The coming feast of Our Lady of Carmel, on the 16th of July, will mark the start of the five-year preparation for one of the important anniversaries of historical events in the annals of the Augustinian Recollects in the Philippines: the 400 years of the arrival of the Virgin of Carmel to those lands.
Among the many programmed activities, music will occupy a central place. There is plan of recovering this cultural heritage, to which illustrious Augustinian Recollect composers had given important contributions. For this purpose many musical concerts have already been planned. Some publications have also been programmed, as well as expositions and conferences.
All through this year the organizers intend to establish contact with the Monastery of San José of the City of Mexico, where the image started its voyage. And, in the following years, the journey of the Virgin will be given continuity by bringing the image to all the Recollect communities in the Philippine Archipelago. As culmination of this five-year preparation, attempt will be made to recover the precious head of ivory of the Virgin which was stolen in 1975.
Recollect Fathers / Descalced Nuns
Long before the Carmelite Friars of one or the other family arrived in Philippines, in the year 1618 what was already the third expedition of the Augustinian Recollects arrived in Manila. It left Spain on 18th of July of the previous year. During their sojourn in Mexico, where they had to stay for several months while waiting for the galleon that would take them to the Pacific, they established friendship with the Descalced Carmelite Nuns of the Monastery of St. Joseph. These, because of their contemplative charism felt as their own the apostolic experience of the Recollects, wanted to participate in their mission with the image of Virgin of Carmel.
And that is the image that was installed in San Sebastian Church, outside of the walls (extramuros) of Manila, when this (church) was founded three years later, in 1621. There it had always been the object of solemn cult which has spread out to the entire Archipelago. The primitive church of San Sebastian disappeared, in the same way that many that succeeded it disappeared due to earthquakes or fires. But the actual neo-gothic church of steel, the only one in all of Asia, continues being a national sanctuary of the Virgin of Carmel.