Juana Gratias

The following is an expressive greeting to Juana Gratias in preparation for the movie that is being made about her which will soon be in our hands:

Juana Gratias, the first Carmelite Missionary

Dear Sister Juana,

A world so widely interconnected places within our reach the opportunity to know and share the diversity of cultures and religions. This requires me to strengthen my personal and vocational identity by deepening on the understanding of our congregational charism, which one day I accepted as a Carmelite Missionary; a charism that is a legacy of our Founder, Fr. Francisco Palau y Quer.

Immersing myself into the roots of our congregational history has led me to recognize you as a key in the transmission of the palautian charism. The first link in this chain of the Carmelite Missionary family continues to this day.

Behind a fragile and petite appearance you hid a firmness and energy capable of displaying an unwavering determination in a timely manner, and that at your 21 years of age, you were desirous of reorganizing your life in a radical following of Christ. You were led to leave Gramat. The French people who saw you grow and you were enriched with the serenity of their fields and a balance of a Christian family environment.


Your vocational journey soon crossed with the strong and sober personality of Fr. Palau, then exiled in France, as he passed by the diocese of Montauban. His austere spirituality fully impacted you, and since then, you accepted his directives that would set forward your vocational path, forging your spirit in freedom, prudence, generosity, spirit of sacrifice and trust in divine providence.

You knew how to perfectly respond to the trust placed in you by Father Palau. You were undoubtedly his most faithful collaborator and confidant in the foundational venture. And, as in all human relationships, your connection with Father Palau knew their hours of crisis; the bond that was tied then did not break ever. You showed it through a tested, permanent and unbeatable fidelity.


Supporting the foundational plans of Fr. Palau, you moved from Livron (France) to Llerida (Spain), initiating a series of itineraries that met misunderstanding in a turbulent time full of political and religious pressures.

Barcelona, Ibiza…you went back to Gramat... and again to Ibiza - Es Cubells, always hopeful, watching for a little light in your yearning for a contemplative life to which you were inclined by nature.

But the plans of Father Palau distantiated you from your cherished dream; and in the face of the socio-political reality of the moment, little by little, you started to assimilate and orient your life to the apostolic action. “Your vocation and divine disposition are joined to my wagon, and you have nothing else to do except to follow me.”

And your following led you to Ciudadela (Menorca) where the first steps of the Congregation were being made. And from Menorca to Formentera, where you felt the isolation so difficult due to the long absence and silence of Fr. Palau, who was then overwhelmed by the problems of his activity as exorcist in Barcelona. You sought advice and you decided. In June 1867 you moved to Salas Altas (Huesca) and took charge of Sunday schools. Confusions and misunderstandings with Fr. Palau were clarified; from trials, confidence was rebuilt…and you continued to untiringly support the foundational projects in Graus, Estadilla and Barbastro ...

With great fortitude you went with a group of sisters to Calasanz to assist those affected by the typhus epidemic. Fr. Palau also accompanied you in this high-risk apostolic field. There you can not avoid contagion. Fr. Palau did not stop until you were out of danger. This was the last time you received his paternal care. After a mere fifteen days, Father Palau passed away in Tarragona. It was on the 20th of March 1872. You had already returned to Estadilla. The news reached you there.

Then, as ever, you felt the call to solitude, at least to take a glimpse of the roads and the will of God to so many contradictions that you were presented at the death of Fr. Palau. With the newly imposed director, a break up of the family arose from Tarragona, in which you could not even recover the property and belongings of the Founder that legally and sentimentally belonged to you. The apostolic Carmel in Bayonne opened the doors for you.


But again God crossed in your life to draw you away from your desire to solitude and set yourself in front of the sisters who did not accept to go to Tarragona; sisters who loved you and valued your moral authority, unmistakably linked to the person of the Founder. And you joined the wagon forgetting the impulse of a personal solution. You ceded to the call of fidelity. In Menorca you assured the situation of the sisters who had joined you in the destiny. And there the work was revived, precisely where it had started a dozen years ago. (Fornells, Mahon, Es Castell, Ciutadella, Alaior ...)

You fought tirelessly to recover Santa Cruz de Vallcarca in Barcelona, installing the novitiate from 1878 to 1879. The old desire to return to the beginning was being complied… the house that the Founder considered as the matrix .. There the enthusiasm of the first sisters was a claim for vocations, and the work was extended to Barcelona and the province (Gracia, Terrassa, Santa Maria del Mar.)




The designs of God are inscrutable because, along with joy, was the pain that you could never imagine… seeing how, after the death of the Bishop who helped you, the segregation was imposed from Menorca. You experienced how your rhythm was broken from the palautian family when, by surprise, the Bishop of Barcelona named a director for the Institute, practically eliminating your services as the common superior of the emerging congregation.

“Conformed and resigned, Juana Gratias accepted the cup of humiliation ... (Rosa Ambrós). “Not a single gesture of confrontation before the imposition; instead a coherent position with the palautian spirit that was received and assimilated: “Live united with God, and all the rest will vanish like smoke and shadow.” (L. 38:7)
And later the bishopric imposed a further step to your personal ordeal: The relocation of the community and novitiate in Santa Cruz de Vallcarca to the community of Gracia in Barcelona, putting you to a painful dilemma, without compromises…or to give up the inheritance- with everything those places meant for you - or to leave the congregation... and you weighed deeply your decision. Prayer and advice sought with sincerity inclined you to what was most difficult, the most ungrateful way: to safeguard those places, the inheritance of the Father in which you wholeheartedly belonged. Inheritance that you carried on your shoulders without noticing the lack of means or the greed of creditors. The sense of loyalty prevailed in you.


Then came the moment of separation ... and you remained there supported by a small group of sisters at your side, who felt the pain to see you suffer quietly, without complaint against anything or anyone…sisters who accompanied you fearlessly even when the harsh reality of eviction forced you to leave definitively those places you had fought for. Providentially, other hands would care to keep alive in those places, the memory of Francisco Palau.

Dear Sister Juana, there is in you, as in all human history, a part of the mystery that only God can fathom. One thing I am sure, that the following of Christ was the value that built your life and fidelity. A loyalty that, in your personal history, crossed with that of Father Palau and his work. And, under his influence, that face of God which you so strongly wanted to contemplate was becoming a reality and a figure in the beauty of the Church: Total Christ, God and our neighbours, finally embraced in one love

This fidelity of yours is like a small light in a materialistic world which questions but also hinders the fidelity among human beings. In this fully tested fidelity, I see reflected the face of the Master, whose eyes lit up your life and made bearable the long and painful destiny of your life.

And on 24th December, after eleven long years of painful journey, the final hours of uprooting came. You went quietly and discreetly, embraced more than ever to poverty and serenity that accompanies one with a good conscience. Finally with a satisfaction of an accomplished duty, Josefa Oller, one of the sisters who accompanied you to the end, took charge of keeping your remains.

Catalina Ferrer y Torres, a native of Ibiza, never left you. At your death, she returned to the Institute. Thanks to her, the Congregation recovered the letters of the Father Founder that you carefully preserved.

People who lived with you said that you had an extraordinary courage. You grew in the face of problems and difficulties. Your resilient character was with you forever. The Bishop of Tarragona said that outwardly you seemed very weak yet very firm in your convictions.


No wonder Sister Rosa Ambrós, your novice in 1884, and as secretary general, described you this way:

“She was our co-founder.

…of a lively spirit, restless and generous; of refined manner; sweet, which favours closeness; simple and welcoming.

She seemed like the Father Founder; it is unclear whether by nature or by contagion.

…of temperamental contrasts: transparent and mysterious, shy and enterprising, firm and indecisive, persistent and indecisive, persevering, trusting and suspicious, weak and courageous, a contemplative and a traveller”.

No one became so close to him as she did. She assimilated the charism up to the smallest details. It was a friendship that was fully tried.

Juana, now it is our turn ... we learned from you, and like you, we want to live our presence with that fidelity that builds a future.

“The Carmelite Missionaries to Juana Gratias,

a solid rock that strengthened our Congregation”