Pilar Pérez, fc.
Short autobiography:
My name is Pilar Pérez Bernal, although all my friends call me Pily.
I was born in Madrid 44 years ago. I studied in the school that the Conceptionist Missionaries of the Teaching have in Princesa street and at 18 I joined the novitiate of this congregation. I was a Concepcionist religious for ten years and throughout that time I lived for three years in Marcilla (Navarra) where the novitiate was, for five in Madrid where I did my juniorate term and continued with my theological studies in the Regina Apostolorum school and my studies of teaching in ESCUNI and for two years in San Lorenzo de El Escorial where I was the Delegate of Pastoral of the school and a member of the Pastoral team of the Province of Spain. Throughout these years I discovered that this was not the place in the Church and the world that God dreamed for me, which led me to leave the Conceptionist Congregation.
For the next three years I worked in the Amorós school that the Marianists have in the neighborhood of Carabanchel Alto in Madrid. In addition to teaching the 3rd and 4th years of EPO, I was a member of the pastoral team. During this time I continued to feel strongly the call of the Lord to the Consecrated Life and began a search that would take me to the Secular Institute of the Claretian Family, Cordimarian Affiliation. I began my time of Initiation as a Daughter of the Immaculate Heart of Mary on the feast day of the Heart of Mary in 2007, on February 2, 2010 I took my first Consecration and on June 4, 2016 my Perpetual Consecration.
Now I work in the school that the Conceptionists have in San Lorenzo de El Escorial and besides my classes I am a member of the pastoral team. I also live in El Escorial with another Sister of Filiation and I belong to the La Fragua Center where, with the help of my sisters, I try to live the gift of this vocation that Father Claret left us. Because after so many words to introduce myself it would suffice to say that I am Pily, Daughter of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
TESTIMONY:
When you asked me to put down in writing my experience of Fr. Claret, the first thing that came to my mind was: How difficult! If it were the experience of the Heart of Mary, if it were my vocational testimony … and I passed the ball at Fr. Claret himself: Tell me what our relationship has been like! That was all because I decided to let it sleep, to let some time go and thus to be able to put in order some ideas, memories, feelings … And today, when I have turned on the computer to write these lines, I have discovered with grateful amazement that I do have a story with him, that there are memories and that I even remember important moments in which I have felt his friendly hand guiding me.
My first conscious memory of Fr. Claret is when I was 15 years old. After my father’s death, I was collecting his things and we found on his bedside table a few writings about Fr. Claret that we never knew how they had come to him. I read them, of course, with more affection for my father than for San Antonio Mª, but he stayed there and began to be part of the list of saints I considered “my friends” in my adolescent time in which I was already experiencing strongly the call of Jesus to the Consecrated Life.
Then many years of silence went by, more or less until I was 34 years old when I came to know Cordimarian Filiation… The silence was only apparent, because today I am sure that he continued to accompany the steps of my new vocational search and guided me to his family. And I always knew he understood my pursuits because he also had to take a couple of turns to find his place in the Church.
In that first year of formation at the Institute I had the opportunity to participate in two activities of the Claretian family that were decisive for my vocational response and for my relationship with Claret. The first was that November in the Vic-encounter, visiting the Claretian places, seeing with my eyes the places he saw, walking the streets that he had walked and doing it all in a moment of so much struggle and search in my life, made me feel very attached to him and his own pursuits, to him and his own struggles. The second moment was a weekend of Exercises on the Fragua (Forge) I did in December … I was so full of doubts still!, there were aspects of the charisma that, by lack of knowledge, I still did not quite grasp. However, that weekend I fell in love with the itinerary Fragua, I was absolutely seduced by Claret’s insights which shaped this charismatic itinerary that then has been and still IS so important to me. And from those days I began to read his autobiography and found myself with a burning heart, with a man of fire, I found his real and passionate love for Jesus, for his overflowing confidence in the Immaculate Heart of Mary and, to tell the truth I was surprised.
I have always said that my “favourite saint” is Ignacio de Loyola, but I have to admit that Fr. Claret has made himself a righteous place in my life, because he is the one who has left me the immense gift of this charism that gives sense to my life and for his faithful companionship over the years. Many times I speak to him and ask for his opinion and advice … It is already something natural to the experience of my vocation as the Daughter of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. There are intuitions of his that are fundamental for me: The experience of the Heart of Mary as the forge where I am forming in the image of Jesus, as the cloister where I live my vocation. “You are in the Heart of Mary and that will suffice you”, he told us and I experience it every day with enormous gratitude. And his missionary ardor! I love that phrase of “my spirit is for the whole world”, for any country and culture, but also for anyone, whatever their condition is, and whenever I experience that his message touches someone’s heart to thrill it I remember and I think: Yes, your spirit really is for ALL and you have entrusted it to me! THANK YOU.
I had a hard time starting off this testimony, but now I could continue writing pages and pages about how much Antonio Mª brings every day to my life, and the love of daughter I feel for him. I treasure in my heart his words and his memory and I ask for his help to make reality what he advised: “Fall in love with Jesus Christ and your fellow people…”, this is my greatest desire, to go through the world with a loving and ardent heart, like he did.