On May 2nd, the holiday of the Madrid Autonomous Community, a group of lay Augustinian Recollects pilgrimage through the fields of Cuenca, Spain to visit two towns where the Augustinian Recollects have left a deep mark, which persists even today.
After celebrating the Eucharist in the parish of Saint Rita, in Madrid, the group of the Secular Augustinian-Recollect Fraternity undertook the road to Belmonte, Cuenca.
The trip from Madrid to Cuenca, once it enters this province and leaves the Madrid-Valencia highway, is certainly a pilgrimage through fields and small mounds of poor vegetation, with very little population.
In Belmonte
At 11:30 the pilgrims arrived at Belmonte, a town of about 1,800. inhabitants, and went directly to the collegiate church of Saint Bartholomew (19th century) the parish town. Prior telephone contact with the parish priest Don Emilio de la Fuente, who facilitated the visit to the collegiate church as much as possible, they put in communication with Marta Castellanos, catechist and tourist guide, that Don Emilio had presented as the ideal person to attend to the group of parishioners of Saint Rita.
Marta Castellanos gave a detailed historical-artistic explanation of the collegiate; of every one of the chapels and the valuable choir. Martha was open to all kinds of questions, which she answered professionally.
Within the guided tour, there were two things that the ten tourists wanted to see with special interest and for what they came to Belmonte: the baptismal font where Fray Luis de León was baptized and, mainly, contemplating and praying before the Holy Crucifix of Peligros, (Danger) an ivory image, brought from the Philippines by the Augustinian Recollect missionaries and given to the town of Belmonte in 1715, by Fray Juan de Jesús, Belmonteño, vicar general of the Order from 1712 to 1718.
According to legend, while crossing the Pacific Ocean from Manila to Acapulco, a strong storm arose. The image of the Crucified was hung from the galleon’s mast, which sailors and passengers invoked, and the storm subsided.
The locals guard the Blessed Crucifix of Danger with great care in the altarpiece of a side chapel of the collegiate church, where you can see through a glass, which defends it and gives security. This image leaves the niche in which it is placed, during Holy Week, because it is one of the “steps”, and in the festivities of the first Sunday of May, which placed on some litters. This circumstance made it easier for the ten Madrid pilgrims to photograph a photo with it from all angles.
Within the guided tour, as something special, courtesy of the parish priest, Marta Castellanos transferred the group to the parish archive where the valuable ecclesiastical documents are.
After two hours of visiting, the time came to regain strength, which, in Belmonte, a place with a lot of tourism, does not cause problems. As a nice detail, Don Emilio, who could not share the table with the pilgrims, shared coffee with them and had a pleasant and interesting conversation.
In Campillo de Altobuey
It was 4:30 p.m. when the group set off for Campillo de Altobuey, which has about 1,300 inhabitants. The journey to this point can be considered a pure and simple pilgrimage (walking through the fields). Within an hour, the town was sighted and the group headed directly to the convent of Saint Augustine on the outskirts, where the Augustinian Recollects lived from 1690 to 1829. When they arrived, the parish priest of the town, Don José Vicente, after the greeting and presentation, opened the convent church: a good-sized church with transept and lateral naves and, above all, a magnificent Baroque altarpiece in the apse of the central floor. In the niches, they have placed statues of the Augustinian spiritual tradition: Saint Joseph, Saint Rita, and Saint Monica, of little artistic value. The original ornamentation preserved collects, in high relief, motifs from the Augustinian spiritual tradition- collect. The paintings with which they have adorned the church are not very happy.
The pilgrims had a special interest in seeing the museum located in the choir and in the hallway that runs above the side naves, where you can contemplate the beautiful chasubles and dalmatics brought from the Philippines and some books from the Augustinian-Recollect conventual library.
The church buildings, like the cloister of the convent, where since the beginning of the 20th century they located the town’s bullring, are property of the City Council, which has recently purchased the so-called “orchard of the friars”, which is a piece of land, in the words of a local farmer, of more than one acre, with water wells and black, very fertile soil. Don José Vicente got a counselor to open the door of the “friars’ garden”. It was the first time that this space was opened to visitors.
The parish priest invited the pilgrim tourists to visit the parish of Saint Andrew, in one of whose chapels a small altarpiece is installed with Our Lady of the Hill, a dressed carving from the 18th century, which belonged to the convent of Saint Augustine, whose protection and veneration was assigned to the Recollects in Campillo de Altobuey. The primitive image of the Virgin of the Hill was a medieval wooden board, but this is the one that is known and is seen replicated with a certain frequency in the town in various materials. In any case, in Campillo, the Virgin Mary continues to be an object of worship with this dedication. The visitors sang “Salve, Regina”.
Don José Vicente, greeted the travelers, welcomed them warmly, and acted as a guide. He even invited the group to his own house to have refreshments. On his desk, he had Volume IV of the Chronicles of the Order of Augustinian Recollects and Volume I of the History of the Order, by Ángel Martínez Cuesta. He confessed that, upon learning that a group of Augustinian Recollects laypersons was coming with a friar of the Order, he had prepared to say a good word to the visitors.
The pilgrimage day had to end to return to Madrid. Each one of the ten travelers greeted with affection and gratitude to Don José Vicente, a town priest, who lives in the town and for the people.
The satisfaction of the ten tourist pilgrims for the day they experienced was total. Someone commented: “We are more Recollect now.”
