We use to think that spiritual life is a complicated thing. We think we need to do a lot of spiritual exercises, special retreats, pray a lot of prayers, attend the mass (the more the better), confess every week, have prepared a special place for prayer. And the most important thing: people around us need to know very well that we belong to „the spiritual ones”, we are not just ordinary people.

Francisco Palau presents us a different way. God doesn’t have his hands tied to all these external ways, methods, exercises. The only requirement is to stay alone in silence with him. The life of the Spirit happens in the spirit. No matter what our exterior conditions are. Sometimes we need to allow others to take care of us, of our material deeds, to dedicate ourselves completely to the this relationship because it is where we can find our strength to face life’s difficulties. The inner peace is the key to everything. The world has its ways with us, life can be brutal, violent, unforgiving. To remain at peace facing hatred, rejection, calumnies, is the highest art of spiritual life. The secret to it is to not allow the world to enter into the temple of our soul. It doesn’t mean to stay away from helping those in need. Far was Fr. Palau for forbidding his daughters to serve those in real need. But there are so many situations out of our control, and yet so often we allow them to alternate our inner life, to shake our faith, to move us out of our center that is God alone. God alone is enough, he will repeat many times after St. Teresa of Jesus.

This letter became one of my favourite one while staying in Vietnam. Here we are many times misunderstood from people outside, sometimes even from our own sisters. We have limited access to Jesus in Blessed Sacrament, cannot live our religious consecration fully as we wish for. But God doesn’t have his hands tied to all of it. In so many ways he guide us, shows us the way, protects us. All we have to do is no take care of this inner space, our temple, the temple of our soul. This is the only thing that truly depends on us.

40. To Juana Gratias: Gramat (France)

Es Cubells (Ibiza), July 28, 1857

J. M. J.

Long live Jesus

1. Dearest daughter: I received your letter through the Mother Prioress of Palma and I was very happy to receive it because I was attentive of the correspondence.

Above all things, let us go to the main thing and let us not forget and neglect the essential of the direction, which is the progress of your spirit in God and your interior relations with God. The rest “all things pass away, God is not moved, and patience achieves all things”.

2. Since your father’s house is unoccupied, I suppose you have your little cell there. Well then, stand firm there and letting yourself be cared for in the corporal by your parents, order all your strength to prayer. I and God, I for God and God for me, “he who lacks God lacks nothing, God alone is enough”. Order your life in prayer, retreat and silence and these walls will guard you against your enemies. In prayer, in silence and retreat, there you must be alone with your God. If the demons, arming the world as their ally, besiege the fortress, if they attack with slander, with cursing tongues and if they accused you, you know how far the world goes, if they deprive you of the holy sacraments, humble yourself, and God, who does not have his hands tied to these signs, will bless you. So do not be moved, remain unchanged, calm and at peace in your relations with God. If they curse you, bless; if they slander you, be silent and pray. To him who lives in peace with his God, how contemptible is the world and all its things! Deprive it of its follies and malice, and take care to keep your heart unchanged in view of what it may say and do.

3. But what can it do to him who loves God? Nothing. Sitting me securely on the high and steep and firm rocks of the Vedra, I see all the furies of the sea crash and turn to foam, and I laugh at its vain efforts because I am safe. It is troubled, it is shaken, it is moved, it is uproarious, it raises its bellows, furious, it curls its waves, it shudders and, erect in pride, it throws itself on the hardest rocks, but all its malice turns into foam. The servant of God sleeps peacefully, he is not moved, he is not troubled, he is not disturbed, and while the sea is tossing around him, he goes on with his work and his tasks in peace. Beware, daughter, of losing your heart, I mean, inner peace, repose and tranquility in view of the world that surrounds you, follow your inner tasks and occupations. The world and its things are unworthy to occupy place in the temple of your soul. Look at it from the heights of your meditation and do so only to order your relations and indispensable communications with it according to God. In this matter, do not quarrel with it, do not defend yourself, be silent, pray and meditate and have compassion on it. There you have, my daughter, traced out the conduct that you must observe in the midst of the world.

4 . Your presence in Gramat and your works will justify you. Take care to walk well ordered in your interior and leave to your director the care of establishing yourself externally in this or that place. Be silent, flee from arguments and quarrels with the world, for this would be to descend from the top of the rocks to fight by force of arms against the waves of the sea. If you are reviled, be silent and pray; if they consider you unworthy of God and of his holy sacraments, glory that you find yourself worthy to suffer something for Jesus Christ, and in this case do not go to bother them or ask them for graces. If he does not give you absolution and if the confessional becomes an instrument of war and ruin, either look for another confessor or do not go. Suffer patiently. The tyrant will suffer more than the martyr. Do not go in haste to seek the grace of men; be silent, pray, watch and wait. To indiscreet questions, do not answer, for they have no right to question you. Be very reserved and circumspect.