Pope Leo XIV has used the metaphor of light throughout his addresses during the recent Jubilee of the educational world. Referring to the darkness surrounding today’s society, in the homily where he proclaimed John Henry Newman a Doctor of the Church, he recalled one of Newman’s best-known texts, Lead, kindly Light: “In that beautiful prayer, we realize that we are far from home, our feet falter, we cannot clearly discern the horizon. Yet none of this stops us, because we have found the Guide: ‘Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom. Lead Thou me on.’”
To perceive the light that shines through the lyrics of Rosalía’s latest album, one must return to its source: her own spiritual experience — the “kindly light” that illuminated her darkness. Beyond the media dazzle surrounding the album’s release, there glimmers the subtle Lux that the pop singer reveals in her many interviews.
In an informal conversation with Catalan journalist Valleverdú, Rosalía shares that this is the first album she is not afraid might fail. She describes the previous years as a quasi-monastic life: discipline, reading mystical authors, and long solitary hours in the studio. Yet the most revealing element is not her method, but her search: “I’ve spent my whole life with this feeling of emptiness. Sometimes you think you can fill it with something material, an experience, a fling, a relationship where you put the other person on a pedestal. Maybe we’re confusing that space. Maybe that space is God’s space. Maybe God is the only one who can fill it.”
These words, spoken by a global pop figure, open an unexpected horizon: that of the spiritual longing pulsing within contemporary culture. Rosalía has immersed herself in the writings of mystics and saints —women who described in burning words their encounter with the divine— seeking, like them, the God who fills the void.
The mystical tradition has offered humanity maps of the soul: guides born of experience for those who venture along the inner paths. Without claiming that Rosalía belongs to this lineage, her work reveals the first stages of what theology calls the “life in the Spirit”—a moment when the soul begins to sense that fulfillment lies not outside, but within.
For centuries, saints and mystics have traced alphabets and paths toward the Mystery. Through her artistic language, Rosalía reaches an audience often beyond the Church’s pastoral reach. It would be unwise to stifle that “Lux” with quick judgments about her style or imagery. What if God had become a “stalker” for her, as she sings in one of her songs, to draw near to the farthest away?
The term stalker, describing one who obsessively follows, becomes here a theological metaphor—a God who never stops seeking. Perhaps Saint Teresa, had she been born in this century, would have used it instead of her famous image of the “Hunter.”
Rosalía intuits, in contemporary language, what the mystics once knew: that modern life abounds in choices but lacks meaning. Time will tell whether her album can turn that intimate experience into a collective one, offering listeners a way to name their own emptiness.
In this hyperconnected world that disconnects new generations from their inner sources, Rosalía, through her art, seems to weave a thread of lux, inviting us to pause, look within, and discover that emptiness can be a dwelling place for God.
Mercedes Méndez Siliuto, RA. @memesira
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