The mission of the Augustinian Recollects has the face of service and holiness. In the closing Eucharist of the Augustinian Recollect Missionary Synod, celebrated on October 2 in Rio de Janeiro, Fray Miguel Ángel Hernández presented the missionaries as angels who accompany, protect, and care. The prior general recalled that almost all the faces of holiness in the Augustinian Recollect Family “bear the color of mission” and invited the entire Order to carry the fire kindled during these days.
The feast of the Holy Guardian Angels offered the prior general an image to express the missionary vocation: to be sent ones who make present the care of God. “How many times you have been angels in people’s lives,” he said to the synodal participants, evoking a presence that is close, daily, and often silent.
Like Raphael alongside Tobias, missionaries walk beside people, share their difficulties, and help them move forward. Fray Miguel Ángel recalled some stories heard during the Synod: an elderly woman who only needed companionship, children whom they try to protect from the street and from drugs, a community vehicle converted into an ambulance, and lay people who cook for the sick and the elderly.
“That is being an angel: someone who arrives sent by another, who cares without taking ownership, and who does not announce himself,” he affirmed.
Mission of the Augustinian Recollects: to care and to contemplate
The prior general situated the source of that service in the relationship with God. “The greatness of the angel lies not in what he does, but in what he beholds,” he explained. The guardian angel maintains a double gaze: he attends to the little one entrusted to him and contemplates the face of the Father.
In that image he recognized the union between interiority and mission that characterizes Augustinian Recollect spirituality. Prayer nourishes self-giving and the encounter with people leads back to God:
“Whoever only looks at the little one ends in activism and dries up; whoever only looks at heaven falls into a spiritualism that touches no one.”
This gaze also demands caring for those who dedicate their lives to others. Weariness, loneliness, and the risk of continuing to work without joy require a fraternal response. Recalling the angel who offered bread and water to the prophet Elijah, Fray Miguel Ángel pointed out that “one cares for the brother so that he may walk again.”
“The entire Order must become the guardian angel of its missionaries”, he asked. A task shared through listening, accompaniment, prayer, and concrete attention to each brother.
Augustinian Recollect holiness bears the color of mission
“That double gaze has a name: holiness,” the prior general affirmed. And he added with conviction: “Mission is the best place to be a saint.”
The history of the Augustinian Recollects shows how missionary self-giving has been fertile ground for the Gospel. Fray Miguel Ángel recalled Saint Magdalene of Nagasaki and Saint Ezequiel Moreno, the two saints of the Recollection, whose lives were bound to the missions. He also evoked the blessed martyrs of Japan and more than a hundred lay martyrs of the Augustinian Recollect Family.
That same missionary gaze runs through the life of Venerable Fray Mariano Gazpio, given to the mission in China; of Venerable Sister Cleusa, who gave her life in Lábrea for indigenous peoples; and of the Servant of God Monsignor Ignacio Martínez, whose self-giving was also united to that Brazilian land.
“Almost all the faces of holiness in our family bear the color of mission,” he underscored.
In these testimonies, holiness becomes visible in a life that contemplates God and learns to look with love upon his people. Mission thus appears as a place where the Augustinian Recollect charism matures, is shared, and bears fruit.
The prior general also recalled that the missions have strengthened the communion of the Order, broadened its horizons, and helped overcome self-referentiality. “Thanks to them we have learned to see life through the eyes of those most in need and to better understand the Beatitudes,” he expressed. He also highlighted that in the missions two of the three congregations of Augustinian Recollect sisters of active life were born, sharing this spirit and charism.
Carrying the missionary fire to the entire Order
In closing, Fray Miguel Ángel invited the synodal participants to return to their communities with a responsibility: to share what they had lived.
“What I expected from these days was not a text, it was a fire,” he recalled.
That fire must reach the houses of formation, the provincial councils, the brothers who could not participate, and the elderly and sick who continue to be missionaries through their prayer. “A bonfire is not measured by how high it is, but by the fires that were kindled from it,” he affirmed.
To keep it alive, he pointed to two essential supports: prayer and fraternity. From them, the closing of the Synod becomes a new sending forth, with a question that each community is called to make its own: “Lord, where do you need us?”
“Go. Proclaim Christ wherever you can. You are sent. You are angels. And you do not go alone”, he concluded.
