Jose Luis Azcona: “The heart of the mission is for me a real immersion in the gospel.”

Jose Luis Azcona Hermoso was born in Dicastillo (Navarre, Spain) and received his religious education and studies for the priesthood in the seminaries of the Augustinian-Recollects Order. Once he was ordained, he specialized in moral theology in Rome where he obtained the doctorates degree. He dedicated part of his life in teaching, was a chaplain among the immigrants in Mantinghausen (Germany) and worked in diverse tasks in the governing body of the novitiate, as a provincial prior.

At forty-five years of age in 1985, he was assigned in Marajo in the state of Para, Brazil. After two years he was appointed bishop-prelate of Marajo, a ministry he has been in until the present, and has been one of the constant counterparts of the social projects of the NGOd Haren Alde in Brazil

Q: How do you see these days the fact that the Augustinian Recollects Order likes to renovate and improve its organization and its presence?

A: As to my actual view of the efforts of revitalization and restructuration of the Order, I must confess my limits due to the fact that I live in a mission which is really on the
social, ecclesial periphery of the Order. However, I would like to give my personal impression. I think the task of revitalization of the Order is urgent. I believe that we have departed very much from the Recollect charisma and we didn´t know how to revitalize to the rhythm of the multiple development and instability and distraction that humanity is going through in our time. I believe that the challenge and risk that come with “seeing” the personal and communitarian reality and that of the world in which we belong without being in it have filled us with some kind of fear and even panic in facing the things that come our way.

A false confidence in the presence of God in history then and now, has severed us from this “dangerous” view. With the grace of God we have this will to change. Worldliness, loss of identity are among the other effects of this lack of courage to have a qualified and consequential view.As an Augustinian Recollect I feel a part of this revitalization of the Order and I like to express my great worry about this.

Q: When you arrived in the Marajo mission many years ago how did the mission, your meeting with the missionaries and the lay people affect your previous experience as a consecrated priest?

A: Upon my arrival in the Amazons my encounter with the mission enormously and positively affected my condition as an Augustinian Recollect. Looking back to those 26 years I give thanks to God and specially as an Augustinian Recollect for having been given the grace of being a missionary in Marajo. The impact was enormous in all aspects of my personality as a consecrated Augustinian Recollect priest. I started to make a distinction between the essential and the circumstantial where it was necessary to live the charisma (Augustinian Recollect´s) with fidelity. It was one of my greatest accomplishments as a consecrated priest. It wasn´t easy for a man with legal learnings, with excessive support of the constitutional norms (of the Order), zeal in its observance that I embraced during my thirty something as a Provincial prior.

The mission, the missionaries and the lay men have made me through the forge of the mission an Augustinian Recollect. Some missionaries told me that I didn´t have the paternal gift of Alquilio Alvarez Diez, my predecessor, that I didn´t know Marajo, its culture and Church, etc. Now I give thanks to God and the missionaries and the Marajo people for everything. They have greatly contributed in making me a religious of the Augustinian Recollect. I believe that due to my frailty, in the communities of the Order outside the Amazon, it would have been difficult for me to live the spirit and the reality of the beatitudes.

Another impressive lesson that I learned in the mission was the capacity to forgive the enemies of these people, those riffraff, the eternal tricksters. It was not easy even with the grace of God to forgive the enemies of the Church and of the people and at the same time, even at the risk on one´s life, continue denouncing, announcing the Gospel of total liberation with all their consequences. In other places, due to my accommodation to a spirituality without history, this would have been impossible.

Q: What can we, the religious, learn of the other realities and charismas of the Church and the communities of the poor, those in the tail end (of society), from those who receive their faith in the missions?

A: Of the other charisma of the Church, we, the religious, learn to value the Church herself and in a special way her structurally charismatic dimension, that which renders possible the revitalization of the religious life itself, enriched by the immense (spiritual) wealth( of the Church). The inside of the mission constitute for me a real “immersion in the Gospel” in the purity, the simplicity of faith manifested among our poor, in a life of continuous prayer that goes on in the jungle, the great river and in their enclosure.

Q: Do you remember any anecdote, story or experience that has called your attention during the years of your encounters with the Christians of Marajo or with others?

A: What impacted me is hearing confessions manifesting the power of conversion as confirmed by the ecclesiastical community: “Since I joined the community I have stopped being an adulterer.” “It´s been 18 years (my years in the community) since I haven´t touched alcohol which I used to get drunk with everyday.

Another example about families it´s not a rare case finding people rowing two hours to participate in the celebration of Sunday masses with the community and doing the same on the way back home.Seeing these cases and similar ones everyday the religious would ask: “Have I got enough faith to do the same?”

Q: Can you present to the religious of the Order the mission ministry as a place and example for revitalization and at the same time provide a challenge towards creativity for the religious.

A: I believe firmly that the mission is the proper place in developing creativity, personality and the apostolic spirit and human maturity, Christian and religious. I can never get tired of repeating this declaration. That´s why, if the revitalization of the Order doesn´t pass through the mission, there will be no revitalization.

Allowing God to use you in an ambient where the human means, precaution, programming, using the media of communication can´t give you security, you are more disposed to pray, study, research and organize along the line of Him who said, “Without me, you can not do anything.”

Evidently the mission demands caution and care. It´s precisely because of the fact that, among others, things can get out of hand and away from your control, that you count on God and his Spirit, the chief actors of all missions. It can never be easy, but it becomes fascinating.

Q: What do Christian Communities from these places hope from the religious?

A: They hope that they be men of God, a person who speaks of Him, with whom they can easily and profoundly feel, to whom they can go to as people who make God present among them with strength and proximity.

They expect the religious to pray for their sick, that´s why they bring their dying children so that they can pray over them, to bless them every time that they see them, to give them advice for some important matters in the family, work, Church. The priest is everything. He is also regarded as their defender against police abuses, one who can scare away pirates, who are so numerous and at loose these days, somebody who defends justice and tell the truth in small and, above all, in great measures.

Q: What does the presence of the friars among them mean to them, a valid testimony? Can you remember a significant case?

A: Among these cases in Marajo is the testimonial and emblematic event of the drowning of the Friars Zacarias Fernandez and Ramon Echavarri in the waters of the Amazons in the service of the Gospel.

The people understand very well the missionary who remains with them and dies for them and with them in Marajo. They understand that the Gospel implies the giving of oneself, Marajo man or woman until death. This is the strongest testimony that convinces our brothers in Marajo. Being with them, suffer with them, not abandoning them, dying with them. For the people of Marajo this is the greatest testimony.