How rich was his journey Sunday Jun. 16, 2002, Philippines

HIS life had come full circle. After a series of seminars among farmers' groups in Zambales, Jeremias Montemayor, ''Dean'' Montemayor to many of his younger colleagues, passed by Apalit, Pampanga for another training session. As was his wont, he chose to spend the night in the home of a farmer and it was in this farmer's home that his friends discovered his lifeless body.

Jeremias Montemayor, agrarian reform champion and pioneer, community organizer, faithful lay leader, educator and father of 10, passed away at the age of 79.

Even after death, remarked his wife Bing, Montemayor was still giving of himself. His funeral had to be delayed for a few days when farmers in Davao, where the Federation of Free Farmers made major inroads in rural organizing, requested that they be given the chance to bid him farewell and requested that his remains be brought there for viewing. He will be laid to rest today.

He was born the fifth of 11 children of Leon Montemayor and Amparo Ungson of Alaminos, Pangasinan. The Montemayors were among the more prominent families of the town, deriving much of their income from the proceeds of farmlands inherited from their own parents. In addition, Leon Montemayor gave vent to his own adventurous and entrepreneurial interests by setting up a bakery, establishing a lumber business and even prospecting for mining claims in the mountains surrounding the town.

One incident, writes Montemayor in his unfinished autobiography, may have subconsciously influenced the direction his life took. During the ''dapil,'' a communal ritual whereby harvested sugarcane is crushed and the juices boiled to make molasses, he recalled, ''my grandmother suddenly became mad at one of the tenants. She seized a round bamboo stick and struck the tenant on the knee. Immediately, the tenant hobbled in pain across the yard and silently removed himself out of the sight of all the people present.''

He was just four years old at the time, wrote Montemayor, so he was hardly affected by the incident. ''But it came back to my mind and recurred in my memory now and then as I grew older.'' Little did he know that the making of a champion of the rights of the rural poor was being born in the person of a ''serious and studious'' scion of a land-owning family.

* * *

WHEN he was 17, Montemayor says he had a sudden and unexpected insight that the priestly life was not for him. Thus he told his tearful mother that he was leaving the seminary, and opted instead to pursue his studies at the Ateneo. He clinched his AB summa cum laude in 1948, and his law degree magna cum laude in 1952.

Shortly after graduation from college, Montemayor wed the former Nieves ''Bing'' Quimzon, with whom he had 10 children, the oldest of whom is Leonie, now agriculture secretary and a former congressman. Late in life, they discovered a baby boy abandoned at their doorstep and raised him as their own.

From the beginning, says Montemayor in his account of his life, his involvement in social concerns and pursuit of justice was rooted in his deep catholic faith. What he calls his ''unordained ministry,'' said Montemayor, sprang from his study of not just the land problem and the issue of ownership, but ''to the even deeper and broader consideration of God's purpose in creating the world.''

But he was not one to keep his beliefs separate from the way he lived his wife. To his widowed mother's surprise, he decided to waive his share of inheritance, which consisted largely of landholdings. When he tried convincing his mother to give their lands to their tenants, she retorted: ''Do not forget that were it not for those lands, you would not have finished law.'' Reflects Montemayor: ''I believe that to this day, hardly any of my relatives and townmates have understood what happened to me in regard to my thinking and attitude concerning our land.''

With support from progressive Jesuits who had also been involved in labor organizing, Montemayor and a few contemporaries organized the Federation of Free Farmers in 1953 in San Fernando, Pampanga. With the Huk rebellion crushed, farmers around the country flocked for assistance and support to an organization that worked to secure their land rights but eschewed the use of armed violence and based its ideology on Christian teachings. Later, the FFF leaders would also found the Federation of Free Farmers Cooperatives Inc. or FFFCI.

* * *

EVEN as he went around the country with other FFF leaders training farmer-leaders and negotiating with both national and local government officials, Montemayor sought to support his growing family by carrying a full teaching load and even serving as Dean of the Ateneo College of Law.

So deep and heartfelt were his social and Christian commitments that some of his children, including Leonie, would likewise pursue careers within the agrarian reform movement. This despite their own exemplary academic records which they could have parlayed into much more materially rewarding pursuits.

In recognition of his faithful service to the church, Montemayor was named a ''Consultor'' and later member of the Vatican Concillum of the Laity (now the Pontifical Council of the Laity) from 1968 to 1975. He counted Pope John Paul II as a personal friend, having met him when he was still Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Poland.

"How Rich Is My Journey!" is the title Montemayor gave his unfinished autobiography, 15 chapters of which he had completed before his death. His life, however filled with contradiction, was itself of a piece, a full circle of service and Christian commitment, social service and fidelity to the God he had loved all his life.

Memorial webpage to Jeremias U. Montemayor.

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