Prefigured by the chosen people in the Old Testament, the Church was instituted by Our Lord Jesus Christ in the fullness of time, in order to perpetuate His presence among men and thus lead them to salvation. Originating from the Greek εκκλησία – ekklésia – the word church means convocation or assembly.
In this sense, much more than a mere material or legal structure, the Church is a living reality. Thus, we see her represented sometimes as the Lord’s vineyard or field (cf. 1 Cor 3:9; Mt 21:33-43), sometimes as the flock of which Christ is the Good Shepherd (cf. Jn 10:11-16), but also as a spiritual house built with living stones: the heavenly Jerusalem (cf. 1 Pt 2:5; Rv 21:9-14).
Considering the “personal” dimension of the Church, it is natural to wonder: does this venerable lady have a physiognomy?
However, St. Paul presents an even more sublime image. In his Letter to the Colossians, the Apostle of the Gentiles states that Jesus is “the Head of the Body which is the Church” (Col 1:18). And so close is the bond between the Divine Saviour and the institution He founded that, as St. Thomas Aquinas teaches, “the Head and members are as one mystic person.”1
The Church, our Mother
If we can acknowledge this quasi-personal character of the Church, we will all the more readily be able to add the maternal character. Indeed, through the waters of Baptism, she gives us birth to life in Jesus Christ; through the grace of the other Sacraments, she nourishes, strengthens and heals us; and through the Magisterium, she teaches us eternal truths. Furthermore, this visualization is reinforced by Catholic tradition, which for centuries has been accustomed to referring to the Mystical Bride of the Redeemer with the expression Holy Mother Church.
Considering this “personal” and maternal dimension of the Heavenly Jerusalem, it is natural to wonder: does this venerable lady have a physiognomy? What might it be? Transfixed with filial love, we are led to plead, paraphrasing the Apostle St. Philip: “Lord, show us the glory of our Mother, the Church, and that will be enough for us” (cf. Jn 14:8).
This was the ardent desire that led a young Catalan to enter the Carmelite monastery in Barcelona in 1832.
Passionate for Christ’s Church
Born into a family faithful to both altar and throne, Francisco Palau y Quer came into the world on December 29, 1811, in the small town of Aitona, near the Pyrenees. Having received an exemplary religious upbringing, he soon decided to give himself to divine service.
In 1828 he entered the diocesan seminary in Lleida and studied there until age twenty-one, when, discerning in himself a Carmelite vocation, he was admitted to the novitiate of the monastery in Barcelona. In November of 1833, he professed his religious vows and took minor orders shortly thereafter.
However, a special passion impelled him on the path of consecrated life: “Separated from the world, retired to the monastery, I asked for the thing I loved, I sought it […] in the austerities of religious life, in fasting, in silence, in poverty, I sought it and found it!… I saw my beloved and united myself to her in faith, hope and love! Her presence satisfied my passion and with her I was happy, her beauty was enough for me. God and my neighbour – that is, the Catholic Church – appeared to me as beautiful as a divinity.”2
Therefore, enraptured by the supernatural beauty of the Mystical Bride of the Saviour, the young Carmelite made his love for her his raison d’être. However, Providence was not slow to test his fidelity to his beloved, allowing him to be, for a long time, the target of the persecution that the enemies of the Church always wage in their insatiable desire to tarnish, deform and, if possible, destroy her.
A life of intense battles and profound recollection
In 1835, an anti-clerical conflagration broke out in Catalonia. In a satanic rage, the revolutionaries set fire to the Carmelite monastery in Barcelona. Miraculously escaping the attack, Blessed Palau went to Barbastro, where he was ordained a priest the following year.
Starting then, he suffered a series of attacks, often with homicidal intent, from the visible adversaries of the Church of Christ, in addition to diabolical attacks, and was no longer able to maintain a stable residence. He began to alternate periods of apostolic mission, such as those in the Balearic Islands, with periods of exile, such as the eleven years he spent in France.
However, the Carmelite priest never gave in to the pressure of his adversaries: through prayer, exorcism, polemics and preaching, he waged an unrelenting battle.
Blessed Palau, whose love for the Church was his life’s reason, saw her under the form of a maiden with whom he had moving conversations
Among his many apostolic endeavours was the newsletter El Ermitaño, in which, as well as condemning the sins of his time, he recorded a number of his mystical experiences, some of which, in the context of private revelations, can be considered true prophecies.
The strength of this indomitable fighter came from his frequent meditations and assiduous recollection. From time to time, he would go to a rocky island in the Mediterranean and spend days there in solitude. These retreats on the island of Es Vedrà resulted in many sensible contacts between Blessed Palau and the heavenly Jerusalem. In 1860, his beloved began to appear to him in the form of a maiden with whom he had moving dialogues, as recounted in his posthumous work My Relations with the Church.
Finally, informed that an epidemic was raging in his native region, he returned there to administer the Sacraments to the sick. His health, however, already shaken by incessant activity and prolonged penances, suffered a decisive blow in the midst of this gruelling mission. Having arrived in Tarragona on March 10, 1872, the champion of the Holy Church gave his soul to God on the 20th. He had spent his entire life fighting for those he loved so much: God and his neighbour.
When the orthodoxy of his writings and the holiness of his life had been verified, he was beatified on April 24, 1988.
Divine teaching
After this biographical sketch of Blessed Palau’s features, we can move on to consider his mystical relationship with the Holy Church.
As the Divine Redeemer helped him to penetrate the mystery of His union with mankind, manifested in His Mystical Bride, the Carmelite Saint’s soul, at the same time, yearned more and more to contemplate the true physiognomy of the one he had sought since his youth. And Our Lord responded to this noble desire with refined subtlety and – why not say it? – with didactic art.
In fact, as a sublime spiritual reality, the Church exceeds human comprehension. For this reason, many of her perfections were presented to the Blessed in the person of different figures from Sacred History. We will recount some of them below.3
Living figures of the Bride of the Lamb
In March 1865, the Carmelite went to the island of Ibiza to preach a mission. Thinking he was alone, he was surprised to come across a beautiful young woman dressed in pastoral clothes. The Blessed asked her in amazement who she was.
“I am Rachel,” she replied.
Recognizing in Laban’s daughter (cf. Gn 29:5-10) the figure of his beloved, the priest asked:
“When I am alone, will you be with me?”
To the affirmative answer, the shepherdess added:
“And also when you are accompanied, because I am the neighbours united to one another by love, under Christ, my Head. When you are with them, you are with me and I am with you.”
Again, the missionary asked:
“When I am alone, who are you, most amiable companion?”
“I am then the congregation of all the Angels and Saints of Heaven and earth under Christ, my Head.”
In fact, the young woman kept her promise. During a mission on April 2, Fr. Palau once again found himself in front of the same maiden, who told him:
“I am the daughter of Laban, and these people who run after you […] are the flock I feed in the woods of this world.”
On March 3, 1866, the Blessed was in the ruins of a castle when he came across the figure of Esther, who represented the regal power of the Christ’s Bride. After making several pronouncements to him about the Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel for the latter times, the sovereign said:
“On the ruins of the infernal empire I will rise in glory, and on the ruins of my sanctuary I will build my imperial citadel with a glory such as I have never had on earth.”
By means of emblematic figures of the Old Testament, Providence revealed to Blessed Palau the perfections of the Spouse of the Lamb
In the days that followed, the Church again addressed Fr. Palau, this time in the guise of the judge who led the children of Israel in the war against Jabin and his general, Sisera (cf. Jgs 4).
The lady said to him:
“I am Deborah. Death to Jabin and Sisera, down with the demons! As Sisera was nailed to the ground by the hand of Jael, so Beelzebub and his princes shall fall into my hands and be cast into the abyss.”
And she added:
“In my name, for the price of redemption, present on the altar the Body and Blood of Jesus, my Spouse, and cast the demons into hell, because they have been vanquished and defeated in battle!”
Through these figures, Providence wanted to reveal to Blessed Palau the perfections of the Bride of the Lamb. Other aspects were also personified in Rebekah, who tenderly and deftly favoured Jacob (cf. Gn 27:6-29); in the chaste widow Sarah, who had seven husbands murdered by Asmodeus, and was finally able to marry when she found a pure and worthy man, Tobias (cf. Tb 3:8); and even in the invincible Judith, who cut off the head of the wicked Holofernes (cf. Jdt 13:3-11).
Mary Most Holy: the perfect model
However, although they were authentic images of the Church, these ladies represented her partially and imperfectly. Fr Palau needed to get to know the only creature capable of containing within herself all the moral perfections of the Bride of Christ.
One evening, while he was on Mount Vedrà, the Carmelite priest perceived, in a confused and veiled way, the presence of his beloved under a hitherto unknown figure.
“What is your name?” he asked.
“I am Mary, the Mother of God.”
“Having said this, the heavens opened and the shadows and figures vanished,” recounts the Blessed. During the dialogue, the Blessed Virgin assured him that from now on it would be in her that the Carmelite would contemplate the Church, although her other images would continue to visit him.
In fact, after some time Rebekah reappeared, explaining to him the reasons for the change:
“The other women and I represent the Church very imperfectly. At first, for your sake, it was Judith, Rachel, Esther, Deborah, myself and others who began the work in you. Now you believe, and through your faith you can see something more perfect. […] The Virgin Mary is the sole type, the only figure in Heaven who most perfectly represents the holy Church because, created and formed for this purpose, She is, in the moral and spiritual order as well as in the physical and material, the most perfect and finished work of God’s wisdom and omnipotence.”
Years later, the Blessed would explain this reality in the following words: “Only Mary, Mother of God, was Virgin and Mother; and in these perfections, She is the only one who shows us the purity, virginity and motherhood of the Church. The Church is a virgin because the Holy Spirit is at work in her conception and in her birth; she is a most fertile mother, who has as her children all those predestined to glory.”
Holy, Catholic, Apostolic… and Marian Church!
It is striking to note the harmony between Blessed Palau’s writings and the teachings of the Church’s Magisterium. In fact, recognizing Our Lady as the “type and excellent exemplar”4 of the Mystical Bride of Christ, the Second Vatican Council states: “For in the mystery of the Church, which is itself rightly called mother and virgin, the Blessed Virgin stands out in eminent and singular fashion as exemplar both of virgin and mother.”5
Only Mary can represent the holy Church with perfection, because She is the most perfect work of God’s wisdom and omnipotence
For its part, the Catechism of the Catholic Church6 recalls that the Mother of God represents the Church not only in what she is, but in what she will be; in other words, that the Mystical Body of Our Lord, through a continuous growth in grace and holiness, will reach its fullness when it fully resembles the Immaculate.
In this regard, making Blessed Palau’s ardent desire for the glorification of the Church our own, we have to ask ourselves: when will humanity have the chance to contemplate the physiognomy of the Mother of God in the Mystical Bride of Christ?
St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort prophesies an era in which “souls breathe Mary as the body breathes air.”7 Undoubtedly, when this happens, we will be able to refer to the Church not only as one, holy, Catholic and apostolic, but also as Marian. It will then be the great “nunc dimittis” of faithful souls: “Now You can bring history to a close, Lord, for all the glories of your Bride have been fully manifested!” ◊
Notes
1 ST. THOMAS AQUINAS. Summa Theologiæ. III, q.48, a.2, ad.1.
2 BLESSED FRANCISCO PALAU Y QUER. Mis relaciones con la Iglesia. In: Obras selectas. Burgos: Monte Carmelo, 1988, p.350.
3 The facts recounted here, as well as the dialogues reproduced, are taken from the aforementioned work Mis relaciones con la Iglesia [My Relations with the Church].
4 SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL. Lumen gentium, n.53.
5 Idem, n.63.
6 Cf. CCC 972.
7 ST. LOUIS-MARIE GRIGNION DE MONTFORT. True Devotion to Mary, n.217. In: God Alone. Bay Shore, NY: Montfort Publications, 1987, p.360.
