Fr. Angel generously answered each of the questions. In order to provide a global view and to foment interest among the readers, we carefully chose the aspects to present together with the whole text of the interview. We hope that our religious will deepen their reflection on the topics.
Question: What meaning does December 5 have to the Augustinian Recollects?
Answer: Memory of birth is pleasant and helps us to grow. In our case it is the memory of those ideas that gave life to our Order and led us to move on, towards our own way of life. We do not have a specific founder in whom we can mirror and with whom we may compare ourselves. There is no ancestral house that allows us to recreate those vital spaces of our infancy. But we have a well-defined date, on December 5th, 1588, when a group of Augustinians, desirous of greater perfection, decided to inaugurate a new form of life, which in so short a time became a document that was given the name of Forma de Vivir. The document gained relevance in the middle of the twentieth century, thanks to the studies made by Fr. Jenaro Fernandez and to the enthusiasm of Fr. Eugenio Ayape. From the first moment Fr. Ayape discovered the basis of his program of governance in the Acts and Forma de Vivir, he was all focused on the recovery and the foment of the most valid aspects of the document’s charism, that is to say, interiority and common life. He immediately ordered the translation of the Latin version of the Forma de Vivir into Spanish, and taking advantage of the publication of the Ratio Institutionis – a document that covers the complete cycle of formation of the religious in doctrinal, spiritual, apostolic, and Augustinian Recollect aspects – he declared December 5 as “dies natalis ordinis” and ordained that it should be celebrated as such in all houses of the Order.
Question: What are the characteristic marks of the Augustinian Recollection?
Answer: The Recollection was born in a climate of splendor, of high spiritual intensity, in a time when the common desire was to distinguish oneself in the service of the Lord. Our early Fathers, children of and in harmony with those times, desired that their disciples be known primarily for their aspiration to distinguish themselves in the service of God. No less than three times is the word, perfection, repeated in the first eleven lines of the first paragraph of the Forma de Vivir. This is a perspective that wonderfully entwines with the ideal of Saint Augustine and also with the most genuine sources of religious life.
Together with this primordial attitude, which impregnates the Forma de Vivir from beginning to end, there brilliantly shine the desire for profound interior life, the love for common life, and a strongly marked asceticism.
Interior life is made manifest in the appreciation of mental prayer and silence, as well as in the organization of the daily life of the communities. The Recollect community is one that is attentive to the divine guest who dwells in the community, to the teacher who speaks in the interior of each member; it is a community that is recollected, an adjective in which the spirituality of the 16th-century Spain is deciphered; a community that flees from dispersion, busyness and superficiality.
The love for common life or fraternal life in common, as it is said today, converted Augustine into a founder. He gathered friends and followers who could live together, who would share material and spiritual goods, were kind towards each other, and mutually respectful of their individualities including their habits and weaknesses. For him the community was a privileged place where he can comply with the law of love, which is the one thing that really occupies him, because, as he wrote in De moribus Ecclesiae, where there is charity every thing is full and where there is lack of it, every thing is vain.
Asceticism is realized in a series of practical norms that involve the whole life of the individual person and the community: abundance of fast and disciplines, simplicity and the use of unpolished materials for buildings, rooms and clothing, real poverty of the community and of the individual. This is hard a message and difficult to the hearing of those who are attuned to a world that is dominated by a humanistic anthropology and forgetful of transcendence and original sin. And in addition, it is made more difficult because not all of the sources of the message are evangelical. In order to make it a little more attractive, perhaps, it is fitting to reduce the message to one word, which, in this case, can be sobriety. Sobriety can stand today for asceticism and can serve as Christian antidote to a consumerism that is so much depreciated and yet, interestingly, also much sought for.
For me perfect community is the reflection of a community of love, born of and sustained by the grace of God and consecrated to His service; a community of simple and sober life, wherein everything is put in common: talents, affections of the heart and material goods; where there is no place for authoritarianism or privilege, but respect for the personality of each member and attends to their needs; a community that lives in fraternal and trusting dialogue, that dedicates some time to manual work and communicates with the local church; a community that, although lacking in concrete and determined mission, feels the need to be always attentive to the voice of the Lord and to the needs of the Church. I believe that this is also the model that each Augustinian Recollect community should follow. Our reformers of the 16th-century focused more on the aspects of prayer, community and asceticism, but the Spirit has taught us, through the avatars of history, to appreciate aspects like ecclesial openness and humanism, which our Fathers somehow have left in the shadows.
The spirit of prayer is the distinctive mark of the Recollection. Question: Let us dwell on prayer. What is prayer to the Augustinian Recollects?
Answer: The spirit of prayer is the distinctive mark of the Recollection, the best that defines and differentiates it, at least in its origins. It is also the one that gives it its name. If in the beginning the term Recollection meant solitude, retirement to a secluded place, and withdrawal from dispersing affairs, very soon it turned to mean the “re-folding” of the soul over itself, interiority, and the concentration of the soul on its powers.
The houses of the first Recollects were authentic houses of prayer and recollection, and the friars lived with total dedication to this activity. “The entire exercise of the religious,” wrote Quiñones, the legislator of the Franciscan Recollects (1521), “has to be reading, prayer, meditation and contemplation.” And this norm, or better still, this aspiration was assumed totally by the recollections that, upon the influence of the Franciscans, happened in all the mendicant orders. They all found in prayer their neuralgic center that directed and ordained their life.
The author of the Forma de Vivir shares these same ideas, but, as a good Augustinian, he did not base them on the order of means but on the order of end, which in the life of the Christian is always charity. For him prayer is precious because it is the most important food of love, and as such he proclaimed it as such in the very beginning of the first chapter. And he was not contented merely with this solemn declaration of principle. In order not to let his words remain mere theory, from the enunciation of a simple desire he would proceed into legislation on times, places and modes of prayer. From the very beginning he made it clear that the Eucharist, the Liturgy of the Hours and Mental Prayer are the guideposts that mark and ordain the daily life of the Recollects.
Since the power to pray if lacking in adequate climate and surrounding cannot fully develop in plain actions, he tried to create such circumstance by means of strict norms on silence, the retirement to the rooms, spiritual reading, distancing from secular affairs, including norms that regulate mortifications. The spirit of prayer lived agitated times. A kind of spiritual cooling off in mid-seventeenth century, lapse of religious tension in the society and the exigencies of the apostolate, which at that time were growing more intense everyday, motivated the change. The story illustrating the decadence of prayer life continued during the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. By the year 1760 meditation already lost its central place in the practices of the missionaries, it was almost totally left to the discretion of each religious. During the nineteenth century the Order, which was then confined in the Philippines, failed to counteract the impetuous attack of the circumstances and, swept by these forces and in her search for inspiration in priestly and individualistic spirituality of that epoch, progressively distanced herself from the original sources. There flourished towards the last part of the nineteenth century, nostalgia for the past. Some voices were heard clamoring for a change of direction.
Question: How much time was dedicated to prayer and how did they pray?
Answer: Toward the year 1660 meditation in the morning as well as in the afternoon, had duration of half an hour. The other two half-hours were substituted, respectively, by Solemn Mass in honor of the Immaculate Virgin Mary and the singing of the Salve and Joseph. The general chapter of 1666 also reduced to half hour the meditation in the afternoon of Sundays and Feast Days. After the war of independence the time dedicated to prayer dwindled drastically. The Divine Office never regained the former solemnity and mental prayer was practically reduced to two half hours. St. Ezekiel brought with him this practice to Columbia and ten years later, the superiors imposed the same in the houses that started to grow in different regions of Spain and the Americas, although the practice took root in the communities only at a much later time. With the normalization of the life of the Order during the first decade of the nineteenth century, the norm was applied generally to all communities, and the practice continues to the present.
We know that during these last decades meditation in the morning was done in common, and that each religious is left free to choose the theme to reflect on. I personally believe that the criteria that the religious used in choosing themes were oftentimes not very appropriate. The time and other modalities of the meditation in the afternoon were left to the discretion of the local communities.
The concerns of the friars of today are varied and very different from those of yesterday. Question: Is there a specific Augustinian Recollect way of meditation or mental prayer?
Answer: In the past there was some kind of uniformity in matters of theme for meditation and affective orientation. Today there is absolute heterogeneity. Each is free to organize his meditation with absolute independence, and according to his likes and personal needs.
Question: Is prayer today the same as that of the seventeenth century at the time the Order was born?
Answer: It is not and it can never be. The concerns of the friars of today are varied and very different from those of yesterday. And no less different are their anthropology and vision of the world. Today we feel that we have less need of prayer, perhaps, because we believe we are more self-sufficient and as such, less dependent on heaven. It is harder for us to be beggars in relation to God, to have that attitude which naturally inclines one to pray and leads to some ascetical practices that are considered absolutely indispensable as minimum preparation to encounter God. It is only when disaster or calamity shakes our personal securities in life that we learn to assimilate and make our own such an attitude.
Question: Why is it that the spirituality of St. Theresa, that of St. John of the Cross or the Ignatian spirituality, are more known and not that of the Augustinian Recollects? Can you speak of friars who are eminent in their Augustinian Recollect spirituality?
Answer: There have been Recollects we consider as great spiritual figures, although ordinarily they did not enjoy wide projection, and no one left to us a literature that compares with that of the great masters of spiritual life. But it is important to remember that our spiritual tradition did not begin in the sixteenth century. Our tradition is traced back to St. Augustine who, in this field is also our first teacher. Then we have Thomas of Villanueva, Tome de Jesus or Alonso de Orozco. The three were nourished in the spiritual humus that gave birth to the Recollection, and all of them left to us important spiritual teachings with which the Recollects can easily harmonize. I believe that we will have more to gain if only we give them a little more attention.
Among the writings and spiritual figures of the Recollection I would give distinction to the two first martyrs of Japan, to Andres de San Nicolas, Agustin de San Ildefonso, Ezekiel Moreno and Jenaro Fernandez. Blessed Francisco de Jesus and Vicente de San Antonio offered to Christ the supreme homage of their love in an atmosphere of Christian joy, fraternal union and ecclesial communion that gave perennial vitality to their testimony. Andres de San Nicolas and Agustin de San Ildefonso have perhaps best transmitted the spiritual heritage of the primitive Recollection, while Ezekiel Moreno and Jenaro Fernandez, in incarnating Recollect fundamental values in times that are closer to our generation.
The rich spiritual legacy of the Recollect nuns and sisters also clamors for more attention. Among the female religious there were always exceptional souls, and many of them put to writing their prayer experiences. The first is undoubtedly the mother founder, Mariana de Jesus; in her the Recollects find a model of sanctity and teacher of prayer. Together with the founder many female religious were sanctified, and we are in possession of first hand documents on the matter. We can mention Isabel de la Cruz, the confidant of Luisa de Carvajal in her youth and the inseparable companion of Mother Mariana since 1604; and Ines de la Encarnacion, hero of charity and woman of great power of persuasion, who left to us a precious narrative of the gifts with which God has been marking her life.
We also have the autobiographical record of Isabel de Jesus (1584-1648), the humble pastor of Navalcan who, before and after entering the convent of Arenas de San Pedro, lived in continual communication with God; that of her niece, Isabel de la Madre de Dios, whose diocesan process of beatification is about to conclude within few days; also the record of Antonia de Jesus, the founder of the Andalucian convents; of Maria de San Jose (1656-1719), one of the founders of the Mexican convents of Puebla and Oaxaca, many extracts from her voluminous autobiography have been published lately; and others whom I have to omit in order not to lengthen the list.
I take exemption with two religious who are almost our contemporary: the Venerable Monica de Jesus, whose process of beatification has progressed very much, and Guadalupe Vadillo, the great restorer of the feminine recollection in Mexico. The writings of both are rich in prayer experiences and spiritual teachings.
During the first decades the principal devotions of the friars were the Eucharist, the Cross of Christ and the Virgin Mary. Question: What are the principal devotions in the Order?
Answer: During the first decades the principal devotions of the friars were the Eucharist, the Cross of Christ and the Virgin Mary. To these was added the devotion to St. Joseph in the second half of the seventeenth century.
Eucharistic piety was manifested in the daily conventual celebration of the Holy Sacrifice and in the private Masses of all the priests, as well as in the extraordinarily frequent communion on the part of religious who were not ordained priests, …some 130 days a year.
The devotion to the passion of Christ also took deep roots in Recollect cloisters. The cross of Christ was the ordinary theme of morning meditation, it presided the nakedness of their rooms and most of the common halls.
The Forma de Vivir dedicates not a word to Mary thus it keeps the general legislation of the Order intact. It can be deduced from this that the Recollect communities were contented with the Marian practices that were common in the Order. Nevertheless, such was not the reality. Their clear contemplative leaning moved them to increase the frequency of some traditional devotions and introduce new ones. On the day itself of the profession of vows, all religious consecrated themselves to Mary and made a promise of perpetual submission.
Beginning the year 1602 all communities have sung the Saturday Mass in honor of the Virgin and in the year 1630, they started intoning the Salve every Saturday, a practice which the chapter of 1660 extended to the nine principal feasts of the Virgin. More emphasis was given to the feast of the Immaculate Conception, converting this into a day of obligatory communion. Not long after, they began to pray her Office “all Saturdays except those of Advent and Lent, vigils, four ember days and those that were impeded with feasts of nine readings”.
The Constitutions of 1912 added the daily recitation of the rosary, and those of 1928, the celebration of the fourth Sunday of the month in honor of the Mother of Consolation. The two practices were not new in the Order, but only in those indicated dates did they find incorporation in the constitutional legislation. We find another sign of Marian fervor in the naming of numerous convents after the Virgin, or entrusting them to her patronage.
During the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries the Order failed to show greater interest in promoting Marian titles that were proper of the Order like, The Virgin of Grace, Our Lady of Consolation, or the Virgin of Good Counsel. Most of the communities preferred to cultivate devotion to images or Marian advocacies that were associated to their particular history or to the regions where they were established.
In Spain the most common advocacies were those of Copacabana, the Pillar and the Lost Child. In the Philippines the most preferred advocacy has always been the Virgin of Carmel. In Columbia the Virgin of Candelaria prevailed, and this continues today.
It was in the nineteenth century when the devotion to the Virgin of the Way found space in the heart of many religious. She is the patroness of Monteagudo, which for decades served as the only novitiate of the Order. We can recall many other advocacies and manifestations of Marian fervor, but let what has been said suffice to help us realize the depth of the Marian fervor that has always accompanied the Recollects.
The liturgical cult to St. Joseph was a much later addition in the occidental Church. It was in the fifteenth century when his memory was put in the Missal (1479) and in the breviary (1499), and it would take another century to declare his feast as a day of obligation (1621). Among us we consider Fr. Gabriel de la Concepcion as the principal promoter of devotion to St. Joseph. During his term as general (1630-34) he introduced the song of St. Joseph that was sung every Saturday and which, in spite of having been shortened in 1968, is today the only relic of the old devotion of the Order to the saint. Toward 1650 the Order added his commemoration in the Saturday Mass in honor of the Blessed Virgin and started to celebrate March 19 as the solemnity of St. Joseph.
St. Augustine, St. Monica, and St. Nicholas of Tolentino are the most venerated among the saints of the Order. Devotion to St. Rita was developed later.
Great part of all of these devotions already belongs to the past. In its desire to “rationalize” the life of piety of the Order, removing the slat that has accumulated through the centuries, the general chapter of 1968, left so deep a cut and forgot the reasons of the heart, thus leaving the Order unsheltered from inclement influences.
The mere fact of being an Order approved by the Church assures us of her being a right way to attain perfection. Question: Can a person, being an Augustinian Recollect, become a Saint? How?
Answer: The mere fact of being an Order approved by the Church assures us of her being a right way to attain perfection. And history confirms us in this belief. For hundreds of years, and especially in the first century of the existence of the Recollection, there were Recollects who followed Christ closely and in heroic ways served the people, preaching the Gospel and laboring to alleviate the life the of their fellow pilgrims in this world.
There were hundreds of martyrs from Miguel de la Madre de Dios, the proto-martyr of the missions in the Philippines (1606), to the almost complete community of Motril (1936) and the five Chinese religious of the China of Mao who suffered hunger, cold and forced labor (between 1958 and 1989), through the martyrs of Japan and Uraba (Colombia) in 1632.
Others consecrated their life to the service of the lepers, like Simeon Diaz (1896-1980) who lived for more than half a century with the interns in Providence Island in Maracaibo; there were those who without any trace of doubt sacrificed their life to save their faithful like, Jesus Pardo in Labrea (1955) or Roman Echavarri in Marajo (1981); you also have religious who found sanctification in professorship and in the formation of young religious, like Juan Gascon in Monteagudo and Marcilla (+1884) and Eugenio Cantera (+1956) in Monachil, or in parish ministry like, Juan Perez de Santa Lucia (+1864) and Mechor Ardanaz (+1921) in the Philippines, Pedro San Vicente (+1915) and Luis Goñi (+1951) in Venezuela or Santos Ramirez in Brazil (+1934); and finally others, like Juan de la Magdalena (+1657) and Santiago Fernandez Melgar (+1784), reached the height of contemplation in between their domestic chores.
Negligence in the development of our own, the anomalous situation of the community during the nineteenth century and the juridical limitations that dragged on until 1912 did not favor the opening of processes that should have pushed forward the sanctification of our brothers and deprived the Order of having some of her children installed in the altars.
Francisco de Jesus and Antonio de San Vicente were beatified in the middle of the nineteenth century and in the twentieth, we became witnesses to the glorification of two other martyrs of Japan and the seven of Motril. And above all, the dream was realized of seeing in the altars our own father, Ezekiel Moreno, a religious who incarnated in heroic degree the fundamental aspects of the Augustinian Recollect life in three nations (Philippines, Spain, and Colombia in that order) and in so diverse functions like, the missions, formation, governance, and the Episcopal responsibility.
Actually the Order expects the glorification of four of her children. The four are of very diverse character and biography. Ignacio Martinez (+1942) sanctified himself in the immense solitudes of Labrea, with body and soul dedicated fully to the evangelization of his poor and few inhabitants, he died alone, with no brother to close his eyes or raise a prayer to God for his soul. Mariano Gazpio (+1989) walked the interior ways of sanctity in the missions in China and continued the journey expeditiously in the cloisters of Monteagudo and Marcilla. Alfonso Gallegos (+1991) attained sanctity among the violent and disoriented youth of the street quarters of Los Angeles; and Jenaro Fernandez (+1972) found sanctity in the midst of archive articles, by the side of the poor and the sick in the suburbs of Rome and in transacting proceedings or editing formularies for vows for Roman congregations.
The Augustinian Recollects then, just like all Christians, can sanctify themselves in any part of the world and while fulfilling any kind of work entrusted to them. The key is, and as always, in the love that moves their life, in the renunciation of self and in their openness to the voice of God and the cry of the brothers.
If you ask for a model or style of sanctity that can be considered as the most proper of our tradition, I am afraid I will defraud you. I even doubt it exists. Perhaps we can speak of certain marks that can be found in each of our saints. These are silence, simplicity, humility, and the quiet and faithful compliance of community and pastoral obligations. Humility is the first to be seen even in those religious who, although no one thought of elevating them to the altars, have always been perceived as saintly by the people they served and the religious with whom they lived. We already mentioned the names of Pedro San Vicente and Santos Ramirez, they two good examples.
History certainly sheds light and helps us know better the Augustinian Recollect spirituality. It also challenges us to present proposals of a way of life and sanctity that urge the religious toward contemplation, fraternal communion and evangelizing mission.
Fr. Angel, we hope we can ask more questions in the near future. Thank you very much for your collaboration and availability especially in support of the Website of the Order: agustinosrecoletos. Com
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Biographical Notes | Angel Martinez Cuesta |
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Born in Brulles, Burgos, Spain, on the 26th of September 1938. From 1949 to 1956 he took his secondary education in the seminaries that the Augustinian Recollects had then in Lodosa (Navarra) and Fuenterrabia (Guipuzcoa). He had his novitiate in Monteagudo (Navarra) and professed simple vows on the 14th of September 1957. He finished his ecclesiastical studies in Marcilla, Navarra, where he was ordained priest on September 29, 1961. After a year of stay in Manila, Philippines, he began further studies in Church History in the Gregorian University in Rome in 1962. Fr. Angel finished his licentiate in 1964 and doctorate in 1972 with a dissertation on the socio-religious history of the island of Negros in the Philippines, and which earned him a gold medal from the university. He has been residing in Rome since 1962, dedicating his life to the study of the history and the spirituality of the Order. And for more than forty years he has been in-charge of the General Archives of the Order. He also has been directing the Historical Institute of the Order for the last thirty years, an assignment that made him found the Order’s official magazine, Recollectio, in 1978. Aside from his thesis which was published in 1980, Fr. Angel also produced the following works: El Camino del deber (1975), biography of then blessed Ezekiel Moreno; the first volume of the Historia de los Agustinos Recoletos (1995); the edition in four volumes of the Epistolario de san Ezequiel Moreno (2006); the biography, in Italian and Spanish, of Fr. Gennaro Fernandez, Se non sono santo, per cosa voglio la vita? (2008); several contributions to the Dizionario degli Istituti di Perfesione (1974-2002) and to other publications of church sciences, especially the Recollectio. At present he is preparing the second volume of the Historia de los Agustinos Recoletos. |