Chapter Sixth

Only section: (Year 1646)

One of our Beatas, named Isabel, passed to the better life this year in the village of Butuan of Filipinas. We know nothing else about her except that she was converted to the faith by the preaching of Ours when they entered that province. The Lord illumined her so that she should leave the darkness of their idolatries, and she was baptized and given the name of Isabel. She produced great fruit in a short time, for the hand of God is not restricted to time limit. Seeing her so useful in the mysteries of the Catholic religion, our religious sent her to become a coadjutor and the spiritual mother of many souls, whom she reduced to the faith and catechized thus gaining them for the Church.

She was sent to the villages where the devil was waging his fiercest war and deceiving by his tricks, so that she might oppose herself to him by her exemplary life and the gentleness of her instruction. She established her school in a house in the village to which the young girls resorted. With wonderful eloquence she made them understand that the path of their vain superstitions would lead them astray, and explained the rudiments and principles of the Christian doctrine. At her set hours she went to the church daily, and the people gathering, she instructed the stupid ones, confirmed the converted, and enlightened the ignorant—and that with so much grace and gentleness of words that she seized the hearts of her hearers. To this she joined a modesty and bearing sweetly grave, by which she made great gain among those barbarians.

Since so copious results were experienced through the agency of Isabel, both in the reformation of morals and in the many who were converted from their blind paganism, the fathers sent her to preach in the streets and open places where the people gathered to hear her—some through curiosity, and others carried away by her wonderful grace in speaking. By that means many souls were captured and entreated baptism, for she was a zealous worker and an apostolic coadjutor in that flock of the Lord. She also entered the houses of the obstinate ones who did not go to hear her in the streets. There, with mild discourses and full of charity, she softened their hearts and inclined them to receive the faith.

After some years of employment in that kind of apostolic life her husband died. Upon being freed from the conjugal yoke she desired to subject her neck to that of religion. Father Fray Jacinto de San Fulgencio, at that time vicar-provincial of that province, gave her our habit of mantelata or beata. She recognized, as she was very intelligent and experienced in the road to perfection, that her obligations to make herself useful were stricter, that she must live a better life and employ the talent which she had received from God for the benefit of her neighbor, and she did so. One cannot easily imagine the diligence with which she sought souls; the means that she contrived to draw them from the darkness of heathendom. What paths did she not take! What hardships did she not suffer! She went from one part to another discussing with the spirit and strength, not of a weak woman, but of a strong man. The Lord whose cause she was advancing aided her; for the solicitation of souls for God is a service much to His satisfaction.

She finally saw all that province of Butuan converted to the faith of Jesus Christ, for which she very joyfully gave thanks. She retired then to give herself to divine contemplation, for she thought that she ought to get ready to leave the world as she had devoted so much time to the welfare of her neighbor. She sought instruction from Sister Clara CalimÁn (whose life we have written above), and imitated her in her penitences, her fastings, and her mode of life, so that she became an example of virtues.

For long hours did Isabel pray devoutly; she visited the sick; she served them; she exhorted them to repentance for their sins and to bear their sorrows with patience. She devoted herself so entirely to those works of charity that it seemed best to our fathers (who governed that district) not to allow her respite from them, and that she could [not] live wholly for herself. They built a hospital for the poor and sent her to care for them. She sought the needy, whom she often carried on her shoulders, so great was her charity. She cared for their souls, causing the sacraments to be administered to them; and for their bodies, applying to them the needful medicines. She solicited presents and alms, and she had set hours for going out to beg for the sick poor. She did all that with a cheerful and calm countenance, which indicated the love of God which burned in her breast. Her hour came during those occupations and she fell grievously ill. She knew that God was summoning her and begged for the sacraments of the Catholic Church; and, having received them with joy, she surrendered her soul to her Lord—leaving, with sorrow for her loss, sure pledges that she has eternal rest.

Chapter Seventh

Only section: (Year 1647)

As the province of San NicolÀs de Tolentino had been founded in the Filipinas Islands by our religious, and since they had many missions in various districts to which to attend—not only converting infidels, but comforting and sustaining those converted—they thought that it would be necessary for them to send repeated missions of religious and to conduct them from EspaÑa to those districts. The usual route is by way of Mexico, a most famous city; and since our Recollects had no house there where the religious could await in comfort the opportunity to embark for the said islands, they determined to take a house or hospice in which they could live and where those who fell sick from the long and troublesome journey could be treated. The Order petitioned it from the king our sovereign, Felipe Fourth, who, exercising his wonted charity, issued his royal decree in this year of 1647 for the founding of the said hospice; and it was actually founded. It does not belong to this history to relate the conditions that were then accepted; we have only thought it best to give this notice of it here.

[The remainder of this book does not concern Philippine affairs].

[The following is translated and condensed from Diego de Santa Theresa’s Historia general de los religiosos descalzos, being vol. iii in the general history of the Recollect order.]2