375 years of Contemplative Life

Icono de Sor María de Jesús

They are fulfilled 375 years of the foundation of the Convent of The Conception by Sister Maria de Jesus of Ágreda.

It would be unthinkable to write Ágreda’s history without the presence of this Monastery. It is a physical reality that forms a part of the Historical artistic Patrimony of the Village, but especially it is a spiritual reality that has served, and serves today as engine to Ágreda’s Christian Community.

We might recreate in these lines the memories of so many people who have approached throughout the centuries up to the Convent of The Conception to pray or to ask for prayers, to have a meeting with God or to discover his existence; to have a gesture of gratefulness for all the nuns, who dedicated between their walls to the contemplative life, have moved our faith and our hope; to give honoring to the real guardians of the legacy of the Mother Ágreda.

Three hundred seventy five years is a wide period of time for these and other many things, but what really is clear is that today, just in 21st century, in the today’s Church, the nuns of The Conception’s monastery are an example for Ágreda’s Christian community of that it is possible to live through the life with the real freedom of the children of God, that it is possible to have the experience that God is A Father, the universal brotherhood, the balance between the silence and the prayer, the joy, the peace and to give testimony of the Hope. The Conception monastery continues giving response to the deep questions that the today’s man asks himself about the sense of the life and of the death, the hope and the love, the suffering and the happiness, the time and the eternity. The life of the religious ones is a privileged way of announcing to the men the arrival of the God’s Kingdom. Dedicated to listen the God’s Word and to the prayer, they have the freedom of assuming as own the problems of the persons and raise them to God by means of the prayer.

Throughout this year, and until July 10, 2009, we will celebrate that the Convent of The Conception in these 375 years has been source of light, spiritual refuge and living place of meeting with God.