In the heart of the province of Salamanca, the convent of the Augustinian Recollect nuns of Vitigudino is a small mosaic of the universal Church. On the Day of Consecrated Life, their simple and silent testimony reminds us that love for God and neighbor remains the center of every consecrated vocation.
“Above all, dear brothers, let us love God; then, also our neighbor, because these are the main commandments that have been given to us”
(Rule of Saint Augustine)
A convent with more than four centuries of history
Founded in 1615, the monastery of the Augustinian Recollect nuns of Vitigudino is one of those places where time seems to pass differently. Its walls have welcomed generations of consecrated women who, from the cloister, have sustained the life of the Church, and our religious family, with prayer, silence, and fraternity.
Today, that history is renewed with very diverse faces: sisters from Europe, America, Africa, and Asia live together in the community, a human and cultural richness that has become an eloquent sign of communion.
Four continents, one community
“We are few, but very united,” the sisters explain. Currently, religious originating from Spain, Italy, Venezuela, Peru, Tanzania, and China live in Vitigudino, a diversity that does not dilute the identity, but strengthens it from the Recollect charism.
Each one contributes their language, their history, and their sensitivity, but all share the same life project: to seek God together and love each other as sisters. As Saint Augustine dreamed, they live “with one heart and one soul oriented towards God.”
Persevering fidelity and vocational joy
Among the religious, there are very diverse trajectories. Some have decades of consecrated life, like the Spanish sisters who have given their whole lives in the monastery; others arrived twenty, fifteen, or ten years ago from different countries; and there are also young sisters who are taking their first steps in the community.
All agree on one word: happiness. A discreet happiness, without stridency, woven in the everyday, in common prayer, in shared work, and in the fraternity that overcomes any cultural border.
Loving God and neighbor, today
In a world marked by haste, individualism, and fragmentation, the contemplative life of Vitigudino offers a counter-cultural response. Its message is not expressed in great discourses, but in a life given, faithful, and hidden.
On this Day of Consecrated Life, the Augustinian Recollect nuns of Vitigudino remind the Church and the world that the consecrated vocation remains a living gift that is born of the desire to love more. That foundational impulse that, at the end of the 16th century, led the Augustinian Recollection to favor a more austere way of life—so as not to put obstacles to the Holy Spirit—continues to fertilize history. The intuition of the amantiores, of those who yearn to love with greater radicality, does not belong only to the origins: it remains the soul and horizon of the Recollect life today.
In the simplicity of the cloister and in the diversity of their faces, these women from different towns and cultures make their existence a praise. They know that, just as the goal of their life is to love God, their main care is everything that ignites them in that love: worship and praise, the sacraments, meditation, and shared prayer. From Vitigudino, their hidden life proclaims without words that loving God and neighbor is not an idea of the past, but a concrete, humble, and luminous way of inhabiting the present.
