By: Rosa María Ber Miralles
«What are you doing there, Elias? I am burning with zeal for you, oh! Lord God of Hosts», it reads in the book of Kings, (1 Kings 19, 9-11). This verse also describes the zeal for God and for souls of the Blessed Francisco Palau. Discalced Carmelite, priest, Apostolic Missionary, writer, founder, exorcist, and son of the prophets… Exclaustrated, persecuted, slandered, betrayed, exiled, banished, imprisoned, several times they tried to end his life… He was born in Aitona, Lérida, in 1811 and died in Tarragona in the year 1872. On April 24, 1988, Sunday of the Good Shepherd and Marian year, he was beatified by St. John Paul II in Rome.
The Blessed Francisco Palau was the great-uncle of Saint Teresa of Jesus Jornet, but unlike his niece, Father Palau has been forgotten along with his message. An impressive message for our days, for the Catholic of faith or for the person who may have lost it or had it taken away, but who is still willing to listen. The young Francisco understood very well the words of the Lord to St. John: «Behold your Mother», (Jn 19, 25-27). The Lord proclaimed the spiritual and universal motherhood of the Virgin.
A dark night accompanied the Blessed for many long years. The Holy Spirit called him to a greater love, to espousal and union with the Church herself. Every priest is called to this union: «As a priest, I am your spouse». «Only the union of faithful spousal love can satisfy the desires of the heart, consummated at the Altar with the participation of the most august sacrament», he wrote in his work My Relations with the Church.
An order of exorcists
Ascending toward the summit of Mount Carmel in 1860, with determined determination, he began his mystical experience with the Church. First, through some holy women of the Old Testament, figures of the Church and of Mary. Until in 1864 it was the Most Holy Mary, the perfect and complete figure of the Church, who revealed herself to him.
The Holy Trinity established a union with the Immaculate that is unrepeatable and superior to any other creature. It is for this reason that to the Church and, therefore, to its Head, Our Lord Jesus Christ, we must go through Mary. She reveals to us the love of the Holy Trinity for each one of us.
From 1851 to 1854 Father Palau had founded in Barcelona the School of Virtue. «True devotion is authentic when it is translated into works of virtues, in imitation of Mary’s life», he once said. But also in his exile in Ibiza, from the islet of Es Vedrá, like St. John, he saw a fierce attack against the Church: «He saw Mary, the Church, and the dragon…», (Rev. 12).
A «halt» to the action of Satan
«God has sent me to you (…) to instruct you about and on the matter of exorcism», St. Michael will tell him. A special mission to remedy unbelief. And it is that the ministry of exorcism had notably diminished. An order of exorcists and asylums for «energumens», under the direction of the Holy Father, scattered throughout the Christian world, this is what God commanded.
Although the signs from heaven were fulfilled in the Barcelona neighborhood of Vallcarca and Els Penitents, the ecclesiastical authorities did not understand the Blessed, authorities to whom he always obeyed. His Holiness Leo XIII, with his vision, would confirm what was prophesied by the Blessed. Palau’s mission would have been like a «halt» to the action of Satan.
And he announced: another mission will come, the mission of Elias, an extraordinary mission, of restoration, with the Woman clothed with the Sun, the Immaculate. «Until then the power of Satan will increase. Sin and unbelief give him strength and freedom. But the Church will overcome him as Christ on Golgotha. And until the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary arrives, her Reign, which will prepare that of Christ: thy Kingdom come to us». Father Palau exhorts us —«Catholics, to the virtues!»— to return to putting God as the priority of life. The victory is assured, it depends on us the response to the Most Holy Virgin Mary.
Note: Article originally published in El Debate and which, at the request and with the permission of its author, has been replicated in Infovaticana