Mother Ignacia Avenue, a two-lane commercial road between EDSA and Scout Chuatoco Street, is made famous because it is the address of ABS-CBN as well as the site of its 720-foot Millennium Transmitter. But has anyone ever asked who the person the road was named after?
During her lifetime, nobody called Ignacia del Espíritu Santo as "Mother". She was referred to as "Madre" because she lived between the 17th and 18th centuries, back when Spanish was still our country's lingua franca. Madre Ignacia was born in 1663, the daughter of an "india tagala" named María Jerónima, and a Chinese immigrant from Amoy named Jusepe Iuco, thus making her a "china cristiana". They all lived in the Chinese "arrabal" (suburb) of Binondo.
Upon reaching the age of 21, her parents had wanted to marry her off, but she didn't want to. By then, she was already inclined toward living a life of saintly solitude. So she sought the counsel Fr. Pavel Klein, a Bohemian Jesuit priest, who advised her to read Saint Ignacio de Loyola's "Exercitia Spiritualia" (Spiritual Exercises). Hence she received inspiration to "remain in the service of the Divine Majesty" and to "live by the sweat of her brow". She left her parents, bringing with her only a needle and a pair of scissors, and moved to a house at the back of Colegio de San José in Intramuros, at the corner of Calle Escuela (now Victoria) and Calle Santa Lucía.
Eventually, other women with the same calling joined her. This led to the establishment of the "Beaterio de San Ignacio" (Beguinage of San Ignacio) in 1699. It conducted eight-day spiritual retreats where women worked, ate, and prayed together.
Madre Ignacia died on 10 September 1748. Her funeral was attended by the Church and State's highest officials.
On 6 July 2007, Pope Benedict XVI issued a papal decree (Decretum Super Virtutibus) regarding the status of Madre Ignacia:
"Servant of God, Ignacia del Espíritu Santo, Foundress of the Congregation of the Religious of the Virgin Mary, is found to possess to a heroic degree the theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity toward God and neighbor as well as the cardinal virtues of Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude."
The following year, 1 February, 2008, Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales presided over the promulgation which officially accorded Ignacia the title "venerable" at the Church of Nuestra Señora del Santísimo Rosario (aka Minor Basilica and National Shrine of San Lorenzo Ruiz) in Binondo, her hometown.
Today is her 275th death anniversary. May we never forget her.
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