Ezekiel, Augustinian Recollect friar

Religious consecration is the core of Ezekiel Moreno‘s personality, and in this respect he follows the path of other saints in his religious family, such as Saint Augustine himself or Saint Thomas of Villanueva: he did not want to be anything other than a religious man, although later life led him to take on other tasks and ways of life.

Born on April 9, 1848 in Alfaro (La Rioja, Spain), as a child he dreamed of being an Augustinian Recollect like so many of his countrymen who, since 1855, had been knocking at the doors of the Recollect novitiate in Monteagudo, in Navarre, just 31 kilometers from his home.

Since childhood, Ezekiel dreamed of distant worlds, not to help his family with riches or to have a life of adventure, but because he wanted to be a missionary. At the age of 17, after finishing his novitiate, he made his profession; and, from that moment, the Augustinian Recollect community would be his only horizon and life project for the remaining 43 years of his life.

Always linked to this religious community, he would not separate himself from a Family whose history, dreams and projects he followed with passion, proud of its triumphs, worried about its difficulties, saddened when he could not enjoy its presence and, at the end of his days, eager to take refuge in one of its convents to return to the arms of the Creator.

As a consecrated man he went from continent to continent and continually varied his responsibility according to what was asked of him: for his Order he was a missionary, parish priest, administrator of a farm, local prior, provincial vicar in Mindoro (Philippines), provincial by delegation of the general commissioner of the Order for the restoration of the Recollection in Colombia; and for the Church, he was apostolic vicar and, finally, bishop. But always and in everything, behaving as an Augustinian Recollect religious.

During his formative years he assimilated, became fond of and identified with the principles, criteria, values and attitudes of the Augustinian Recollect charism; conditioned, of course, by times of administrative disorder, theological poverty, charismatic confusion, oppressive interference from the State, lack of freedom of organization without chapters or general priors, without guides or mentors; even the Order’s connection with Rome left something to be desired.

These were also times of individualistic and priestly spirituality. Only the influence of the Constitutions, the pedagogical value of the convents and the action of religious with greater foresight and preaching ensured the presence of Augustinian and Recollect elements in the daily life of those religious of the 19th century.

It was also a simple spirituality, less problematic, more attentive to reality than to theory, to facts than to ideas or words. They saw the voice of the law and of superiors as sacred; prolonged prayer and recollection; the discipline of the senses, separation from the world and control of passions with corporal penance; humility and sobriety; devotions to the Sacred Heart or to the Virgin Mary, Eucharistic adoration triumphed. A child of his time, Ezekiel shared that spirituality and adjusted his life to it.

And Ezekiel knew how to reflect in his real life the Augustinian ideal with the Recollect nuance: primacy of charity and love for people, continuous reference to God, cultivation of interiority, preference for affective prayer, continuous reference to the Church, denunciation of selfishness, high regard for common things and family resemblance, vision of the law as pedagogy and not as an imposition that restricts…

In short, in the life of Ezekiel Moreno the three most characteristic elements of spirituality pointed out by the Constitutions of the Augustinian Recollects shone clearly: interiority, community and apostolate.

NEXT PAGE: 3. Ezekiel, for the People of God

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