term “return to the new normal” keeps showing up in our narratives. Our situation calls for more than just returning to our old ways of being. We must reconstruct the way forward - alter our mechanisms and our processes, redefine our priorities, underline once again what truly matters. How easy it was for the world to unravel as we knew it, challenging our fundamental systems of belief, reawakening our need for a greater vision of life and death, sifting our priorities, teaching us what we need and what are simply distractions to a life of meaning.

We thank you for being here, and continuing to read the narrative of this mission we call the Ateneo de Manila University. We look forward to this brave new world we are about to make together.

Dr Rica Bolipata-Santos

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF