Testimonial for Justice Nachura
Feb. 28, 2007

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

These words of wisdom flowed from the pen of a simple lawyer from Memphis, Tennessee by the name of John McQuiston II. I quote:

“No one is excused from rendering personal service to others. No one is exempted from performing the mundane tasks of daily life. Rendering service to others is necessary to our own fitness. If one has special talents, they should be used for the benefit of the group or of other individuals.”

He continues: “Humility is the key that unlocks the universe”.

When one listens to those words from Attorney McQuiston, one would think they would have been excerpts from a meditation book on life rather than on law. And one would be correct in that assumption. Attorney McQuiston’s book from where those words were drawn is entitled “Always we begin again”.
And the McQuiston book is an annotation of the Rule of St. Benedict, the great leader of the monastic movement which injected vitality to the early Christian church.

To some, Atty. McQuiston would both be a puzzle and an irony. How could a lawyer, they might ask, focus his mind and his pen on a spiritual magnum opus closest to the hearts of monks rather than on barristers? To others, there is nothing puzzling about the Tennessee lawyer’s passion for the sublime and the spiritual. Those reared in the Benedictine tradition will not find it unusual at all to marry the spiritually noble and the mundanely relevant.

Our honoree today has been reared in the same Benedictine tradition. An alumnus of the San Beda College of Law, Associate Justice Antonio Eduardo Nachura is the very personification of the Benedictine words penned by Lawyer Mcquiston: one who serves others; one whose special talents have been used to benefit his fellowmen; one whose humility “has unlocked the universe”.

On behalf of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines , I welcome you all to this testimonial dinner in his honor.

In a little while, we shall hear the fitting tribute to the character and the accomplishments of the newest member of the Highest Court of the land.

I do not know what aspects of his illustrious career will be highlighted by our speakers tonight.

But as I listen to their oratory, I shall train my ear and my heart to the most sterling hallmarks of our honoree’s person: that of simplicity that has become his very greatness.

Of him, the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson live: “Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great”.
And from him, I shall derive a personal inspiration to allow the simplicity of character to define the path of my own life and career.

Robert Francis Kennedy once said, “Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation”.

I am honored to be part of this gathering that shall pay tribute to a man who has done his portion to work out that change.

Thank you and good evening.