8. Recollect or Dominican? A disputed Saint

On the World Mission Sunday in 1987 a group of Japanese martyrs were canonized, in whose list the secular Filipino Saint Lorenzo Ruiz came first.

Four of them were Spanish, one French, another one Italian and the others, up to sixteen, Japanese: some were Priests, others Religious in the various forms of participation in the consecrated life (brothers, helpers, novices, tertiaries,) others are lay catechists. The common denominator in the group would appear to be belonging to the Dominican family; although also in this there are discrepancies, for part of the publicity lays claim to Saint Magdalene of Nagasaki for the Augustinian Recollects.

Nevertheless, the important point is not to dig up the vehement, and sometimes pleasing, baroque conflicts between Orders for points in honorable history. What today seems more surprising is the natural way in which they fraternally lived the same adventure towards the divine, as those who were in the missions in the 16th and 17th centuries were people coming from different countries and with different spiritual perspectives. When they organized a missionary expedition to Japan, generally from Manila or Macao, in the group there was equal participation from Jesuits, Franciscans, Dominicans and Augustinians. What we know of the missionary labor in the time of the persecutions, from approximately 1614 to 1640, indicates that there was complete understanding amongst the missionaries from different congregations. It was probably the contribution of the difficult circumstances in which they lived which brought them together fraternally, and the fact that the majority were of peninsular origin. Also the fact that the stories of martyrdom which arrived to Madrid and spread quickly from person to person and convent to convent for mutual edification is not any less meaningful.

The case of Magdalene of Nagasaki is indicative of this plural participation and the level of cooperation between the great missionary orders. When the first Augustinian Recollects arrived to Japan, in about 1623, she had just been made an orphan by the martyrdom of her parents. She was between ten and twelve years old, but we do not know what providential paths connected her with the now Blessed Francis of Jesus and Vincent of St. Anthony; the first from Palencia the second Portuguese, but both Augustinian Recollects. Magdalene served them first as an interpreter and spokesperson, and later as a catechist; with them directing her spiritually. The source of affection which was created would go on to mature her vocation and she asked to be admitted into the family of her new guides, the Augustinian Recollects. But the limited structures in a time of persecution would not allow any another way than to be admitted as a tertiary. So as a tertiary Augustinian Recollect she formalized her promise.

In 1632 Francis and Vincent are also martyred. The two new recollects that were sent to take the place of the missionaries Melchior of St. Augustine and Martin of St. Nicholas, are pressured little after setting foot in the Japanese Empire; betrayed by two Chinese sailors who transported them, and they will in the same way die as martyrs. The catechist Magdalene, doubly orphaned, after losing her parents and her spiritual guides, is now disconnected from the Recollect bedrock which has sustained her for nine years. She takes refuge now in another Religious, the Dominican Jordan of St. Stephen who also follows the Rule of St. Augustine. He will put her in contact with the Dominican tertiaries, and in a change to things, she is admitted into the Novitiate as such.

NEXT PAGE: 9. The Augustinian Recollect Secular Fraternity

---

.