In this rich province of the island of Luzón, flourishing through its products and its active trade with the capital, of extensive territory and densely populated, the discalced Augustinians were not assigned with the intention of a permanent stay, in the olden times, to preach the gospel to those natives.
However, present legislation regarding the service of parish churches in this archipelago has, at the same time while it has varied in a certain manner our traditional method of support, introduced us into some of the parishes of the province of Batangas; and at the same time when we have been obliged to cede villages in Visayas—which were our offspring, and had been converted by our predecessors, and whose history was identical with the ancient glories of our corporation—in exchange we have received parishes organized by the sweat and apostolic fatigues of ministers of the religion of Jesus Christ, who were not members of our religious family.
[The villages administered by the Recollects are as follows: Rosario, with 4,259½ tributes, and 17,040 souls; Santo Tomás, with 2,832 tributes, and 9,748 souls; Lobo, with 805½ tributes, and 3,200 souls; and Balayan, with 5,434 tributes, and 24,154 souls.]
Province of Laguna
The territory of this province, whose coasts enclose the great lake of Bay, had been administered by the Franciscan fathers, in most of its extent, from the times of its reduction. But in the year one thousand six hundred and sixty-two, they invited us to share in the ministries on the opposite coast, in the neighborhood of the port of Lampon; and although those missions were not very desirable, on account of the wretchedness of the country and the small number of tributes, they were received as very meritorious for heaven, although but little profitable when looked at from a worldly standpoint.
The Recollect fathers Fray Benito de San José, Fray Francisco de San José, and Fray Clemente de San Nicolás having been assigned, with three other companions, to the village of Binangonan, established the first house and church, with the title of San Guillermo; and two religious remained there. Afterward they went to the village of Baler and established a convent, under the patronage of St. Nicholas of Tolentino. The third was the village of Casiguran, with the advocacy of our father St. Augustine. The fourth was established in Palanan, with the title of Santa María Magdalena. The discalced Augustinians resided for forty years in those convents founded on the coasts of the Pacific, exclusively consecrated to the service of God, and the sanctification of their neighbors, and they attained both objects with great spiritual advantages.
We had religious there of pure virtue, who were imitating the virtues of the dwellers in the desert. From those missions went forth our father Fray Bartolomé de la Santísima Trinidad, son of the convent of Madrid. He lived much retired from intercourse with men; and when he was elected provincial, in the year one thousand seven hundred and one—at which time all said that he was a person unknown in Manila—Archbishop Camacho uttered these words: “The election of the discalced Augustinians has been and is, properly, an election by God and by the Holy Spirit.” While so great advance did the missionaries on the opposite coast make in their own sanctification, not less was the gain in the vineyard entrusted to their care. They made many Aetas and heathen children of the Catholic church, and directed those souls along the paths of eternal life. They had the special glory of numbering, among those whom they directed, some privileged women endowed with the gifts of heaven, and raised by the spirit of God to a height of Christian perfection which confounds our lukewarmness in His service. One of these was Sister Juana de Jesus, a native of the village of Binangonan de Lampon,[1] an oblate nun of our order, who elevated herself with the steps of a giant, even to the greatest and most complete purification of her spirit, by her abstraction from worldly affairs, by her heroic practice of all the virtues, by her fervent daily communion, and by the most lofty contemplation and the most clear vision that God vouchsafed her of the mysteries of our holy religion.
In the lamentable period of the missions between the years one thousand six hundred and ninety-two and one thousand seven hundred and ten, when no religious came to us from España, our Recollect family was obliged to abandon this territory which it had in trust, for the lack of evangelical laborers. That action was taken in the provincial chapter of one thousand seven hundred and four, and the missions above mentioned, which we had served for more than forty years, were returned to the Franciscans.
At present we have only the following village in the province of Laguna: [Calauan, with 957½ tributes, and 2,734 souls.]