God does not cease to raise up throughout the ages fervent souls who adore Him in the tabernacle, just as He once called the shepherds and the Magi to Bethlehem. Among these souls especially devoted to the Divine Eucharist, one should be singled out: Bl. Manuel González García, the “Bishop of the Abandoned Tabernacle”.
Newsdesk (05/01/2022 9:03 PM, Gaudium Press) The Church has just commemorated the most splendid event in History, which divided it into a before and an after: the Birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, if the coming of Jesus at Christmas makes us feel so much joy, with all the more reason we should vibrate with enthusiasm when approaching a tabernacle, where the same Jesus is really and truly present in Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, under the Eucharistic Species.
This is why God does not fail to raise up throughout the ages fervent souls who adore Him in the tabernacle, just as He once called the shepherds and the Magi to Bethlehem. Among these souls especially devoted to the Divine Eucharist is one whose life we are concerned with today: Bl. Manuel González García, the “Bishop of the Abandoned Tabernacles”.
Called to the priesthood since childhood
He was born in Seville on February 25th, 1877. His family was very Catholic.
He spent his childhood peacefully with his parents and siblings. The fact that some of his childhood desires were not fulfilled led him, years later, to give thanks to God, because in this, he said, he learned to govern his personal tastes well, to have a more realistic knowledge of life and to sympathize with those in need.
He made his First Communion on May 11th, 1886, and received the Sacrament of Confirmation in December of the same year. Strengthened in his faith by the Sacraments, little Manuel grew in the conviction of his vocation to the priesthood.
His parents did not hide their joy to be able, one day, to see their son go up to the altar to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice, but parental care did not fail to point out the seriousness with which the choice had to be made: “My son, we would very much like to see you become a priest, but if the Lord does not call you, don’t be one. We would rather have you be a good Christian than a bad priest”.
When he was 12 years old, he once disappeared from home. Night fell and there was no sign of where he could be found. They searched in vain for him in the churches he used to frequent and all over the neighbourhood. Disguised affliction was already being felt among the relatives when, at a certain moment, the boy arrived and asked his parents to forgive him for the late hour.
He presented them with some papers and explained that he was returning from the minor seminary, where his enrollment had just been accepted, having passed the entrance exam.
“May I not lose my vocation”
With a lively imagination, great intellectual capacity and a heart of generous feelings, he managed, by his constancy and firm will, to pass through all the difficulties of the first stage of the seminary, from assaults of scruples and illnesses, to attacks against the priesthood, coming from the most unexpected flanks…
One morning, in the middle of class, one of his professors spoke jokingly against ecclesiastical celibacy. Upon hearing this, Manuel stood up and, full of uprightness, declared: “It is unworthy of a professor to dare to speak with such little respect on this delicate matter. We cannot consent that it be spoken of in this way to those of us preparing for the priesthood. I protest with all my soul!”.
The teacher became angry at being reprimanded by a student and the class ended in a tense atmosphere. As they left, his fellow students applauded him enthusiastically for his act of courage and daring. Afterwards, the teacher corrected his opinion before the students and asked their forgiveness for his fault…
Another fact from his time as a seminarian reveals his zeal for his vocation: as the time for military service approached, he put his cause in the hands of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and of Mary Immaculate, asking them to save him from this risk to his vocation. However, he ended up being called to the lines… Confident, he was not disturbed. There was still the possibility of paying an indult of 1,500 pesetas to obtain a dispensation.
He went to the rector of the seminary and asked permission to collect among his acquaintances the not small sum. He wrote a circular letter to them all. The amount collected was so abundant that, besides being sufficient for him, it also allowed him to help another seminarian in a similar situation.
A sad and pleading look at Jesus
After being ordained a deacon on June 11th, 1901, the young seminarian was sent to numerous missions in different villages. He had great dreams of evangelization in his heart, but soon he began to realize a terrible reality: “I was faced with miniatures of big cities, with all their moral corruption…
Although I did not see in the villagers the thirst for divine things – or perhaps precisely for this reason! – I wanted to be for souls like Christ in the Sacred Host: to give myself with love to the point of sacrifice and for the whole of my life.” With this purpose in his heart he was ordained a priest on September 21st, 1901, at the age of 24.
He spent the first three years of his priestly life preaching in the churches of the Diocese of Seville. Tireless in the care of souls, he was also zealous for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.
In one of his missions, in Palomares del Río – a ghost town in terms of church attendance and the Sacraments – he received the call to be the reparator of the “Abandoned Tabernacles”.
Having heard the sacristan’s account of the lack of piety of its inhabitants, he himself describes what happened:
“I went straight to the tabernacle of the restored church, in search of wings for my almost fainting enthusiasm, and … what a tabernacle! […] There, kneeling before that heap of rags and filth, my faith saw through that old, little door a Jesus so quiet, so patient, so despised, so good, who stared at me … It seemed to me that after traveling through that desert of souls with His gaze, His look rested upon me, a look sad and imploring, that said much and asked me for more …”
From then on, he was for his whole life an adorer and reparator of Our Lord abandoned in the tabernacles, and he tried to transmit his spirit of reparation to all those who placed themselves under his direction, especially priests, because he well knew that on their example depended greatly the faith and devotion of the Catholic people.
Founder of works of reparation
The grace received in Palomares del Río had a profound effect on Father Manuel’s spirit.
As chaplain of a nursing home in Seville, he promoted adoration of the Blessed Sacrament among the elderly, so that in their solitude they could keep the Great Abandoned One of the tabernacle company. And they never missed their hour of vigil!
Thus was born a kind of “Brotherhood of the Abandoned”, the first reparators of the “Abandoned Tabernacle”.
When he was 28 years old, he was sent by the Archbishop of Seville as Archpriest of Huelva, a city that was lying in a deplorable moral and spiritual decay.
He was suffering terrible hardships when he received an invitation from the Bishop of Leon to be his secretary. Leaving the choice in the hands of his Archbishop, he received an order from him to remain there.
The state of the tabernacle revealed to Father Manuel the measure of the moral and spiritual life of the parish. The empty parishes or the churches with abandoned tabernacles he used to call “Calvary”.
To reverse this situation, he inaugurated the Work of the Three Marys, composed of a group of pious collaborators of his apostolic activities, to whom he launched this poignant call: “Adoring Marys, before the eyes of the modern Pharisees and the ingratitude of the people who were Christians, and the cowardice and laziness of the disciples, take your place beside the Cross with Mary, Mother of Jesus”.
Later, he founded the work of the Disciples of St. John. Both initiatives had the primary objective of encouraging the faithful – men and women – to promote adoration and reparation before the “tabernacles-calvary”, following the example of Mary Most Holy, Mary Magdalene, Mary of Cleophas and St. John the Evangelist, at the foot of the Cross.
To his consolation, these undertakings spread rapidly and widely. Various other works were joined to them: Diocesan Eucharistic Missionaries, Eucharistic Missionaries of Nazareth, for religious women, Nazarene Auxiliary Missionaries, for consecrated lay women, Eucharistic Children of Reparation and Eucharistic Youth of Reparation.
To be a host of love for Jesus
In December 1915 he was named titular bishop of Olimpo and auxiliary of Malaga, and the following January he received episcopal ordination. When he became titular of this diocese in 1920, he based his pastoral action on three pillars: the formation of priests, the religious education of children, and the cultivation of authentic piety among the faithful.
To each of these aspects he gave special attention, but his call to be the reparator of the “Abandoned Tabernacles” led him to give priority to the preparation of future priests and to found a seminary in Malaga. Tireless in this task, Bishop Manuel struggled to make them aware of the importance of their mission.
Concerned by the secularizing wave that influenced even the priests themselves, he exhorted them: “If the love that my Jesus has is the love of a Host, I must be for Jesus a host of love. If Jesus is my host for every day and every hour, must I not aspire and prepare myself to be his host for every hour and every day?
In addition, he always tried to instill in them the conviction that when a priest is ordained, he ceases to be an “ordinary man”. The person of the priest is entirely marked by his ministry; it is not a function to be exercised only for a few hours a day.
That is why he warned them: “Priests, my brothers, know that every time you dress like a man, you speak like a man, you aspire and have ambitions like a man, you look at your brothers and your superiors like a man, you conduct yourselves in society like a man and not like a priest, the secularizing revolution gains a triumph and the Christian spirit suffers a defeat. Do not forget that in being and living as a priest is all your honour, your strength, and the fruitfulness of the mission that God and the Church have entrusted to you.
A life consecrated to the Eucharistic Jesus
In May 1931, anticlericalism took over the streets of Spain. Churches and convents were burned and desecrated in the most barbaric and inhumane ways. The city of Malaga was one of the most affected by the wave of religious hatred. Historic images of Our Lord and Our Lady were burned in the public square, and along with them, paintings, documents, and valuable liturgical pieces.
A little more than a decade at the head of the Diocese of Malaga, Bishop Manuel sees his episcopal palace consumed by flames without having the means to prevent it. To save his own life, he had to take refuge in nearby Gibraltar, where he remained in exile for some months.
He later settled in Ronda, but soon moved to Madrid, from where he followed the events of his diocese. In 1935, he was named Bishop of Palencia, where he spent the last period of his life.
In November 1939, his health, already weakened, suffered a great blow with a kidney disease, and on December 31st, he was transferred to the Sanatorium of the Rosary in Madrid, where on the dawn of January 4th, 1940, at the age of 62, he gave his soul to God.
His mortal remains were placed at the feet of the Blessed Sacrament in the Cathedral of Palencia. On the white marble tombstone was engraved the following epitaph, which he himself composed: “I ask to be buried near a tabernacle, so that my bones after death, like my tongue and my pen during life, may always be saying to passers-by: ‘There is Jesus! There is Jesus! There He is! Do not leave him abandoned”.
Text extracted, with adaptations, from the magazine Heralds of the Gospel n. 169, January 2016.
Compiled by Roberta MacEwan
