We are invited to accept this gift from God responsibly, advancing daily toward perfection, counting on God’s grace. During this novena in preparation for the feast of blessed Francis Palau, we will have the opportunity to reflect on holiness, guided by the teachings of our Blessed Founder.

To read or download, click on the link Novena of Francisco Palau 2025

United in prayers!

Generous hopes, fleeting encounters, wounds of love… that remind us of the Spiritual Canticle of St. John of the Cross, will be configuring what for Palau is the object of a love without borders, the Church.

His intimate diary, to which he gives the meaningful title of My Relations with the Church, is an example of this constant and relentless search.

1. Francisco Palau, a man of prayer.

One of the unmistakable hallmarks of Blessed Francisco Palau is his profound spirit of prayer. Apostolate and prayer are like the poles that oriented his whole life. They alternated in intensity and external presence, but they were always harmoniously united in him. There are clear testimonies that already from childhood he was very much given to prayer and fond of devout exercises. This tendency became stronger and more consistent during his years as a seminarian in Lérida, where he stood out for his love of recollection and his assiduity in prayer, meditation and the reading of Sacred Scripture. In his life as a Carmelite he learned, without a doubt, the appreciation and esteem for prayer, as demonstrated by his later teaching on prayer and his familiarity with the terminology peculiar to the spirituality of the Teresian Carmel. He learned the method of mental prayer and its prolonged exercise. The perfect assimilation of this fundamental element of Carmelite spirituality is confirmed throughout his life, beginning immediately after his expulsion from the convent. He took refuge in his hometown and remained faithful to his commitment to prayer, habitually withdrawing to a cave to spend long periods and nights in prayer. There his prayer took on a manifestly apostolic dimension. Not only did he pray for the Church, but he also attended spiritually to the needy who came to his cave in search of consolation and reconciliation. This was to be a constant feature of his whole life. The long period of his life in France was dominated by the assiduous and prolonged practice of prayer. It can be said that his life is one of continuous prayer. From his stay in Perpignan a note with his life plan is preserved; in it he dedicates an hour and a half to prayer after Mass, another hour and a half in the evening and two hours after midnight. He led the same tenor of life in the other places he lived, according to the testimony of his time.

• Prayer illuminates his path of union with God.

Before giving a new direction to his life, he withdraws into solitude to scrutinize the will of God and ask for his lights. This aspect is also a very marked constant in the practice of Palautian prayer. He seeks in it, above all, union with God and, consequently, full acceptance of his will. When this is not clear or manifested, he insists on prayer to know it and follow it. This doctrine is his own experience: “Having finished the winter mission, free from the cares it brings with it, retired to the solitude of my hermitage, I spend the summer in prayer to strengthen my soul”.

• The centrality of the Church in prayer.

We cannot forget that his prayer experience must be read based on his relationship with the Church. Here is the necessity of his prayer, the motive that sustains it, the reality worthy of contemplation. His relationship with the Church is what changes his life: “I was so changed and so new, that her presence renewed soul and body” (Meditation 725.3). It was not only a matter of “strengthening his soul” through prayer; this was for him, above all, the habitual means of his communication with the Lord. Since he encountered God concretely in the Church, his prayer was gradually transformed into a regular ecclesial colloquy. Exactly as we read in My Relations with the Church. As he penetrated the mystery of the Church, prayer itself opened up to the apostolic sense. Union with God thus became “union with God and neighbour,” as he insistently taught his spiritual daughters. It was not only a theoretical teaching; with his prayer he tried to strengthen the foundational work, asking the Lord with great urging to enlighten him on the way to follow. It was one of the most direct and insistent apostolic forms of his prayer. He frequently repeated in his letters clarifications like this one: “In prayer I take care to consult God and I continually ask him to infuse you with those virtues that you cannot and do not know how to acquire with your own strength“.

In him everything is contemplated and focused from the mysterious reality of the Church; everything starts from the Church and becomes Church. Therein lies its original optic, which renews and recreates the being and living of the Carmelite. The friendly colloquy of the prayer unravels with the Mystical Christ and becomes union with the Church, communion of life with all those linked to Christ by the Spirit. On the other hand it considers in the Struggle of the soul with God that the portion of praying people are the heart of the Church and represent it alive (Struggle 149).

• Advanced disciple of Saint Teresa.

The prayer that Francisco Palau lives and transmits has all the features of Teresian prayer. If we look at the Teresian definition of prayer: “It is nothing else, in my opinion, the mental prayer, but to try to be friends while we are often alone with the one we know loves us” (V 8:5), we find that Francisco Palau defines prayer in the following way: “Prayer is an intimate, familiar intercourse that man has with God” (Cat 30:4). We see that in both of them there is a friendly contact, in solitude, which is a gift and a desire to communicate with the Beloved. “These visits only served to torment me more, because with them my desire to see her and to have friendly relations with her grew“ (MRel 727,3). Thus he prays and thus he teaches to pray, if we take the first letter of the epistolary that he addresses to Eugenia Guerin, we see that he invites her to discover her own interiority, to enter into it and to remain there, before the Lord of life. Let us remember what the Saint tells us when defining the prayer of recollection: “It is called recollection, because the soul gathers all its powers and enters within itself with its God” (CP 28,4) and Francisco Palau similarly affirms that: “the great work of God is worked in the interior” (Letter 38,2). Following the Teresian style, he insists that prayer must be transformed into works. “In this matter of prayer, I will say a few things … before I say … what prayer is: three things I will enlarge on in declaring … one is love for one another; another, detachment from all that is cherished; the other, true humility” (CP 4,4). Going through the Letters he wrote to the first sisters, we see that he transmits the same message to his groups. The virtues will give authenticity to prayer and prayer will purify life, so he advises them: “I will repeat many times those counsels that form the spirit, according to the vocation to which you are called… these principal virtues are necessary, obedience, poverty and charity for one another (Letter 12,1). Also, to Juana Gratias he insists: “prayer for the needs of the Church should be short and frequent”…. and he insists telling her who is the Master: “Imitate Jesus Christ in this and you will find a true Master and model of prayer, follow him in all his steps: you will see him in the desert praying for men, in the garden of olives agonizing for them, in preaching helping them in their needs, on the cross offering himself to the Father as a victim of propitiation“ (Letter 6,7). Let us remember how the Saint prays and advises us to pray in this way: “Since I could not think with my mind, I tried to represent Christ within myself“ (V 9:4). The life of prayer is a theological path, which we could summarize as “determined determination”. It is a vital attitude for responding with fortitude and serenity in the face of adversity. Francis Palau expressed himself thus: “God knows how well disposed I am to serve his Church and that in matters of her glory I see everything plain and easy” (Letter 56:1).

HOW FRANCISCO PALAU PRAYS

Francisco Palau’s prayer has several expressions. We highlight the following:

1. Prayer of petition and intercession

In his early writings, Francisco Palau speaks above all of the prayer of petition and supplication. In fact, the entire book of The Struggle is a staging of this theme with the aim of teaching how to pray for the Church; it is not in vain that this mode of prayer is the most frequent in the Gospel, wonderfully condensed and exemplified in the Lord’s Prayer. Palau also introduces in this writing an Our Father applied to the Church. For him, prayer is the reality that enters into the heart of God in such a way that it achieves all that he wants and desires; it is the last remedy when all others have failed. To the prayer of supplication he applies a great capacity for service, liberation and salvation. He goes so far as to say that if Jesus does not remedy so many evils that afflict the Church of Spain, it is because there is no one who asks him for it properly.

The practice of prayer for the needs of the Church is one of the key points of his life and spiritual magisterium. “For the solitary life it is necessary to have great commerce with God, relative to the affairs of men’s health; that is the ultimate of perfection.” And he insists: “prayer for the needs of the Church should be short and frequent” (Letter 6,4).

His conviction of the efficacy and power of supplication and intercession is based on Sacred Scripture: “If one opens the Sacred Books, one will find stamped therein this consoling truth that when the chosen people have been stricken by the hand of God and have made supplications and cried out to heaven, they have always been heard and God has returned to them in his grace” (Lucha 134; cf. 136).

Prayer as a struggle is a very peculiar form of F. Palau within the forms of petition and intercession. It is the theme of the book with this title. Throughout, he understands prayer as a struggle with God in order, like Jacob in his struggle with the angel, to obtain his blessing for the Church.

• The prayer of gazing.

The gaze, which is so important in human experience, and which we know is fundamental in the Teresian experience, is undoubtedly so in F. Palau. The Saint comments: “see that the Lord is looking at you” (V 13,22). For his part, Francisco Palau, explaining the way to pray to Juana, advises her: “Look at him in this body which is the Church, wounded and crucified… offer yourself to take care of him and render him those services that are in your power. Look upon him as Lord and master and king” (Letter 42,2). The Son of God is your beloved and your lover; he is the object of your sight and of your gaze” (Act 74:4). Also in My Relationships this aspect of Palautian contemplation is highlighted, which is an expression of his friendly relationship with the Church: “The more I look at you, the newer I see you… let yourself be seen” (MRel 724). His gaze is centered on Christ as head of the Church: “I looked at Christ, uncreated wisdom and head of the Church, I looked at him with the eyes of faith, I looked at his relationship with the Church, I looked at his beauty, himself“ (MRel 725:Cf.727): looking at the beauty of the Church captivates him: “My Beloved. My Bride, my Sister, you have mortally wounded my heart: with a glance you have revealed your thoughts to me, you have made yourself known to this wretched mortal. And seeing you, returning you to my sight, looking at you, I have remained a prisoner, captive and slave of the presence of your indefinable beauty; and manifesting to me, with your sweet and affectionate, gracious and attractive look, your immense kindness and the affections of your heart for me, my heart has been wounded to death: your look has killed me” (MRel 756).

• Prayer of deliverance, exorcisms.

Where the prayer of Blessed F. Palau acquired more vibrant tones of ecclesial meaning was in his daring apostolate with the sick who were considered victims of the devil (Cf. Positio 508-511). In this mission he felt with greater intensity the urgency of uniting poverty, penance and sacrifice to prayer and faith and a great rectitude in his actions (Cf. Ct. Ermitaño, 15-4-1869, 4; 12-8-1869, 3; MRel 921).

• Liturgical prayer.

As a religious and priest, Francisco Palau was always mindful of the liturgical prayer of the Church; we can see this, above all, in his experience of the Eucharist. This aspect once again shows us his fidelity to the Church.

His daily life is a continuous liturgy since all of it is an offering to his Beloved and through his Beloved to the Father: “I am at her service; Lord my God, command me, reveal to me what you want me to do to please her. You know that on the altar of the cross I have sacrificed my life, my rest and all that is dearest to me for her…” (MRel 729;948).

The manifestation of this experience is found in the way of relating it, which is a liturgical way in the apocalyptic style: “Having said this, there appeared on the mountain an altar of gold, and on the altar the Gospel and the sacred vestments of a priest, and addressing one of the princes who surrounded her, she said: “Clothe this my minister with these sacred vestments”. I went up to the altar, and they dressed me as a priest. She held in her hands a book and a crucifix, and said, “Come near to me.” And I approached the throne where she was, and she held out her right hand to me and stretched it over my head, and said, “March, preach the Gospel. This is the law: “You shall love God for who He is, infinite goodness; and your neighbors as yourself,” and he handed me the book. Then, extending her right hand again, she said to me: “Go, proclaim to the world the forgiveness and remission of their sins“. And handing me the cross, she added: “This is the sign of the redemption and mercy of God on earth; by its virtue you will destroy the kingdom of sin“. Having said this, heavenly songs were heard on the mountain, mingled with very soft and sweet music; and the voices said: Glory to thee, O holy Church, thou hast triumphed in the blood of the Lamb” (MRel 740; Cf.720; 743-744; 752-753).

Nature and the cosmos are also presented as a welcoming and living space that is involved in this prayer (cf. MRel 847; 897; 910; 977). Because “all that material world, which we see moving in our sight, the celestial spheres, and the bodies that revolve in them, the stars and planets, serve the good of the Church” (Igl 709; cf. Col 1:18,20). Palau places Christ and his Bride at the center of the universe. Christ as the source of light and the Church as the finality of all creation. “Such is the idea that we have of the earth and other elementary bodies, and of all the celestial bodies that serve man for his perishable life. We do not abound in the sense of some, who think that it is that material sun that should occupy the center of the globe of the universe, but the humanity of Jesus Christ, and the body of his Bride the Church, by which everything has been created, and to whose glory all creatures will serve” (Igl 709).

• Prayer in life.

For F. Palau, apostolic service is an encounter with Christ present in the members of his own Mystical Body, which is the Church. Prayer and apostolate are complementary expressions – mutually inferred – of the same ecclesial love. Christ and the brethren become present both in contemplation and in the proclamation of the divine mystery before men. To love and serve the Church is equivalent to realizing in fullness and perfection the supreme law of charity. In the end, as Francisco Palau repeats, “love is works“ (MRel 740).

Going through the letters he wrote to the first sisters, we see that he transmits to his groups the need not only to pray at specific times, but also to live a life of prayer and to pray over life. For Palau, as a good disciple of Teresa of Jesus, the proof of authentic prayer is in the occasions that arise each day.

HOW HE TEACHES TO PRAY

When Francisco Palau speaks of prayer, he does so from a strong and intense experience. He speaks as an experienced teacher. The pages on prayer are autobiographical pages, fruit of the experience of the intimate, friendly and familiar relationship he has had with his God.

1.Mystagogy

The word mystagogy comes from the Greek verb (mystagogein) and means “to grow in the mysteries”, “to be introduced into the mysteries”. In the early Church mystagogy referred to the last stage of the catechumenate. There was a remote preparation (of several years), then came the immediate preparation for the reception of the sacraments of initiation, which were received at the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday. The teaching received up to this point was called catechesis. In the early Christian communities the mystagogue introduced the baptised to the sacred realities and the Mystery of Christ. We do not find a more elaborate reflection until the Mystagogical Catecheses of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Cyril of Alexandria and St. John Chrysostom. And we will have to wait until St. Maximus the Confessor (580-682 A.D.) for a treatise on mystagogy.

With time, the meaning of this term was broadened and applied to any transmission of one’s own experience of God so that the other person can have his or her own experience. In reality it is to begin a journey of deepening in the mystery, proceeding from the visible to the invisible, from the sign to the signified, from the “sacraments” to the “mysteries” (Cf. CCC 1075). Throughout history we see that the great mystics have made an authentic initiation into the Christian mystery through their own experience of encounter with Christ.

Nowadays, spirituality tries to exercise mystagogy by presenting the mystery and inviting to experience it.

• Francisco Palau as mystagogue.

Francisco Palau in his spiritual itinerary shows us how he arrives through prayer or what is the same through the relationship with the Church to such an intimacy that it becomes a mystical experience that he lives and transmits.

He transmits and spreads what he lives to his groups of brothers and sisters, to the students of the School of Virtue and to all the people who approach him and invites them to follow his own itinerary. He does this in the places where he settles and creates communities.

From his prayerful experience embodied in the book of My Relations can be deduced some guidelines to follow for those who wish to enter into his deepest center in order to unite intimately with God and neighbor and experience the mystery of ecclesial communion. In fact this entire book is an ongoing relationship of friendship with his beloved Church. But it is above all in his Letters that he unfolds his prayerful magisterium, rightly guiding those who wish to embark on and enter this path.

Features

• The core of prayer is the ecclesial mystery of communion. It is grounded in the Gospel and this is its nourishment and strength.
• It is a free gift from God but requires the acceptance of the person for God to act.
• Determination is needed.
• The training process has to be administered in due time, gradually and gently, according to their capacity and disposition.
• It takes into account the whole person.
• Since the physical and moral constitution of man is such, his progress and his march along the path of virtues requires and demands a gradual and lifelong education, because in the school of Christ, learning is our whole life (cf. EVV 404-405).
• The rightness of adopting and choosing a suitable way of transmitting the content of the faith (EVV 403).

Pedagogy of prayer.

Taking into account his orientations, we arrive at the following script on prayer:

Enter within yourself: “Enter the temple of your soul; place yourself there in silence and listen to the voice of your King Solomon, who speaks to you always from the throne of the altar in the depths of your heart” (Ct. Ch. 1).

To be silent. In order to listen, it is necessary to seek solitude, to silence oneself. It is not an empty silence, but with a purpose: to listen to the Beloved, to welcome her or her word, to allow oneself to be looked at, to be transformed in order to reach union with God and the Church in faith, hope and love: “God hears us and can do no less because we speak to him in complete silence” (Cf. Cta 28; Cf. 38).

Time to contemplate: the gaze. “If you believe in me, never look at the Head separated from the Body…” (MRel 785;Cf.Cta 42,2).

Time to let oneself be contemplated: “And since I believe that this very clear and pure intelligence has been looking at me and seeing me for an eternity, it was very natural for me to be attentive to her eyes and to wish to see them open and looking at me, since I was looking at her” (MRel 727).

Time to let oneself be transformed: “The presence of your Beloved in faith, love, in your person, has transformed you into her. Your being, formless without faith or love in her, has taken on her figure with her presence, and you have been transformed into her being” (MRel 915;Cf.753, 7;725;958).

Time to respond: “I am no longer my own, but your property; because I love you, dispose of my life, my health and my rest and all that I am and have” (MRel 722;Cf.332;740).

ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF THE PALAUTIAN PRAYER

We start from the fact that the essential element of Palatian prayer is ecclesiality. The other characteristics derive from this as from their source:

Dialogical, personal and communitarian prayer.

From his experience of the Church as a mystery of communion-relation it follows that the first characteristic of Palautian prayer is that of being dialogical and personal. Palautian prayer is rooted in the very structure of revelation, which is precisely dialogical: God speaks, and man listens and responds; God works and man collaborates. To the extent that he listens, he becomes capable of questioning himself, of seeing and understanding. Palautian prayer is personal in the sense that it is addressed to a person, the Church, and involves the whole person. God is experienced as a ‘mystery of communion’. The encounter with God is one to one, but the you is “God and the neighbor”, therefore the encounter from person to person is an encounter with the Church. The Church is a living person, in whom only finds love, forgiveness and salvation. That is why Palautian prayer is never a monologue, but the descent into the depths of the self is always a coming out of oneself, a communitarian, ecclesial colloquy. This colloquy is so true, so real, that it sometimes takes the form of discussion and dispute. The colloquy with God-Church moves simultaneously between two poles: transcendence and immanence, closeness and distance, trust and fear. It is enough to open the book of My Relationships. All of it, as its name indicates, is a permanent dialogue with the Church.

Palautian prayer is therefore deeply personal; it always involves the whole and sincere prayer of the person praying, but it is also communitarian and ecclesial. The individual is never separated from the history of his people and always prays as a member of the people and intercedes for them. The passage from the personal to the collective, from the individual to the communitarian takes place without counterpositions and without violence. And this is not only in formulated prayer, but already beforehand at the level of lived experience.

Prayer, a matter of three.

Generally, the emphasis is placed on the dialogical relationship between God and the person. On the other hand, it is fairer to open ourselves to the triangular dimension: God-me-others. The praying person in his or her complexity. God’s partner in prayer is the person in the realism and complexity of his being. He must never avoid this confrontation with the reality of life in order to place himself in the presence of God without masks. In the person/community relationship in which the believer lives, the others are not strangers, they are the “with me” of the history of salvation.

The pedagogical value of mediations.

The non-immediate character of the relationship with God, if not through faith and love, the non-visibility of his presence and the non-audibility of his word and his will, must open the discourse to the mediations of the presence and revelation of the God of prayer. In fact, prayer – dialogue with God – is realized through mediations. These mediations can be: the Eucharist, the Word of God, nature, the events of history, images, the various simple repetitive prayers. In the same way, these mediations can be at the service of a prayerful expressiveness on the part of those who wish to be in total relationship with God through expressive forms: prayer with gestures, prayer with the body, prayer with song, meditation, contemplative silence.

The interiorization of prayer.

Since the encounter with God tends to take place in the most intimate part of us, every prayerful activity must gradually lead to an interiorization by which the whole person listens to God and responds to God. In this task of interiorization, it is necessary to underline these two possibilities that go at the same pace: The progressive interiorization of the external mediations. Interiorization of the word, the rhythmic and repeated prayer, the Eucharistic presence, the image…. the progressive interiorization of the praying methodology through the degrees of prayer, as indicated by the masters of Christian prayer: vocal prayer, meditation, recollected prayer, simple contemplation or loving attention… The path of interiorization cannot but go hand in hand with a real progress in the totality of the real relationship with God in the whole sense of Christian life, at the moral and spiritual level.

Trinitarian experience

The God of our prayer is the God of revelation in its Trinitarian dimension: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. In Jesus revelation has manifested itself as the communication of a divine life that is a dialogue between persons. The revelation to man is the translation to the exterior of an internal dialogue. And so prayer is not a generic reference to a solitary God, but a precise and personal reference to the Father, the Spirit and the Lord Jesus. The ultimate end of prayer is always the Father, but through Christ and in the Spirit.

“I went up, and he led me among the ruins of a hermitage. My spirit rose to contemplate the heavenly Jerusalem; the whole mountain was filled with glory. And the Father, making his voice heard, said: “This is my Daughter and your Daughter“. And the Son: “This is my Bride and your Bride“. And the Holy Spirit: “I am the love of the Father and of the Son, and I am the bond that will bind you by grace and love to the Daughter of God and to the Bride of the Lamb” [Rev 21:9-27]” (MRel 754-755; cf. 772,946.6).

Gratuitous experience

Prayer presupposes a relationship and, more precisely, a relationship of love. The men of the Bible are the friends of God. Prayer, therefore, can be discovered along the lines of friendship, and those who pray are God’s friends who converse with Him, since they are invited by Him to this conversation. In relation to man, God always has the initiative. Although in the Bible the “search for God” seems to prevail, it is He who moves first in search of man. If God had not revealed Himself, all the efforts to find Him would be valid; but if He has revealed Himself, it is right and prudent that we seek Him through the path of His concrete revelation. In dialogue we must leave the initiative to God: to pray is above all to listen. Prayer in the Bible favors the attitude of listening: “Hear, O Israel” (Dt 6:4). In the beginning there was already the Word. Jesus is the total revelation of God. To pray is to welcome this word and this mystery.

Prayer is born of the awareness of the gift and the knowledge of the limit, but always in an open vision, in the desire to go beyond. If it is true that the gaze starts from daily experience, from the history in which we live, from its joys and its dramas, it is equally true that then the gaze goes towards the One who is beyond history. Above the goods of God, prayer seeks God. The secret vein of all Palautian prayer is the desire for God. Prayer thus expresses the loneliness of man, who feels exiled, unsatisfied, a pilgrim towards the absolute and a stranger here, never perfectly integrated and understood, never perfectly expressed. The things of the world, the very gifts of God, are the image of God, not God. Prayer is the sign that man is made for God; it expresses the desire to meet him: “I saw her looking at me, and I thought she was looking at me with favorable and loving eyes…. I had my heart full of things and I could not explain them to her. So, she went away and I remained mad with love and affection, because these visits only served to torment me more, because with them my desire to see her and to relate with her in a friendly way grew“ (MR 727;Cf.721;726,1.2;952,3).

INTERWOVEN WITH HISTORY AND LIFE

Another important characteristic of Palautian prayer is its close link with history and with life. Note above all that the prayer assumes different physiognomies and tones in the various stages of his spiritual journey, the history of salvation itself. The prayer of eager search of his youth: “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 the enigma, of the tropes, of the metaphors and I could not see you except under the species of a being incomprehensible to me“ (MRel 722). That of the Struggle of the soul with God during his exile in France; the prayer full of questions during his exile in Ibiza; the prayer of liberation practised in the exorcisms; the joyful prayer of union with the Church, once he discovers her true face: “Oh, what joy is mine! 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... I am no longer my own thing, but your property; because I love you, dispose of my life, my health and my rest and all that I am and have” (MRel 722).

1. Francisco Palau prays in life and with life.

God speaks to man in history, and man responds to God within history, adopting its language, its culture and its problems. The man of God who is Francisco Palau transforms into prayer all the realities that populate his life. The God of prayer is the God of salvation, the God of life. Prayer is not a separate experience, an isolated event. There is not prayer on the one hand and life on the other. Palau prays what he lives. Palautian prayer is above all contemplative. He does not disregard his personal reality or his surroundings; the interest of prayer is directed towards God and his neighbor, towards the contemplation of the Church:

“-I will not let you be alone from now on,” she said to me with much love.

-When you see me alone, will you be with me?

-Yes, and also when you are in company, because I am the neighbors united among themselves by love under Christ, my Head; and when you are with them you are with me and I am in you” (MRel 799).

From it, the prayerful person will know how to return to himself and to the things he has to accomplish, for her glory and in her service.

“Seeing that human forces are not enough to stop the very serious evils that afflict the Church, in certain seasons I withdraw to an islet, an hour long and of a prodigious elevation, which in columned crests rises above the deep Mediterranean Sea. The boat leaves and I stay there alone for a few days, to unite myself with God and his Church, in faith, hope and love. My object was to unite with her in faith, hope and love and to carry out her commands. There I saw the attributes, graces, gifts, virtues and perfections of Christ, head of the Church, in the saints who are on earth and represent her…” (MRel 723).

Prayer is always both a vertical and horizontal gaze, never just one or the other. We seek the face of God, and we are referred back to creation and history; here are his traces, the signs of his love and mercy. We question ourselves about life, and we are pointed back to God and his mystery. By questioning life, we arrive at God, and by contemplating God we are led to a new vision of life. Prayer is born from life and, after having turned to God, it returns to life, but with new eyes and opening new possibilities.

For Francisco Palau, true prayer is the prayer of the heart, that is, the prayer that comes from the center of the person and from the depths of life. The prayer of the lips or of many words is not authentic, because it does not come from the root of man. In prayer man is involved in his totality, in his inseparable unity. The physical and spiritual needs form body. Palautian prayer does not move only in the sphere of spiritual goods, but in the totality of life.

Prayer is not a verbal relationship with God, but a vital, existential relationship, of which the verbal relationship is simply its explicit and partial expression. Before the acts of prayer there is in Palau a constant perception of “the presence of the Beloved,” which we can think of as a vital, implicit prayer that gives meaning and truth to the verbal prayer. One of the most serious deviations that the Bible reproaches is the separation between prayer and morality, worship and life (Is 1;Am 5;Jer 7).

• The connaturality of Palautian prayer.

Prayer is not a strange phenomenon, typical of rare people. It is exactly the opposite. Let us think a little about how prayer is gestated in the human heart. Man is a “being of needs”. He is never fully what he wants to be, nothing fully satisfies his desire. And, seeing himself in need, the human being cries out: “I am hungry, I am afraid, I want to be loved, I am overwhelmed, I am dying”. This cry is at the same time a call. The person does not only cry out his need. His cry is addressed to someone to come to his aid. Regardless of your religious beliefs, there is one basic fact that cannot be ignored. The human being is a beggar, and his existence is always, in some way, a cry, a call and a request for help. But human beings do not only need things, objects or solutions to their various problems. At the bottom of these concrete needs, the person perceives a deeper emptiness, which nothing and no one can fill. Women and men need “salvation”. This is continually demonstrated to us by the Palautian narrative. It is, as we have seen, the cry made supplication to God: From the depths I cry out to you, Lord; hear my voice (Ps 130:1).

Ultimately Palautian prayer is not to assume knowledge or learn techniques. It is an awareness of that liberating and saving presence; the only one that ultimately can make the protagonist of the prayer or the protagonists, recover for themselves and their community, their own image and dignity: “In fulfillment of my word, I was going up to the top of the mountain to pray, and I did not find the one I was looking for in the place of the appointment; I called her and she did not answer me. I went up to another little mountain covered with forest, and I found her solitary and in deep meditation. And a loud voice from the same mountain said to me: “Prayer, prayer“. And I became silent and prayerful. I was very agitated and deeply moved by what I had heard in the city from whence I came. And my beloved made me a sign, and lifting her hand to heaven, she said: -During the beautiful summer evenings and at dawn you will pray in due form; you will come alone to this place and find me. Prayer will cure all your ills; do not fail” (MRel 830).

• In spirit and truth. Simplicity and transcendence.

When F. Palau begins to put into words the intimate movement of his spirit, in vibration with the Church, his prayer has reached contemplative simplification; it has naturally become a friendly relationship, a loving relationship with the one who is everything to him: the Church, his Beloved. Prayer is then soliloquy, dialogue, colloquy, reciprocal communication. The process of rational discourse and meditative reflection is overcome.

Everything is expressed and expressed admiringly and affectionately. We are before the Teresian prayer, but centered on the loving presence of the mystical Christ in the Church. When Francisco Palau transfers his prayer to paper, he does nothing more than put in writing what he is saying to the Church or what he has just spoken to her. He is simply expressing the loving encounter of that day.

The common thread of all Palautian prayer is the encounter with the Church. How to serve her in the circumstances of every day and how to find her in every person in need.

THE SIGN OF “SILENCE” IN PALAUTIAN PRAYER

Doing silence is a need of the person to meet himself, to develop more strongly his capacity to think, to be serene, in a word it helps the person to be himself. The believer in making silence also meets with himself and with God, but in this meeting there is the God who speaks and the God who is silent. A capacity to be silent is to welcome in faith this silence of God.

1. Silence of God.

The most disconcerting, revealing and purifying experience of Palautian prayer is the silence of God. Not infrequently in prayer one encounters a God who is silent. The invocation of Psalm 22 comes to mind, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” It is the question of a poor Jew who feels abandoned by a God whose fundamental characteristic is faithfulness. The lament of the poor Jew became the prayer of Christ on the cross. We are at the heart of the Christian faith. The experience of God’s silence envelops life as a whole; however, it is in prayer that this experience becomes more acute, more perceptible, more unarmed. Palau, like the biblical prayer, knows not only a God who listens to us, but also a God who hides himself, who denies us. He even knows a God who seems to deny his own promises.

“My Beloved not only did not accept my blood, nor did she reveal or discover herself to me, but she withdrew from me and abandoned me to the power of all the demons of hell. And at 31 years of my age I began to die living and to live dying a life so horrifying to my sight, so bitter, that it horrifies my flesh to write it: God gave my soul into the power of the demons; and it seems they had the strength to do with me as they pleased. And this life lasted until the age of 50 years, that is, 17 years in a row, without a day of light or interruption. During this time, love not only was not extinguished, but, raising its flames ever higher, it reached such an excess that it was no longer possible for me to bear my situation any longer” (MRel 871; cf. 814-815; 968).

The biblical God, not built by man and greater than man, judges, disenchants, forces him to overcome his desires, and precisely for this reason liberates and saves him. God’s silence is the sign of his love and fidelity, the sign that he listens deeply to man. Prayer is always effective, but in its own way: “What father among you, if his son asks him for a loaf of bread, will give him a stone” (Lk 11:11). Even in prayer, God is the master of events, and his way of directing them is a mystery to man. Therefore, in prayer it is man who is led to conversion, and not God; a theological conversion, and not only a moral one. Prayer is not the attempt to force God to enter into our projects, but the offer of an availability to his free initiative.

• Silence of the prayer.

The exhortation to silence in the presence of God is frequent in Scripture: Silence in the presence of the Lord (Hab 2:20); It is good to wait in silence for his salvation (Lam 3:25); … my desire is still and silent, like a child in its mother’s arms… (Ps 131:1). And in the theophany of Horeb, Elijah recognizes the passage of God when he hears: “the voice of a faint silence” (1Kings 19:12).

The entry into silence is a teaching common to all mystics: “The simple, absolute and incorruptible mysteries of theology are revealed in the more than luminous darkness of silence,” said Pseudo Dionysius; and Taullerus: “Let us sleep in God gently and in that endearing repose, let us listen to what He speaks in us and let us pass into the darkness of wise silence… Choose, then, one of two things: be silent and God will speak, or speak so that He will be silent. You must be silent. Then the word will be spoken that you will be able to understand and God will be born in your soul. On the other hand, be certain that if you insist on speaking, you will never hear his voice. To achieve our silence, waiting to listen to the Word, is the best service we can render him”.

“Pure, chaste, virginal love works in solitude to the fullness of its powers, because there it can see with all possible clarity its own object, which is the holy Church, or God and its neighbor. In solitude, retreat, silence, it works with all its efficacy, because there no one distracts it” (MRel 917).

The mystic goes beyond reason and thought to penetrate into a silence where he no longer needs words or concepts, because God is immediately present. Perhaps this was the origin of Francisco Palau’s silence, after an intense experience of God. He expresses it with the symbolic language he is accustomed to:

“I went many years in search of my Beloved; I found her, for she came to meet me; I have her, and her presence is enough for me. She lives in your midst, and you see her and know her better than I do. Tell me for my consolation: who is she, what is she? Give me her portrait. And the mountains were profoundly silent” (MRel 757).

Francisco Palau is requested by his beloved, he goes up to the solitude of the mountain, relates to her, listens to her, and finds in this conversation the strength and the guidelines for the mission entrusted to him by the Church: “After the prayer I withdrew into the crevices and openings of the mountain, and there I continued my prayer… Oh, I am alone, precious solitude!… And God, seated on the clouds, with a voice of thunder calls me and says to me: “Son of the great Prophets, come out of your cave and come if you dare to deal with me“. I rose up full of terror, horror and fright. And as I came out, a friendly voice said to me silently: “March, do not be afraid“. And I, clothed with strength, stood before the majesty of God” (MRel 922-923).

• Silence of creation.

In his descriptions, especially in My Relationships, he expresses in a masterful way when nature is calm and the effects it produces in those of us who contemplate with attention the peace it transmits: “I got up, I left my cave… A sepulchral silence reigned everywhere: the sea was at rest and without opening its mouth even to murmur; the air, still and serene; the sky, clean and pure. The eagle and the sea raven and other fishing birds that had come to spend the night in these high crags, came out of their hiding places to look for their food; the sparrow hawk that had its little ones in the inaccessible crevices of these rocks came out to hunt; the blackbird, a solitary bird, announced its melodious song from the most sublime of these crests on a beautiful day. Nature, with a sweet and eloquent voice said: “Let us adore the Creator, God, author of our being“; and I, joining her, prostrated myself before the cross of the Savior, that the more rough and rustic, the more it announced its virtue and strength” (MRel 813).

The solitude of the cave or the mountain is that privileged space where the colloquy with the beloved takes place. F. Palau, urged by love, withdraws and the silence of nature alerts his spirit to listen and welcome the voice of God: “Just as one who, tired from walking, lies down and sleep returns his strength, so I, this time, my spirit oppressed as I climbed up the rocks of the mountain, climbing the steps of the mountain….. And nightfall came, and waking up as one who comes out of a deep lethargy, answering the inner voice that delighted me in my reverie and fatigue, I asked with the most lively interest: -Do you exist, my dove?… My soul no longer slept. And keeping silent and attentive, that celestial voice continued saying: -I am, I exist, I live, I understand, I see you, I look at you, I speak to you, and I am your Lover and your Beloved” (MRel 909-910).

In Palautian experience, nature is an ideal space for integrating solitude, inner peace and spiritual experience: “I was, at sunset over the waters of the Mediterranean, sitting on the top of the mountain. The climate and weather was magnificent; all creatures were in deep peace, stillness and silence. The sea looked like an immense hall of glass or blue-green crystal at the foot of this mountain. The air whispered so sweetly, that it scarcely let one feel its fresh aura; and so clean and pure, that, joining in the distance with the waters, it was the image of glory. As the king of the stars hid beneath the sea, he glorified with his rays the waters and the air, so that it seemed like the empyrean, and in its center the Sun of justice clarifying the saints. I was looking at the great panorama that nature presents from the most sublime of the mountains when the star that illuminates and vivifies it bids her farewell. “Farewell, are you going away and leaving us in darkness? Will you come back? When? Come back, our life; come back, bright star, come back and do not delay“. So said all the creatures, and I listened; I was silent. And when the sun disappeared, I knelt down, and there I waited…” (MRel 910;Cf.827;918;944).

SOLITUDE

Loneliness is something inherent in the person. Solitude and silence are necessary both psychologically and religiously to meet God and ourselves. It is a dimension that stands out in Francisco Palau’s life; it is an important vocational element, so much so that it became an imperative need for him; he needed solitary spaces and places where he could meet his Beloved.

1. “In solitude I lived”

Francisco Palau, because of his Carmelite vocation, feels the call to contemplation, it is a personal decision; in his book The Solitary Life, he writes: “I decided at that time (1841-1842) to fix my residence in the most deserted, wild and solitary places, to contemplate with less occasion for distractions the designs of Divine Providence on society and on the Church” (VS 246).

By spiritual instinct and Carmelite formation he is a contemplative: “As a Carmelite, as a son of St. Teresa, I can only kiss these keys that keep me locked within these walls of Mediterranean waters… Here I have more than I asked for in my golden dreams when I was young, I dreamed of a contemplative life. Here I have my cell, my heaven; here I can use all my strength to work as a good priest with God the Father in the affairs and interests of Jesus Christ and his Church” (Cta 44,6).

He feels an imperious desire for solitude, but solitude and silence demand places to find them, we can affirm that he looks for them; we see in his biography that he always has his solitary place wherever he is; it can be a cave or a mountain (Cf.T.ALVAREZ,1981,73-74).

He has places with his own names: Aitona in Lleida; Montsant in Tarragona; Galamus, Livron, Mondessir and Cantayrac in France; San Honorato de Randa in Mallorca; Montserrat and Vallcarca in Barcelona, the Vedra in Ibiza. Solitude appears as the clothing of his great experiences: “These days I have been as solitary as I could wish” (Cta 6,2; Cf.MRel 910-911).

F. Palau’s vocation to solitude did not happen suddenly; it was present at the dawn of his religious life and priesthood. It then unfolded throughout his interior life and his apostolic action, as a missionary, founder and passionate for the Church. With a clear awareness of his connection with the two great archetypes of prophet and solitary: Elijah, the biblical man of Horeb and Carmel, and Teresa of Jesus, the great passionate of solitude (Cf.T.ALVAREZ,1981,74.).

The primacy of God, lived from the Mystery of the Church, imposes a contemplative mood on his whole existence. From this, he felt an apostolic urgency and a hunger for solitude: “In solitude I will be your companion, and in the midst of the peoples I will not leave you; in life I will be with you, and behind the shadows of the present life you will see me and I will be with you face to face in glory” (MRel811; Cf. 794-795).

• Solitude, the place of encounter.

It is the solitude of the heart in love that desires nothing and no one but the Beloved. She is the center of his life, she is somehow, in a San Juanist way, the quiet music and the sonorous solitude. That is why the vital space of the mountain becomes his home: the Vedra becomes the symbol: “You are in your own house. This mountain is your mansion, mortal man… the house that your Father had prepared for you so that in it you would be united with your Daughter” (MRel 807). When he is in the solitude of the mountain he expresses his encounters with the Beloved as biblical theophanies: “I went out of my cave. And on the top of the mountain, on a throne of immense glory, I saw the daughter of the eternal Father ….. She was covered with glory and did not let herself be seen, as the noonday sun does not let itself be seen, and out of the glory one could see only a clarified lump. And she said to me: You have called me; I am here on the mountain, come up” (MRel 739;Cf.851-852;866).

His experience urgently calls for solitude to contemplate and assimilate, to clarify himself in matters that concern the Church and to project the future. In solitude he prays, receives the mission and commits himself to fulfill it: “I remained alone on the mountain and having received the mission, I prepared myself to fulfill it” (MRel 740). Also in the solitude of the mountain he renews his religious commitments of fidelity and surrender to the Beloved: “Now it is important for me to know if you love me. That I receive you, that I love you, this is nothing strange, because you are infinitely beautiful and kind… Give yourself to me and I will receive you, says the Church. I …. give myself as I am with all that I have to you now in the time of my life and eternally” (MRel 763).

In solitude he finds the possibility of being united to his Beloved and at the same time his inner pacification. Here we can perceive the Sanjuanist resonance of the stanza of the Spiritual Canticle “in solitude I lived” (Cf. CB 35). Let us take up his experience: “Darkness and sadness covered my spirit. And I reached the top of the mountain, and there I found the one I was looking for… Happy solitude… I have everything with your presence, I lack nothing if I have you” (MRel 826).

In the same context he expresses that solitude heals the wounds of love, but, at the same time, opens others that are incurable, and these will not be healed until the definitive encounter: “Precious solitude, you have healed the wounds of my heart, but you have opened others that are incurable” (MRel 906; Cf 827).

He concludes the account of Mis Relaciones with a description of some of the birds that nested in the Vedrá, or frequented its rugged rocks, and served as company in his endless hours of solitude. He makes an evocation of the sonorous solitude and that somehow makes us perceive Sanjuanist resonances of the Spiritual Canticle especially in the songs 14-15;35-37. Thus it is expressed: “The solitary blackbird on the rocks, with the arrival of the beautiful season of spring, has already found his consort. And now, satisfied with such a companion, he congratulates himself; and having found a house to house his offspring, the two prepare the nests to place them. This is one of the eyewitnesses of my loves in solitude, a faithful companion, who with his mournful but melodious song celebrates my liaison with the Daughter of God. From the lofty pinnacles of the mountain it has often called my attention, not to hinder my conversation with my Beloved, but to extol with its sweet melody the glories of a solitary bird” (MRel 978).

We can conclude by saying that solitude is the space to recognize the Creator, to savor the intimate manifestations, to regain strength, to recognize the intimate emptiness and to accept the presence of God who envelops us, enabling us to surrender (cf. MRel 827).

Authors: Mª Dolores Jara CM, Pilar Munill CM, 100 fichas sobre Francisco Palau, Ed. Monte Carmelo, Burgos 2010, pp.267-288.

Translation: Aleksandra Nawrocka CMT

In this circumstances, Francisco Palau takes a pen to remind her of what is the most important in life. Anything that happens around us is here for us to take advantage of it to scale the heaven. The world, with all its power, has no power at all on us, when we have our eyes put steady in the Lord. We are in his hands, he will take care of us, as long as we are determined to take care of Him instead of worrying about our own lives. We only need to worry to conform our will to the will of God. If in everything we are ready to do only His will, there is no need to worry more. All we have left to do is to contemplate, look, see the wounds of His body, of the members of His mystical body that is the Church (God and our neighbour united and inseparable) and offer ourselves to put remedy to the evil that causes those wounds. Of course, the external position, conditions help a lot in achieving this interior peace, but are not necessary to be able to stay at peace, confident in God’s fatherly care for us.

I read this letter of Francisco Palau very often. I live in a place hostile to catholic religion, suspicious of any organized religious activity. We don’t even have the Blessed Sacrament in our community chapel. And yet, the demands of faith are the same for us as for any other Christian: to remain „immovable, unalterable and invariable in the midst of that wheel of spiritual stations to which the soul is subject while living in mortal flesh”. Just take care of me, Lord, as I take care of you here and now, in my brothers and sisters in this far land where you’ve sent me.

41. To Juana Gratias: Gramat (France)

Palma de Mallorca, November 17, 1857

J. M. J.

1. Dearest daughter: Let us go to your spirit. Your march and your flight towards God must always be the primary, principal and essential object of all our correspondence; and neither life nor death nor contradiction nor grace and favor must stop you or paralyse you, and you must begin each day a thousand times and not wait for tomorrow. Spiritual organization and order must be established, fixed and consolidated independently of all material things. And that order must be sustained and preserved (therein lies the miracle), in the midst of an eternal and continuous vicissitude of events, incidents that surround us. It must be immovable, unalterable and invariable in the midst of that wheel of spiritual stations to which the soul is subject while living in mortal flesh. Whatever its outward position may be, whatever turn the outward and the material part may take, all must serve to scale heaven. And you already know what this interior and spiritual order consists of: charity, that is, in uniting oneself with God, conforming oneself to him, and divesting oneself of all that is proper to oneself in order to clothe oneself with God.

2. This union is consolidated in the love of one’s neighbour. Take care of me and I will take care of you. Jesus crucified in his moral body is the object of all the soul’s solicitude and care. Well then, in prayer, see if in you there is an agreement between God and your soul. When you see this agreement, disregard yourself and meditate on the wounds of the moral body of Jesus, and offer yourself as a victim for whatever he wants and demands of you, and in these exercises spend your prayer. The exterior form can and does help the interior in a wonderful way, but the interior and spiritual order does not depend on the good exterior action. Leave this for [when providence will give it and it will be up to me to take advantage of the circumstances that will be offered].

They call me and I am sorry because I would like to extend myself, but I will do so in Ibiza. My care will always be directed principally to this part, as long as I have my head unoccupied.

Farewell.

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.

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