12 FRANCISCO PALAU – WRITINGS STRUGGLE OF THE SOUL WITH GOD 13 collection already includes nine easy-to-handle volumes. The conscientious and precise publications of the principal autobiographic writings such as My Relations with the Church and the Letters are taken cared of in another series of major format. It can be said that the Palautian bibliographic panorama is satisfactory. Based on the publications mentioned, the message of Francisco Palau can be studied with complete g u a r a n t y. Likewise, a handy publication had been tried for the purpose of facilitating easy access to the texts of the Blessed ( B u rgos 1988). It is not easy to combine the re q u i rements of similar purpose. The inclusion of all the Palautian pages in one single volume of acceptable proportion and easy handling runs into serious technical problems of composition. They tried again, practically accepting the “complete work, although stripped of illustrations and annotations that accompany the independent publications of each written work. One is obliged to recourse to it when clarification of STRUGGLE OF THE SOUL WITH GOD delicate or confusing points is re q u i re d . The chronology had been the fundamental criterion in the regulation of the texts, although it is not always possible to maintain it with rigor, given the nature of some writings, like the L e t t e r s, the diverse pieces of the legislative body, including M y Relations with the Church. All these writings prolonged their redaction for several years and they interfered or are incorporated with other concrete and determined dates. Consequently, there is a need to opt for a necessarily elastic organization with regard to chronology. This warning has to be taken into account in order to understand better the sequence proposed in this volume that collects in practice all the Palautian production, except for the loose pieces of less interest because of the subject matter or repetitious arguments. These are gathered together in other pages that appear in this edition. 14 FRANCISCO PALAU – WRITINGS STRUGGLE OF THE SOUL WITH GOD 15 P R E S E N TAT I O N With this book Francisco Palau begins the apostolate of the pen. It is the first link of a project developed in the subsequent writings. He intended only to serve the Church and men. According to him, all believers are called to that glorious task. It is not a question of being privileged or super gifted, still much less, exclusive to priests. It is enough to love the Church sincerely and to be attuned with her in order to feel called to her “service.” Francisco Palau was imbued with this idea and he proclaimed it more with example than with the pen. The book Struggle of the soul with God is above all a personal testimony; it later became a reference for teaching. First literary fruit. – The composition took him a few months, that is, the last months of 1842. In the early days of the following year, he submitted it to the printing press in Montauban, where it appeared in 1843. The turmoil of the first “carlist” war confined him to France by the middle of 1840, after an intense priestly ministry in Catalonia. Since his 16 FRANCISCO PALAU – WRITINGS STRUGGLE OF THE SOUL WITH GOD 17 violent expulsion from the Carmelite convent of Barcelona in Apostolate of prayer. – Francisco Palau did not content 1835, he personally confirmed the dramatic situation of the himself with applying his prayer and sacrificial offering of life Church in Spain. He committed himself to work for its in favour of the Church. He tried to influence other souls with recovery through the re-Christianization of the society, but the same desires and intentions. His apostolic projection the civil war “banished him to the strange port of exile.” sprang spontaneously from his Te re s i a n - C a rme lite root. Through it, it is necessarily converted into force of attraction. The situation, instead of getting better, was visibly worsening. He could do little or nothing from his place of Francisco Palau did not feel satisfied with just personal exile; at least, it seemed thus at first sight. The preoccupation work. The Church urged and stirred him towards more. In his for the Church and for his country grew in his soul. From apostolic journeys, and from the confines of solitude, he Rome Pope Gregory XVI called on the whole world to pray proclaimed unceasingly the crusade of prayer; he re c r u i t e d for the critical situation of the Spanish Church. It was candidates for the “struggle with God” in favour of the Spanish impossible for Francisco Palau, who was competent in any Church. From that ideal these pages were born. Some Jesuits, ecclesial undertaking, to remain with crossed arms waiting promoters of the renewed Ignatian spirituality, were on their for an uncertain outcome. He could do much for the Church, way by then organizing the “Apostolate of prayer” in France. above all, to encourage others to work with him for that The exiled Carmelite knew nothing about it, but his re l i g i o u s cause. So, he undertook the work. f o rmation impelled him towards the same direction. He proposed to teach how to pray efficaciously for the Church, no Apostolic efficacy of prayer. – By then Francisco Palau m o re no less. He sought for an original form, not through an had already very clear ideas about the mystery of the Church organization endowed with statutes and regulations, but and the “communion of saints.” Since his initiation into the through a manual pedagogically well structured. That is what Te r e s i a n - C a r melite spirituality, he knew perfectly the he wanted the Struggle of the Soul to be. apostolic value of sacrifice and the life of prayer. His own He declared it in the letter of introduction. His intention religious vocation impelled him toward that direction. Seeing was to instruct souls in “the spirit of prayer that must be himself impeded from acting directly in the apostolic service, followed during the horrible tempest” that wrecked the he revived in his soul the ecclesial impetus of Teresa of Avila. Spanish Church. There were people who did not know how He relived experiences similar to that of the Saint and reacted to respond to that Christian demand and accordingly could in a “Teresian way.” Explicit confession of such harmony is not support the invitation of the Pope. They needed rd found in this same book (3 conference, art. 4). orientation and concrete directives. Francisco Palau offered Together with the basic idea of the apostolic efficacy of himself as mentor and guide for the many who loved the the life of prayer and sacrifice, that which sustains the Church and who found themselves in similar circumstances. framework of the entire book, another reason arose: the The book intends to be “a methodological collection of all urgency of sharing the same restlessness with other persons the ideas, which at present are within its reach, relative to placed in the same situation. From this springboard he set praying properly for the Church.” Prayer is understood in a out to write the Struggle of the Soul with God. broader sense: as a style of life and a concrete practice of 18 FRANCISCO PALAU – WRITINGS STRUGGLE OF THE SOUL WITH GOD 19 prayer. He calls it frequently “prayer and sacrifice for the The author synthesized it thus: “God, with his permissive Church.” It presents “everything that can be humanly will, wants the battle of the Church against the infernal practiced by the ones who sincerely desire to cooperate with powers. We must not want it. Herein lies the collision of wills: the Holy Spirit in this struggle.” ours colliding with that of God, as if we oppose it and we do not want what God permits. So, we struggle with that of God Paradoxical title. – The author did not title his book who, for the glory of the Church, wills the horrible battles that hastily. He thought of it slowly. The epigraph of the Struggle the Church suffers from at present. We do not want these with God would not be bad as a treaty on prayer, but it battles because it brings us to the edge of the precipice. This needed to be clarified. He made it completely in the prologue terrible struggle of the soul with God arises from here, about to the reader. He proposed in it the theological bases on which we are going to speak in this book.” It aims, therefore, which the framework of the work was established. The title to disarm the divine arm through prayer and sacrifice of one’s that we have given to the book we are presenting to you own life. could not but surprise you, benevolent reader. Who could be so powerful as to struggle with the omnipotent? You might have said within yourself, what does this mean? Systematic manual. – Throughout the breadth and length of the pages, the pillars, on which the author’s line of The apparent paradox of the epigraph is clarified by argument is based, remain well fixed. But it is not theory that simple and at the same time profound reasoning. It is c o n c e rns him. He always looked for the practical and reduced to what follows. The evils and misfortunes that afflict immediate: to put within the reach of any person a method the Church, as well as the societies, are the effects of sin and that may at the same time be a manual of ecclesial prayer.