Old Missions of San Antonio

-
On the recent retreat tour of the U.S. South, I went to visit the old missions of San Antonio. I had heard of their famous cousins on the West Coast, the missions of California, but was not aware of the southern Texas line. They were quite stunning in their age and beauty. Moreover they represented the missionary spirit of the men who built them. They were mainly founded by Franciscans in the early 1700s, and are remarkably preserved today.



Resembling in spirit and design the Jesuit reductions in Paraguay and even Ste. Marie-among-the-Hurons in Canada, these early sites were centers of missionary activity, agriculture and protection. They had a church, a residence for the friars, workshops, and numerous homes for the native people, all encircled by a fortified stone wall. Since the Apaches steadily raided the area, the local natives found it a welcome sanctuary.

Of some of the larger buildings connected to the churches, only stone arches remains, but they give an idea of how large these edifaces were, long before there was a city called San Antonio (The Alamo, the "national shrine" of Texas, located in the downtown of the city, is actually one of these mission churches).




The artistry that went into creating the houses of worship rivals anything from Europe at the time. The mouldings on the facades of the churches are particularly stunning.

There are four major missions, not including The Alamo, all within several miles of each other, in a line that extends south of San Antonio. Amazingly, they are still owned by the Catholic Church -- the Archdiocese of San Antonio -- and they are functioning parishes, where people come to Mass each Sunday. The preservation of the buildings and grounds, however, falls under the National Park Service, which has information buildings at each site.




The four mission churches are the following. Please note these are high-res pictures, courtesy of the NPS, which can be clicked on to get large version and downloaded if desired:


Mission Espada
Mission Concepcion
Mission San Juan
Mission San Jose

As beautiful as they are in their bare-stoned hue, the churches were originally painted in bright colours and designs. An artist made a reproduction of what they must of looked like in their day:


These ancient churches are worth visiting. They are both a national treasure, patrimony of the Church, and a tribute to the men and women who laboured there many centuries ago.

Comments

  1. UnknownAugust 5, 2012 at 12:29 AM

    Thanks for posting about the beautiful missions of San Antonio, my hometown. I always enjoyed visiting the missions when I lived there.

    ReplyDelete
  2. John D. O'Brien, SJAugust 7, 2012 at 12:36 AM

    You're welcome. It's a lovely hometown!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ten Secular Songs with Religious Themes

-
Image
While preparing songs for our retreats and coffee house ministries this summer, I have come across many by secular artists -- that is, musicians who don't self-categorize as belonging to genres of religious music -- which were nonetheless powerfully spiritual. This is my top ten list from past and present.
Read more

Focal Things

-
Image
Albert Borgmann The German-American philosopher Albert Borgmann is professor at the University of Montana and author of several books on the effects of electronic media on the human person. He rejects both technological determinism -- the view that technology is a irresistible force that forces our hand as we shape our culture, and technological instrumentalism, which sees technology as a mere collective of neutral processes and structures that can be used either well or badly. Like Marshall McLuhan, Borgmann is aware that the medium “is” the message, highly transformative in and of itself, and requires critical analysis and understanding. For example, he writes: Using or not using the interstate highway system is not a matter of choice anymore for most of us, and neither are the moral consequences of long commutes and the neglect of family, neighborhood, and inner city. When we finally come home, late and exhausted, greeted by a well-stocked refrigerator, a preternaturally effi
Read more

Ten Popular Songs that Point to the Transcendent

-
Image
One of the most-viewed posts here was called "Ten Secular Songs with Religious Themes" . Now, I'm not that person who scours the pop cultural landscape with a magnifying glass looking for oblique references to a latent Christianity. But I do believe that Christ is very much alive, and can be found in the remotest corners of humanity. Sometimes the profoundest truths are not in theology books but in the lyrics of the poets and the insights of artists. Four years later, I'd say it's time for a sequel. The following songs have in common a certain degree of popular acclaim, although not be familiar to all readers. They are, I submit, beautiful songs that point beyond the mundane, offering glimpses of the transcendent -- that is to say, of God who is beyond this material world, while nonetheless present in this life as well. They remind us that we will one day see God "face to face", and generally reflect the key dispositions of faith, hope and love t
Read more