Co-founder of the Augustinian Recollect Missionaries, this cloistered nun born in La Zubia (Granada) in 1905 arrived in China at the age of 26, responding to a call that changed her life and her vocation forever. We dedicate the first part of the story to this call.
“I, Sister María Angeles de San Rafael, twenty-five years old, volunteer to go to the mission in China, if this is God’s will”.
This was the written response of Angeles (1905-1980), a contemplative nun at the Corpus Christi monastery of the Augustinian Recollect Nuns in Granada, to the request of Francisco Javier Ochoa, an Augustinian Recollect, then apostolic prefect in the Kweiteh mission (today Shangqiu, Henan, China) who traveled through the cloistered convents of Spain looking for volunteers for the mission.
Two nuns from the Granada monastery (Angeles and Carmela Ruiz) and one from the Madrid monastery of La Encarnación (Esperanza Ayerbe), because of their missionary zeal, changed their cloistered life for missionary action and in 1931 they left for Shangqiu, in far-off China.
The three of them, together with Monsignor Francisco Javier Ochoa, the bishop who decided to ask for volunteers in the cloistered monasteries given the urgent needs he had in his mission for the care of abandoned girls and for the implementation of female religious life, founded what would become over the years the Congregation of the Augustinian Recollect Missionaries.
Sister Angeles wrote a diary in which she recounts many details of her life and vicissitudes, especially those that occurred in China. The title it received when it was published is An Augustinian Recollect Missionary in China. Diary of Mother Angeles. Throughout its pages, she also reveals some features of her way of being, her thought and spirituality.
The Augustinian Recollect historian Ángel Martínez Cuesta published a review of the book in the magazine Recollectio. He said then:
“[In this diary] the reader will be surprised by a living soul, demanding of itself, whom the continuous dialogue with God keeps in perpetual tension; a soul that subordinates everything to the will of God and judges everything by the light that emanates from it.
It is true that she will find naive judgments, typical of a person lacking academic training or a child of a socially, culturally and theologically undeveloped environment. But they are in the minority, and even those are illuminated by an exquisite human sensitivity, by an extraordinary spiritual finesse, by an innate spontaneity and grace and by a keen sense of observation.
The entire book is permeated with missionary yearnings. The love for souls drives Mother Angeles out of the cloister in 1931, makes her happy in the midst of innumerable difficulties during the 17 years spent in the mission field and bitterly so during the very long last year described in this book.
Leaving China is the greatest sacrifice of her life. She herself says so a couple of times. But it was not necessary. Since she left Kweiteh in February 1948, a halo of sadness surrounds her entire life. She would have liked to work and die at the front. Outside the front she feels like a poor exiled Chinese woman and finds no comfort either in returning to her homeland, despite the patriotic exaltation of the moment, which she shared completely; or in reuniting with her nuns in Granada; and not even in the embrace of her elderly mother.
Only in her great appreciation of obedience does she find solace and strength to face such a great sacrifice. This is how another feature of her spirituality appears, which, moreover, was very typical of the religious spirituality of the time.
Along with it, we can mention her filial love for the Church, her industriousness, her generous and grateful spirit and the ability to transfigure and spiritualize the most diverse experiences of life. (…) Any event triggers her fantasy and leads her placidly to the contemplation of God and his attributes or to the anticipated enjoyment of the delights of heaven”.
Angeles in the Corpus Christi Monastery
Peace and joy are the fruits that God gives to Angeles during her life in the contemplative monastery until the unexpected moment when God bursts into her life with a proposal that was unthinkable for her, from the hands of another mediator, Monsignor Ochoa. Angeles tells it like this:
“In the peace and joy that naturally spring from the union of hearts and wills, we were all living in our beloved cloister, when a missionary brother from China, our most fervent and determined reverend Father Javier Ochoa, came to surprise us with his visit, and with it to break the monotony of monastic life for a few days”.
In a very distant part of the Church, brave and determined sisters are needed, great and generous souls, with missionary desires. What will Angeles feel about such an invitation?
“Once we were assembled and seated in the parlour, the Mother Prioress said to us:
— ‘We have here our brother, the most reverend Father Apostolic Prefect of Kweiteh-fu, China, who has come to our convent on a special mission.’
He politely interrupting the presentation that the Mother was making of him, and with the finesse and kindness that are characteristic of him, he began by saying:
— ‘Yes, sisters, the mission that brings me to this holy house is truly great, for it is nothing less than to seek and find here truly great and generous souls, with missionary aspirations, courageous and determined sisters who, with their eyes fixed only on God and on the salvation of the unfaithful world, wish to come with me to China to share with their brothers the work and the fruits, the pains and the consolations, which are always attached to missionary life. To this end I wrote two letters to the Reverend Mother Prioress during the month of November and for this I also visited the Monastery of La Encarnación in Madrid, where I was assured that I could count on a nun from that community.
— ‘Well, here you will find as many as you want’, several sisters answered in chorus.”.
The missionary atmosphere of the monastery could not have been more propitious. The Mother Prioress, a very holy and dynamic soul, enthused her sisters after having offered herself for the mission. From that moment on, she herself would be in charge of encouraging them and giving courage to those who wanted to offer themselves.
“Encouraged by such a spontaneous and generous offer, Monsignor Ochoa began to prepare his things to give us a series of missionary projections right there. It is not necessary to describe the very pleasant impression that this brief address of the Father Prefect caused in all of them, and the small missionary seed that he had just sown seemed to germinate and grow in the hearts of all of them”.
The missionary willingness that is perceived in the Granada monastery is due in part to the great missionary impulse that Pope Pius XI gave to the Church in those years. However, Angeles begins by feeling unworthy of the joy of being a missionary “on the front.”
She thinks that, due to her great misery, God would never call her to such a great task. That is why she decides to offer her life in the cloister for the missionaries. Here begins the process of inner struggle that she will live during these endless days.
“I was very calm, because being a missionary, as it is ordinarily understood, seemed to me little less than impossible, a joy too great for me if one took into account my great misery… I decided, yes, to offer from that day all my sufferings, physical and moral, for the loneliest missionaries, for those who felt the most sadness in those remote solitudes of the mission of China”.
However, her feelings tell her that there is “something” that will change her life.
“However, I must confess that I too was beginning to feel something within me that attracted and excited me, and I was in this state when a spontaneous and general acclamation brought me back to reality. This was because Monsignor Ochoa announced the beginning of the charming missionary projections”.
The Mission is gradually entering into her eyes and her heart. However, because she does not feel that she has the necessary qualities to go to China, she is “content” internally with being a missionary from the cloister:
“Each and every one of our Recollect missionaries paraded across the screen, and then we saw all kinds of Chinese types: men, women and children of all ages and dressed appropriately for the different seasons of the year.
They truly seemed to me to be beings from another world, but from the first moment I looked at them with deep affection and great, immense compassion: I offered for them the fruits of my prayer and my sacrifices, since I was not convinced that I could one day go to work among them.
Father Prefect, they must have possessed those who were to go to China; on the other hand, I lived very happily in my monastery and in the company of my good sisters. I would be a missionary, because I ardently desired it, but I would be in my convent, as Saint Therese was in hers”.
It seems that here the grace of God bursts forth with an unknown force. What until then had been natural, since as a child she had “sucked” the life of God, now surprises her in such a way that it upsets her whole life. What had always been peace and tranquility, free of doubts and novelties, now presents itself as a dominating thought that she would like to shake off in order to make it disappear:
“On that day a deaf and terrible struggle began for me. In spite of everything I did to hide what was happening inside me, my good sisters realized that I was losing my appetite, my color, my joy.
I no longer interfered in the recesses, and in a single thought I absorbed my life, which until then had been peaceful, very happy, free of doubts and of all desire other than that of living to the full my more or less long life as an Augustinian Recollect, within the blessed walls of my voluntary prison.
Near Christmas (in the year 1930), I wanted to shake off that dominating thought which, if it did not push me to make a decision, did not let me live in peace either”.
Doubt invaded Angeles’ heart, until then so calm and secure in the middle of that cloistered monastery that she called her “voluntary prison.” What does God want from her? How can she discover his will? How could she be sure that this or that was God’s will?
“Flying to China, being a missionary, at the ‘front’, drove me crazy, but how could I be sure that God wanted me there? If I let myself be carried away by that desire, wouldn’t I have to regret it when the difficulties, the sufferings, the disappointments of missionary life weighed on my soul and on my body, leaving behind the bitter: you have asked for it?
Faced with this thought I tried to abandon the desire to fly to the countryside and I held on tightly to my already secure life of seclusion. Here I was happy, I was sure that God had called me; but there, in an unknown region, having to learn one of the most difficult languages…
— ‘No, no’, I told myself, ‘here and until my death. I will be a hidden missionary, I will work’…
And it seemed that I remained calm; but it was with that tranquility that the sick person seized by fever enjoys when he finds a comfortable position, only to leave it as unbearable after a few minutes… The same thing happened to my poor soul, tired by the efforts of the struggle”.
Her life, from morning to night, was filled with uncertainty, doubts, questions without answers. Where are the mediations that God had always put in her path? So much uncertainty affects her whole being and peace seems to have no place in her life.
“My soul is filled with uncertainty, I asked my confessor, my former Mother Teacher, the older Mothers… ‘Do, my daughter, what God inspires you to do.’ This was the answer I received in my eternal days of uncertainty…
I felt sick, and there were even moments when I regretted having seen the film, which reflected that divine face, those pleading eyes that in my moments of confusion I could not remove from my memory, nor from the retina of my eyes…
At the end of December, a letter was received from Monsignor Ochoa asking how many were offering and requesting all the information in order to be able to propose the names to the Sacred Congregation”.
Twenty days of agonizing search for God’s will have passed. The time has come to make a decision: to offer or not to go to the Mission in China. Her Mother of Consolation is there accompanying her.
“The day of January 28, 1931 dawned. My first glance on reaching the choir was for my sweet Mother of Consolation, towards whom I felt a deeper love, as happens to a daughter who has the premonition that she is going to lose sight of the image of her Mother…
I knelt in my place, I wanted to hear the point of the meditation, but my efforts were of no use… Today I will take, I told myself, I will take the last step that will take me to China or leave me in my convent in peace.”.
On this day, as if it were the first time, in the Eucharist she offers herself to the Lord so that He may do with her what He wills:
“The time has come to hear the Holy Mass. In the offertory I offered myself to the Lord so that He may do with me what He wills. He had to manifest His will by accepting or rejecting the offer that day with all the truth of my soul I would write on the paper”.
Angeles feels like she is in the middle of a war between two loves, and two good loves! Her life is like a small boat tossed by the waves of the sea, her body actively participating in the fight.
“At four in the afternoon it was impossible for me to live with that struggle. My love for the convent, for my good Sisters, and on the other hand, my love for the Mission, declared war without quarter and I saw myself as a tiny little boat tossed by the opposing waves of the rough sea…
How much I suffered, my God!
I went to the choir to visit the Lord, to tell Him that I was going to write, and I came out so upset that, according to one Sister, I looked like a walking corpse…
I arrived at the cell, I didn’t know whether to sit down or get on my knees, I did the latter. A great tremor took hold of my body and an even more terrible struggle began in my poor soul. No, I will not leave my convent, and I dropped my pen… What a time!”.
Finally, the mediation appears, so characteristic of her relationship with God, her “good angel” Angeles will say several times. This time it was the words of a priest that she found written in a book that brought the confidence she needed. Then the sea calmed down and with her trusting surrender came peace.
“Fortunately, on the bedside table I had Father Valencina’s precious book entitled Letters to Sister Margarita. I opened it and my eyes met these words: ‘We do not know the purposes that God had in bringing us to Religion’ (or something similar).
A ray of light crossed my mind. If you do not offer yourself, you will always regret not having done so; and if you offer yourself and they do not call you, you will have the merit of having offered yourself and you will always be at peace.
It was (I have never doubted it) my good Angel who brought me this thought… I did not hesitate for a moment. Kneeling as I was, and after looking at the Sweet Mother in heaven, I wrote:
— ‘I, Sister Maria Angeles de San Rafael, twenty-five years old, volunteer to go to the Mission in China, if this is the Will of God’.
And I flew out of the cell to leave the paper with my offer in the Mother’s cell. Then I went to the choir.
— ‘Lord’, I said, ‘it is done: now You have the word. I give myself to Your heart’”.
Now it is the Lord’s turn. She has given her answer. She is totally given to her heart. After so much struggle unleashed in her soul she finds joy, relief, tranquility, peace, happiness. She is back to being the same as before…
“I still seem to feel the relief, the joy that flooded my poor soul, so tired of fighting. That night I did get even during recess… My Sisters, especially my Holy Mother Teacher, rejoiced to see me ‘as before’. How peaceful was my sleep and how white everything looked the next day… I felt happy again and I spread joy around me”.
And the answer to her offer came immediately. The next day she received the Lord’s answer to her offering, from the mouth of the Mother Prioress:
“Everything was silent until January 29, 1931. After the prayer and the Hours before Holy Mass, I heard the almost imperceptible voice of our holy Mother Angeles calling me.
As I knelt down to listen, she said to me:
— ‘Sister Maria Angeles, Your Charity has been one of those chosen to go to China.’
— ‘Blessed be God,’ I said, respectfully embracing her, carried away by the impression that invaded my entire being…
I didn’t even know where I was. Like an automaton, I went to my place”.
Once again, the mediations appeared to dispel her fears. This time it is her missionary companion, her dear friend Sister Carmela, her “soul sister” as Angeles calls her, who will accompany her to China.
“I remember that only one thought worried me: who will be my companion, since I could no longer turn back. Closing my eyes and putting aside childish fears, I said from the depths of my soul:
— ‘Whoever you want, Lord.’
A few seconds later I heard Mother calling Sister Carmela… What joy! Could she be my companion? I did not want to believe it until my dear little sister knelt down next to me and, pressing her trembling hand with mine, not at all calm, she said to me:
— Sister Maria Angeles, I am going to China.
— And so am I, I answered, moving closer to her, signifying, so to speak, the intimate closeness of our souls.
— Today we will offer Mass and Communion for the Pope.
And, without saying anything to each other, we also offered it for each other”.
Carmela, from the moment she met her when she arrived at the monastery, became a true treasure for Angeles. This true friendship has been one of the greatest gifts from God to both of them.
“Yes, that day I prayed in a special way for my little sister of the soul, Sister Carmela, for this sister and companion of whom I can say with all truth that having had her friendship and trust since I saw her enter the cloister, I found in her ‘a great treasure.’
Together we prayed and sang every night before the charming and most devout image of our Sweet Mother in the Mystery of her glorious Assumption. Together and at her blessed feet we formulated our best resolutions to be better every day, to overcome ourselves, to fight until we obtain the palm…
This friendship was blessed by obedience. The Mother Prioress gave us time every Sunday and feast day to discuss matters of our soul, and by my faith my Sister Carmela, far from being the slightest obstacle to my desire for perfection, has been my support and my joy on the sometimes rough road of life. Blessed friendship that brings so much peace to my soul”.
Was she really completely free to go to China? Had the decision she had made in response to the divine invitation been based on her freedom? Her father confronted her with an important question for her future. Angeles knows that God has never imposed anything on her, He has always invited her, seduced her, questioned her, but never trampled on her human freedom.
“My daddy called me aside to ask me if my leaving the convent and going to China was completely free. I answered that I had voluntarily offered myself, believing that by doing so I would fulfill the will of God. Then he said to me: ‘I will live peacefully.’ He gave me money for whatever I wanted and a hug soaked in tears. What a time, my God!”.