The activities organized by the Order’s general council to celebrate the event are the following:

– First Encounter of Augustinian Recollect Bishops (25-30 November 2008)

– Encounter of the Augustinian Recollect Family to celebrate the Anniversary of the Recollection (28 November 2008).

– Meeting of the General Council with the Priors Provincial (1-6 December 2008).

Martínez Cuesta: “The chapter put an end to a period of experimentation”

The lecture of the director of the review Recollectio, Fr. Ángel Martínez Cuesta, delivered at San Millán (La Rioja) last 19 July, which we are offering as a downloadable file, emphasizes the importance of that chapter.

Martínez Cuesta explains that the chapter served to strengthen the Order’s collective identity. The chapter fathers felt themselves steeped in the Recollect tradition and they committed themselves to restoring its old provinces; they wanted to revitalize its missionary tradition and strengthen its link with Saint Augustine by fomenting studies, especially Augustinian studies, and they emerged from the gathering with the determination to work for the full autonomy of the congregation”.

“The chapter put an end to a period of experimentation, a phase of boundless activity, and started another wherein reflection would prevail and a series of measures would be taken that in a few years would lead the Order to the reconstruction of its old regime of government (1908), to its administrative autonomy (1912), to the updating of its laws (1912), to the resumption of the provincial chapters (1911-13) and, most of all, to the more realistic reformulation of its charism and function within the Church and society through recovery of the fundamental traits of its spiritual portrait that in the 19th century had been forgotten.



The religious capitulars gathered at the sacristy of the San Millán monastery on 16 July 1908. An eleven-day historic reunion

The chapter that the Augustinian Recollects held in San Millán de la Cogolla one hundred years ago was of paramount importance for integrating the past and reorganizing the regimen of life of those religious who succeeded in overcoming the effects of the disentailment and confiscation of convents by the governments of Spain (1835) and Colombia (1861) and the situation resulting from the Philippine Revolution (1898).

The religious capitulars gathered at the sacristy of the San Millán monastery on 16 July 1908. The chapter was presided over by Monsignor Antonio Vico, then nuncio of the Holy Father in Madrid. For eleven days they held lively discussions about the Order’s problems, unanimously elected Fr. Enrique Pérez as vicar general, and drew up a list of 28 determinations.

After 79 years, the Order had once more gathered in chapter thus ending an anomalous period in its history. Through the chapter, the Order once again was governed by a vicar general freely elected by its members and endowed solely by the constitutional faculties and accompanied by a team of four councilors. And it served notice of its change of spirituality by declaring solemnly that its present finality was “the apostolic life in all its expressions”.