Blessed Francisco Palau, a Discalced Carmelite, is the paradigm of what John Paul II predicted in the Bull of the Jubilee Year 2000: “The embrace that the Father gives to those who, having repented, go to meet him, will be the just reward for the humble recognition of their own and others’ faults” (IM 11). It can be seen in his writings that, upon receiving priestly ordination, he began a new way of interceding for the Church, which involved asking forgiveness for collective sins, offering the Eucharist in reparation to obtain God’s mercy. At the same time, a profound interior purification begins in him that will prepare him to experience the Church as a mystical person with whom he will establish paternal and spousal relationships that will fill him with deep joy and great ecclesial fruitfulness.

His spiritual experience could be summarized in this way. For years he lived intensely filial love for the Church, and after long years of darkness, God the Father granted him the Church as his daughter. He was so faithful in caring for the Church as the best of fathers, that the Virgin Mary interceded with her Son to grant him the Church as his bride. Jesus accepts the request of his Mother and since then Blessed Francisco Palau began to experience the Church as the spouse of the priest, who will fill his longing to love and be loved by an immense beauty as the Church, at the end of his journey is to live Trinitarian life, the fullness of baptismal grace, and the priestly order, in which Christ in the shepherd wants to build his Church.

The experience of feeling loved by the Church spousally as a priest can be explained in the following way. Jesus gives to all the members of the Church his Word, his Body, his Blood, his Spirit, his Mother; he makes them participate in being children of the Father. In virtue of the sacrament of Holy Orders, the priest (whether parish priest or bishop) is configured to “Jesus the Good Shepherd”. One aspect of this configuration is to be with Christ the Bridegroom of the Church, and therefore to have with the Church a spousal relationship, unique and different from that of the other baptized. Jesus says to him, “you are alter Christus”; you also participate in the spousal love with which I am constantly loved by the Church. St. John Paul II recalls this in Pastores Dabo Vobis

“The priest, by virtue of his configuration to Christ, Head and Shepherd, finds himself in this spousal situation before the community. Insofar as he represents Christ, Head, Shepherd and Spouse of the Church, the priest is not only in the Church, but also at the head of the Church. Therefore, he is called to relive in his spiritual life the love of Christ the Bridegroom for the Church as Bride” (n. 22).

This participation of being, with Christ, spouse of the Church, is what Blessed Francisco Palau experienced. He wrote down these experiences in a book entitled My Relationships, the only testimony of Christian spirituality that we have on the mystical relationship between the priest and the Church as spouse.

Whoever reads My Relationships may be surprised by the insistent call to exercise the exorcism. Jesus Christ granted him the best, which is to participate in the spousal love with which he is loved by the Church, but he also granted him the worst mission, that of exercising the exorcisms and asking the Pope and then Vatican I to officially establish the ministry of the exorcist.

Spiritual Itinerary of Blessed Francisco Palau through his writings

Born in Aitona (1811) Catalonia (Spain)

“In my childhood and youth, I neither had nor knew my Beloved. I sought her on earth, and finding in it no creature capable of satisfying my appetites, I sought her in heaven” (MR 15:1).

Entered and professed in the Discalced Carmelite Order (1832-1833).

“In 1833, not finding her in the world, I sought her in the cloister: I found her, I had her, and I did not know her; we were friends, and our relations were limited within the laws of true friendship” (MR 15, 2).

Because of the suppression of religious orders, he must live as an exclaustrated religious.

“I was a young man of twenty-three. The Revolution of 1835 came; it burned down my cloister, and my desires to see my Beloved without veils and face to face were so vivid that I did not care to get out of the flames. My Beloved came and held out her hand to me, and I emerged unharmed from under the ruins of my convent” (MR I, 4).

Deep filial love for the Church

“Only a miracle of Omnipotence can heal [the Church in Spain]. All human medicine has become useless; only the hand of God can heal her wounds, and for him to heal her it is necessary that we ask him for it. Prayer, then, is the only medicine that remains for the Church of Spain to be saved; and for this prayer to be properly made, the virtue of the Holy Spirit is necessary. […] Since prayer duly addressed to God for her health is an effective medicine, the only one that can restore it, it is our strict duty to offer it to him, and all the more so since we have it in our hands. […] This obligation, among other reasons, is based on the filial love that we should have for her who is our spiritual mother, the mother who begot us in baptism and gave birth to Jesus Christ through the sacrament of faith … The doctors of the spiritual mother are none other than the eternal Father and his only-begotten Son, and her medicine is prayer in virtue of the Holy Spirit. And this prayer duly addressed to the Father and to the Son for her remedy is so efficacious a medicine that it alone suffices to cure her entirely” (Lucha, 17-18, 20).

In obedience to his superiors, he accepted ordination to the priesthood (1836).

“When the Church, through the ministry of one of her pastors, laid her hands on my head, the Spirit of the Lord, who vivifies this moral body, changed me into another man, that is, into one of her ministers, into one of her representatives on the altar, In the same way that a parish needs a priest to represent it at the altar, so the enormous mass of human society that exists on earth, being only a small people before God, needs a priest to represent it before his throne” (VS 21).

He will experience within himself the accusations of the spirit of evil before the throne of God for the sins of the children of the Church.

“For many centuries, complaints and accusations have been brought before the throne of God against the Roman Catholic, apostolic people; these complaints, repeated at all times and in all ages day and night [Rev 7:15; 20:10], have several times awakened the sovereign judge; and these reports not being false, he took them into consideration, and having assembled his council and seated himself on his throne, he judged our cause.

But an infinitely just judge could not judge us without calling us to the defense of our cause, much less condemn us without first hearing our statements. I have spent days and nights, weeks and whole months hidden in the bosom of the earth, […] This profound silence and this dreadful solitude were very purposeful and very convenient to be more attentive to the voice of the adversaries, since by my ministry I had to answer their accusations which unfortunately were far from being mere calumnies. […] examining with attention the life of the Roman Catholic people and their clergy; and I did not forget to confront their actions, their works, their thoughts and projects with our model that I always had before me, Jesus crucified. […] No, indeed, these were not false reports; on the contrary, they were true denunciations, based on grave and uncorrected faults, on the most enormous crimes without satisfaction and on scandals without reparation ” (VS 23-24, 28).

Acknowledges sins and offers the blood of Christ in reparation.

“And trembling and with tears in my eyes, my face pressed to the ground and prostrate before the throne of God, my spirit pleaded as a priest for our cause and fought against the justice of God. […] I made and still make every effort to drown the rays of his wrath in the precious blood of the Son of God. […] What were my means of defense; none other than prayers supported by a humble confession of the most atrocious crimes and the most scandalous faults, faults and crimes that remain without reparation, without correction and without satisfaction of any kind. We have sinned, Lord, said I before God, and we, your priests, your princes and your people, have sinned. We are guilty in your presence” (VS 30-31).

Intercedes as a priest before God that he may have mercy on the Church

The priest, “recognizing himself as a minister of peace, of health and blessing, seeing himself clothed with the priestly character, a character which imposes on him the duty of reconciling the people with their God [….] full of holy boldness he draws nearer to the altar, takes in his hands the sacrosanct body which I gave him, and the chalice of health in my most precious blood, lifts up in the air this victim of propitiation and, with full assurance that it will be accepted, without wavering in his faith and with full confidence that he will come forth with his claim, presents it to the Father saying – “Father, we have sinned; [….] for our sins we have contracted with your justice infinite debts. [….] Holy Father, deign to look upon this victim of propitiation which I present to you [….]. You cannot refuse it, for it is your only begotten Son, in whom you are well pleased.

Righteous Father, let your righteousness prevail. If our debts are greater than the price I present to you, punish us, O Lord, forsake us. But if the merits of the body and blood of Jesus Christ infinitely exceed all that we owe to your righteousness, then rule in our favor. [….] To disregard my supplication it would be necessary for you to erase from my soul the priestly character which you have engraved on it, and it would be necessary for you to divest me of these sacred vestments with which, as a minister of Jesus and of his Church, I am clothed. And if the Father delays to give good dispatch to his request, far from diminishing his confidence in nothing, he redoubles his prayer, repeats the sacrifices, and thus perseveres with the spirit of not giving up the struggle until he sees God propitious and the Church saved from the frightful storm that is troubling her?” (Lucha IV, 12; V, 87).

Long years of darkness (1836-1860)

“I spent my life in search of my beloved thing until the year 1860. I knew it existed, but how far I was from thinking she was who she was! The object of my love was for me God, in a confused and vague way and without details. I desired, like everyone else, to love and to be loved, to love and to be loved back; and this correspondence on the part of my Beloved, I neither had it nor thought it possible; and hence it was that my heart cried out, seeking to love and to be loved” (MR 8:21).

“Holy Church! Twenty years I had been looking for you: I looked at you and I did not know you, because you were hidden under the dark shadows of enigma, of tropes, of metaphors, and I could not see you except under the species of a being incomprehensible to me; thus I looked at you and thus I loved you. It is you, O holy Church, my beloved thing! You are the only object of my love! Ah, since I have been grieving for you for so many years, why did you cover and hide yourself from my sight?”

(The Church answers him) “I have unveiled myself to you little by little. You have first seen my body, all its parts, my physical and moral constitution, the functions of my members and my power, my virtue and my strength; you have admired me in battles and you have seen my arsenals and fortresses; you have been able to contemplate my riches and the inexhaustible treasures of virtue and graces. And now I unveil my face to you, I reveal my spirit to you and I show you my heart and my love for you, because your love for me, your loyalty, your fidelity has not faltered in the hard, long and heavy trials to which you have been exposed by order of my Father” (MR III, 1,3).

The eternal Father makes him partake in his fatherhood over the Church (1860)

This mystical experience will transform his whole spiritual life. The Church is not a city, nor a house, but a mystical person, a living person with whom relationships can be established. The passage from the concept of the Church as an abstract reality to a living entity was the consequence of this vision he had in the cathedral of Ciutadella (Menorca) in November 1860. All that he had meditated on the nature of the Church, was simplified in a beautiful woman that the Father gave him as a daughter.

“One afternoon I was in a cathedral church waiting for the hour of the function to arrive. There I was to give the last blessing that was customary after the conclusion of a Mission. And my spirit was transported before the throne of God. […] The old man beckoned to me and told me to give the blessing in his name. I turned to the altar and saw on its steps a very beautiful young woman, clothed in glory; her clothes were white as light; I could not see her but wrapped in light […]. Her head was covered with a very fine veil. I heard a voice coming from the throne of God, saying to me: You are the priest of the Most High; bless, and he whom you shall bless shall be blessed; and that which you shall curse shall be cursed. That is my beloved daughter. In her I have my complacencies: give her my blessing. The princes of the Kingdom of God made court to the Young Woman and she knelt before the altar; she received my blessing and all that vision disappeared. […] When the hour of the service came, as I was going up to the pulpit, I heard the voice of the Father saying to me: Bless my beloved Daughter and your Daughter” (MR II, 2-3).

To the care of this Daughter he will devote himself totally: “on the altar of the cross I have sacrificed my life for her, my rest and all that is dearest to me” (MR 7:5). This paternity over the Church will be concretized in the re-evangelization of Ibiza and in the foundation of two religious congregations, one masculine and the other feminine, which in turn will give rise to the Carmelite Missionaries and Teresian Carmelite Missionaries.

Although he gave himself with all his being to the service of his Daughter, these relationships of paternity “do not satisfy all the emptiness of the heart” (MR 22,23). God, who never lets himself be defeated in generosity, in the face of Blessed Francisco Palau’s fidelity, loyalty and self-giving made him enter into a new spousal relationship with the Church, which, as he would say, were aimed at “filling the heart directly” (MR 22:44). The Virgin Mary will be the mediator.

The Virgin Mary intercedes with her Son (1864)

“The Virgin was seated, clothed with all the royal insignia of the queen and sovereign of the world: on her head she wore a crown of glory.

Virgin: I represent here for you, O minister of the altar, the whole congregation of the saints, the holy Church. Tell me: do you love the Church?

Priest: Beautiful and pure Virgin, you know that I love her.

Virgin: Do you love her?

Priest: You know it. […] Weeping suffocated my words.

Virgin Mary, turning to the Elder, said to him: “Eternal Father, this priest whom you see on the altar loves your Daughter, the holy Church, and asks her to be his Bride.

The Father: My Daughter is his Daughter, and my Daughter and his Daughter, is his Bride.

The Virgin to her Son: My Son, the priest whom you see present on the altar loves your Bride; the Father gives her to him as his Daughter, and you give her to him as his Bride.

The Son: The Father and I have ordained that the Church on earth shall have a father who loves her as Daughter, and a lover who unites with her as Bride. And since the priest for whom you plead loves her, I give her to him again as a Bride, as my Father has given her to him as a Daughter. Let these nuptials be celebrated in my court” (MR 1:24-30).

Deeply in love with the Church.

From that moment on, the symptoms of a true infatuation happen in P. Palau. The contemplation of the Church stole all the affections of his heart and left him wounded with love: “The more I look at you, the more beautiful I find you, the more I love you, the more beautiful and lovable I feel you, and you are so new to me that every day seems to be the first time I see, love and possess you” (MR 9.35).

It fills him with joy to be able to relate to “the most chaste, the purest and the holiest of virgins” (MR 4.24) “You are my inheritance, my heritage and the delight of my heart” (MR 5.6). “Oh, how happy I am! I have already found you. I love you, you know it: my life is the least I can offer you in correspondence to your love. The passion of love that devours me will find its fuel in you, because you are as beautiful as God, you are infinitely kind. My heart was created to love you, there you have it, it is yours, it loves you. I love you and you know how to reciprocate my love: I know that you love me with a pure and loyal love, firm and unchanging. I am no longer my own, but your property; because I love you, dispose of my life, my health and rest, and all that I am and have” (MR III, 2).

The Church is the infinite beauty he had so eagerly sought. She is a mystical person, but she is made up of many members united to Christ, who is her head. Palau was looking for a symbol or an image capable of representing the Church, so that he could relate spiritually to her. He understood that the only one who could faithfully represent the Church was the Mother of Jesus: “The Virgin Mary is the only type, the only figure in heaven that most perfectly represents the holy Church” (MR 1.36).

The priest from the day of his ordination is with Christ the spouse of the Church.

“On the day of Ordination, all priests are given to me by my heavenly Father. The priest, whatever his rank and dignity, is from the day of Ordination my spouse, and these nuptials are celebrated in due form before the public. A husband or spouse, notwithstanding the bonds of marriage, can be an unfaithful, adulterous, impure husband, and therefore unworthy of his wife. Can a priest, notwithstanding the sacred bonds of the priesthood with which he is bound to me, be an unfaithful, adulterous and unworthy husband. Well then, I am a virgin, I always have been and always will be, and he who is united with me in spiritual marriage is all the purer the more I embrace him, he is all the more chaste the more strongly he loves me, and no one is worthy of me but he who comes to the priesthood with pure intentions […]. – Who is worthy of you? – He who knows me and loves me: this is the one who serves me, this is my spouse; in faith, hope and love I unite myself with the mortal wayfarer. The priest who before the world is united with me by the bonds of the priesthood, if he is not united with me in faith, hope and true love, is an infidel.

-What will become of me! I am not worthy of you. -You have, like other mortals, your miseries; you are bound to me by the bonds of the priesthood, and in the priesthood you sought me alone; you sought me because you loved me, and your intention was pure, and this purity made you worthy of me. And for this reason, having undergone all the trials that you know, after 25 years in which you called me and I hid myself, I finally manifested myself to you: I revealed to you my beauty and I manifested my figure” (MR 18, 5-7).

Various ways of relating to the Church (1867)

“Friendship. Our relations are founded on the mutual love of the two, and the first degree is friendship. But a simple friendship is far from satisfying the appetites of the heart; there must, therefore, be more than simple friendship.

Fatherhood and motherhood. There are between the two lovers relations of maternity, and these are already stronger. You, my Beloved, are my mother, and there are between the two relations of son to mother. You are my mother: according to the physical order, your Spirit, being God the Creator, God the Savior, God the Life-giver, your Spirit, after having given me being and existence, has given me being and the life of grace through baptism. In the course of my life, you, O holy Church, have nurished me with the milk of your doctrine, and with your life-giving Spirit you have sustained me like a good mother in the bosom of your love. How many inner counsels, how many inspirations! From how many evils, O Mother, the most tender, you have preserved me without my knowing it! The relations of mother to child, and vice versa, are founded on maternal and filial love. I did not know you, O tender mother, and you, to give warmth to my holy resolutions, pressed me to your breasts and fostered my piety and devotion and love of holy and ecclesiastical things. But these relations neither satisfy nor fill the emptiness of the heart.

The betrothal. I am your husband and you are my Bride. These are the relationships that go directly to fill the heart, because they unite the two lovers in this life with the perfection that the mortal condition permits. Simple friendship can be found without constituting family, maternity constitutes family and there is community of goods, but the betrothal constitutes family, makes community of goods and persons. The betrothal is the mutual surrender of the lovers one to the other; and love is that which unites the lovers, making slave one of the other. I am your husband, faithful or unfaithful. On the day I was ordained a priest, I was consecrated by ordination to your service to the face of the Church, I was given to you; and from that day on I do not belong to myself, I am yours and all my actions, all that I am and have” (MR 22:22-24).

The Eucharist celebrates the union between the priest and the Church.

His deepest desire was to live on earth an ever deeper union with his Beloved; this takes place in the Eucharist, “Only the union of love of a faithful spouse, consummated on your altar with the participation of the most august Sacrament, can satisfy the desires of the heart” (MR 22.26). In the Eucharist, although in a mysterious but real way, the union of all the members among themselves and with their head is realized:

“In the most august Sacrament of the altar, there every day represented in her invisible Head, Jesus my Son, there she will unite herself with you again. Giving you her Head sacramentally, she gives you all of her mystically and morally out of love; and uniting you there sacramentally with the Head, you will unite yourself morally with her whole body. There, eating the flesh of Christ his Head, you will become with her flesh of her flesh, bone of her bones; there you will unite with her, and she with you in spiritual marriage, and you will rejoice in her and she with you with that spiritual joy which the world and the flesh know not. Your beloved Bride, your Daughter, is and will be in the temple of the living God day and night, her Head – Christ in the Sacrament – reclining on the altar. Take care of her – the militant -wipe away her tears, comfort her in her afflictions, relieve her sorrows; what you will do for her on earth, she will return to you and do for you in heaven” (MR 1:31).

Trinitarian Life (1867)

God progressively enriches this spousal relationship, which takes on Trinitarian characteristics, and leads him to live the fullness of Baptism and priestly Orders, which is Trinitarian life:

“God, in order that the living image of God might be perfectly represented, communicates to the elect his infinite perfections. Not one creature being able to represent them all, he created many. The perfections and attributes of God communicated to the whole congregation of the saints in heaven and the righteous on earth, which is the Church, form in them the living image of God triune and one. […] In each of the predestined there is the image of God in essence, and some accidental perfection proper and special that singularizes and individualizes him, but in the whole body and head of the Church there is with all the essential and accidental perfection, because in her alone are all the divine perfections that constitute the said image. God and the neighbors, that is, the holy Church, being the living and finished image of God Triune and One, and the essential and accidental, or primary and secondary object of the love of a man who is a wayfarer, the presence of the thing loved by faith in him produces perfect love between the two lovers; and the two are the mirror in which God Triune and One looks at his image and is pleased with it. The eternal Fatherhood in God, looking at himself in the two, husband and Bride, seeing in them his own beauty, enriches them both as far as each is concerned: to the Bridegroom he gives as a dowry faith, hope and charity; and the Bride, in correspondence to the faith of the wayfarer, communicates to him the vision, and, by reason of hope and charity, the possession and fruition of all the heavenly joys; and thus, rich as befits such lovers, he presents them similar to himself on the wedding day” (MR 22,31-33).

If here on earth priests do not perceive these spiritual graces in a way analogous to Blessed Francisco Palau, they will not for that reason fail to live these realities in the heavenly Church, perhaps even more fully because they have had to live their priestly ministry for the good of the Church with a faith that is stripped of all spiritual consolation. Blessed F. Palau expresses this very clearly: “If you had not revealed yourself, I would have disappeared from among mortals without being in relationship with you. How surprised would I be when I saw you without veils in heaven” (MR 22.17).

Being a spouse of the Church is an inherent dimension of the sacrament of Holy Orders. The testimony of Blessed Francisco Palau can help to strengthen many priests in fidelity to priestly celibacy, but it can also help those who in “moments of darkness and storm clouds were scattered” (cf. Ez 34:12) to rediscover the beauty of priestly celibacy and to discover the spousal and paternal dimensions of the priesthood.

In heaven one of the missions of Blessed Francis Palau must be to help the priest to discover the Church as his Daughter and his Bride, and as he said a few days before his death (20.3.1872) to a family friend, “As I am going to heaven, claim me, claim me and I will help you”.

Spanish original: https://sacerdotessantosiglesiasanta.wordpress.com/2020/04/05/beato-francisco-palau-testigo-privilegiado-de-la-iglesia-esposa-del-sacerdote/

Translated to english by Sr. Aleksandra Nawrocka CMT