For a devotion to NSDA going back 3 centuries and still going strong and ir appears getting stronger yet – what but genuine amazement and joy can match such longevity and ardour, in our times of passing even evanescent fad and crazes and shallow baseline factions. We should see in this continuing devotion to NSDA a robust prospect in thr continuing life of the spirit -hereabout at least.
In 1705, a Jesuit priest Juan Echazabal, a Basque first proposed a devotion to NSDA in his mission – post of San Mateo, Luzon, Philippines. Eleven years later, the church of NSDA was built under thr auspices of another Jesuit priest, Fr. Juan Pedro Gonfalonier. The rest – as we unthinkingly say – is HISTORY.
Some notable bits of which I invite you to share with me.
Pio Valenzuela, some time after his failed mission to enlist Rizal (on Bonifacio’s orders) into the Katipunan, had to hide in the convent of the NSDA with Spanish soldiery hot in pursuit in August of 1896. Three months later, it was the other way round: Spanish soldiers on the run had to take refuge and asylum in the NSDA church with the Katipuneros chasing them. If it were not for the re-inforcement from the Spanish garrison the Spaniards would have had a beating to endure – that was in November of the same year.
From December 1899 to 23 January 1903, the American troops another set of colonizers garrisoned in the Church – that’s quite 3 years.
Then a peaceful hiatus till the 2nd world war which destroyed the church.
On 17 July, 2004, the NSDA was absorbed in the Diocese of Antipolo (another church with a Marian shrine). And then on 31 May 2017 the formal coronation of Our Lady of Aranzazu took place.
