ed
and one--at which time all said that he was a person unknown in
Manila--Archbishop Camacho uttered these words: "The election of the
discalced Augustinians has been and is, properly, an election by God
and by the Holy Spirit." While so great advance did the missionaries
on the opposite coast make in their own sanctification, not less
was the gain in the vineyard entrusted to their care. They made many
Aetas and heathen children of the Catholic church, and directed those
souls along the paths of eternal life. They had the special glory
of numbering, among those whom they directed, some privileged women
endowed with the gifts of heaven, and raised by the spirit of God to
a height of Christian perfection which confounds our lukewarmness in
His service. One of these was Sister Juana de Jesus, a native of the
village of Binangonan de Lampon, [142] an oblate nun of our order,
who elevated herself with the steps of a giant, even to the greatest
and most complete purification of her spirit, by her abstraction
from worldly affairs, by her heroic practice of all the virtues,
by her fervent daily communion, and by the most lofty contemplation
and the most clear vision that God vouchsafed her of the mysteries
of our holy religion.

In the lamentable period of the missions between the years one
thousand six hundred and ninety-two and one thousand seven hundred
and ten, when no religious came to us from Espana, our Recollect
family was obliged to abandon this territory which it had in trust,
for the lack of evangelical laborers. That action was taken in the
provincial chapter of one thousand seven hundred and four, and the
missions above mentioned, which we had served for more than forty
years, were returned to the Franciscans.

At present we have only the following village in the province of
Laguna: [Calauan, with 957 1/2 tributes, and 2,734 souls.]

Province of Pampanga

This province, lying north of Manila--including the district of Tarlac,
which was separated from the province in the year one thousand eight
hundred and seventy-three--is bounded on the north by Pangasinan,
on the south by the bay of Manila, on the east by Nueva Ecija and
Bulacan, and on the west by Zambales and Bataan. In this province,
which was begun by the Augustinian Observantine fathers (who still
have it in charge), permission to found missions in the mountains
of its territory which are on the Zambales side was granted to the
Recollect fathers,