Feast of the Hermit

Hermit, Feast of the

September 1Juan Maria de Castellano is known as a saint among the Hispanic Americans of Hot Springs, New Mexico. He lived in a cave on a mountain peak for three years and slept on the ground. According to legend, he was responsible for a number of miraculous feats, not the least of which was producing water from a rock that had the power to cure blindness and other ills. Once when he had 12 men visit him, the very small amount of food he prepared was sufficient to feed all of them for an entire day.
In the 1930s, the members of the Asociacion de Santa Maria de Guadalupe met twice a year on Hermit's Peak. The second and more important of the two meetings was held on September 1, which came to be known as the Feast of the Hermit. People brought picnics, and some built little huts where they could spend the night. Some came to be cured, while others worked on repairing the fences and clearing the trails. They lit huge bonfires and prayed for the holy man who, like Moses, had caused water to flow from a rock and who, like Jesus, had satisfied the hunger of multitudes.
SOURCES:
FolkAmerHol-1999, p. 356