In order to facilitate an overview and to elicit interest we offer as attached doument the second part of the complete interview for those who wish to deepen on the subject matter.
Q.- What can the Augustinian Recollects offer to spiritual life in the Church?
A.- As Augustinian Recollects we have to underscore – pamper, I should say – common life or fraternal life in community. That idea moved Augustine to embrace this kind of life and to invite others to join it. And as Recollects it behooves us to strive to concretize those ideas, taking paying great attention to human relations and banishing whatever hinders or beclouds them. Especially valuable for that task is the contribution of sobriety and simplicity, attitudes which prepare and fertilize the ground in order that that life may germinate, grow and mature with relative ease. Another possible contribution derives from our spirituality, that is, from interiority or contemplative tension. Our interior life has to move us to help the people of today to rediscover God. But perhaps we lack conviction and tradition. Masters, spaces and times of prayer do not abound in our parishes, schools or communities.
Charism
Q.- What is left of the spirit of Recollection that gave birth to the Order?
A.- History has not been kind to our Order. Today we know our origins quite well, we know from whence we came and what the goals and ideals of our fathers were. We also know how and when we took the downward spiral and how and when this concluded until we became a group characterized by priestly and individualistic spirituality, removed from the recollected and communitarian asceticism of our origins. But the force of inertia and the influence of created structures, as well as a good dose of fear of a challenging charism, which demands effort, study and creativity, paralyze us or at least diminish our enthusiasm and puts us on the defensive, contenting ourselves with imitating models of religious life of the moment, which can be very good or worthy but which do not respond fully to the Recollect model. Our greatest deficiency at present is therefore not the ignorance of our origins or of our charism. What we lack is the perception and appreciation of its value, as well as a dose of courage to face it with sincerity and serene spirit.
Prayer
Q.- Do you think a new impulse is needed in the Order and in Church to rediscover the value of prayer? Why?
A.- I believe that in these last years we have seen some recovery of prayer both in the Church as well as in the Order. It is no longer ridiculed as in past decades nor is its value questioned. Charismatic movements, associations and persons have vindicated the undeniable role of prayer in Christian life. All that has changed the way of thinking of the faithful, at least the more committed ones, and of course also that of the friars. Today people pray more. But this new theoretical panorama has not yet developed all its potential. There is much to do in this area.
Holiness
Q.- Is it possible to be a saint being an Augustinian Recollect? How?
A.- I don’t think any Augustinian Recollect would hesitate to answer the first part of the question in the affirmative. The simple fact of being a Church-approved Order assures us that it is a suitable way to achieve holiness. And history confirms that belief for us. In all centuries of our history, but in a special way in the first, there have been Augustinian Recollects who have followed Jesus Christ closely and have served mankind to a heroic degree, preaching the Gospel and trying to alleviate people in their passage through this world. At present, the Order awaits the glorification of four of its sons. They are four religious with very diverse character and biography, and that already helps me answer the second part of your question. Ignacio Martínez (Death in 1942) was sanctified in the immense solitudes of Labrea, dedicating body and soul to the evangelization of its poor and scarce inhabitants, dying alone, without the company of any brother to close his eyes and to raise a prayer for his soul to the Lord. Mariano Gazpio (Death in 1989) walked the paths of sanctity in the missions of China and continued with brisk pace in the cloisters of Monteagudo and Marcilla. Alfonso Gallegos (Death in 1991) achieved holiness among the violent and confused youth of Los Angeles; and Jenaro Fernández (Death in 1972), among archival papers, beside the sick and poor of the lowly districts of Rome, and processing files or writing opinions for the Roman congregations. Thus, the Augustinian Recollects, like all Christians, can achieve holiness in any part of the world carrying out any kind of work. Perhaps there are traits common to all our saints and those are silence, simplicity, humility, and the faithful and silent fulfillment of their community and pastoral duties. Humility stands out even in those religious whom nobody thinks of elevating to the altars, but whom the people and the religious who lived with them always considered as saints.
Cloister
Q. – How understand the role of Augustinian Recollect cloistered religious dedicated solely to prayer?
A.- A healthy ecclesiology, aware of the central place of God in the life of the Church, poses no objection at all to their style of life. Among us perhaps it was Bishop Martin Legarra (1910-1985) who best attuned with those ideas, which are rooted in the dogma of the Communion of Saints. Or at least he was the one who gave them the most emphatic voice. As soon as he was installed apostolic prefect of Bocas del Toro in Panama, he realized that alone he could not carry such a heavy burden and that the success of the work of the missionaries does not depend solely on them. He needed other aids. One of them, the principal one, he singled out in the prayer of his sisters, the Augustinian Recollect cloistered nuns. At once, he made them godmothers of his mission and through frequent letters he kept them abreast of the progress of his labors. Aside from this complementariness of roles in the Church, we Recollects of the last decades esteem the fraternal bonds that unite us to the nuns and we have strived to strengthen these. This fraternity has materialized in the association of the monasteries of the Recollect nuns with the Order, finally approved in 1993 after five years of experience, the results of which the Holy See has evaluated very positively. The nuns’ essential fidelity to their original charism helps the friars to look back at their origins and spurs them to reflect on and question about their own charismatic evolution.
Thank you, Father Angel, for letting us know in great detail the wealth of our history and for inspiring the concern that today we are also called to live the Augustinian Recollect charism as a way of union with Christ and of service to the Church and to present society.