The missions, social projects and solidarity actions are a constant in the action of the Augustinian Recollect Family. The Province of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine has always lived in mission, since its very birth was motivated by the opening of the first evangelization missions in the Philippines in the 17th century. Since then, he has carried out his evangelizing activity following the mandate of Jesus in the places today called “frontiers”: there where it is necessary to defend the dignity of human life, social justice, equal opportunities, the defense of the most vulnerable.
In 1588, some of these Augustinians from the Province of Castilla responded to call of revision and reform for the mendicant orders, from which emerged the orders now called “discalced” or in the case of the Augustinians, “Recollects”. The History of the Church tends to reflect in these new orders the sense of asceticism, seclusion and the monastic life. But it would incorrect to not also concentrate in their apostolic and responsible proposal. One of the main sources of the Order of the Augustinian Recollects is Book of Chronicles, which relates in its first volume the first of the missions “to the mountains” in the High Pyrenees, almost immediately after the first expedition to the Philippines.
he mission to the Philippines is what has marked later history. It was the first destination for the Recollect missionaries. The first prior provincial, fray Juan de San Jerónimo, received from the King Felipe III the offer to be Bishop of San Cristóbal de Chiapas. But the good friar responded to the king, that instead of such a grace, it was permitted him to head a mission to “new lands”. The monarch chose the Philippines and demanded an expedition of twelve religious.
The Augustinian Recollects chose fourteen of the many who offered to go. On May the first 1605, the Chapter ordered Juan de San Jerónimo, the outgoing provincial, to take charge of the first expedition. He chose religious from the half a dozen existing Recollect monasteries: Jerónimo de Cristo, Miguel de la Madre de Dios, Diego de la Anunciación, Pedro de San Fulgencio, Rodrigo de San Miguel, Francisco Bautista, Francisco de la Madre de Dios, Andrés de San Nicolás, Juan de San Guillermo, Jerónimo de la Madre de Dios, Francisco de San Jerónimo, Simón de San José y Andrés del Espíritu Santo. They were the first missionaries in the history of the Recollection.
Video: The celebration of four hundred years of the Order of the Augustinian Recollects in the Americas has shown the intimate union between the mission and the growth of the Augustinian Recollection.
In the 19th century the missions saved the Order of the Augustinian Recollects from perishing amidst the historical changes, and at the beginning of the 20th century they gave the Order the necessary impulse in order to be accepted as an Order within the Church and the Augustinian family.
In the missions the life of the Augustinian Recollects was extended which has reached as far as the altars of sanctity: Magdalena de Nagasaki, Ezekiel Moreno, Francisco de Jesús, Vicente de San Antonio, Melchor de San Agustín, Martín de san Nicolás…As well as hundreds of martyrs who, throughout history, have given witness to their faith by handing over their very lives.
NEXT PAGE: c. The three stages of the Augustinian Recollect missions
TABLE OF CONTENT: MISSIONS
- 1. Augustinian Recollects: Missionaries out of necessity
- 2. Mission, a complex and all-embracing term
- 3. Religious, lay people, and volunteer missionaries
- 4. Missionaries according to the laws
- 5. Missionaries by inheritance
- 6. The Province’s missions in the 19th century
- 7. The Province’s missions in the 20th century
- 8. Prelature of Labrea (Amazonas, Brazil)
- 9. Diocese of Shangqiu (Henan, People’s Republic of China)
- 10. Boys’ Town (Agua Calientes de Cartago, Costa Rica)
- 11. St Monica’s home (Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil)
- 12. CARDI, the Augustinian Recollect Centre for Integral Development, Mexico City
- 13. Service to immigrants: United States, London, Madrid
