PROPER OFFICES   

BLESSED EUSEBIA PALOMINO

9 February

Blessed EUSEBIA PALOMINO YENES, virgin

Optional Memorial

For the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians: memorial

Eusebia Palomino Yenes was born at Cantalpino (Salamanca, Spain) on 15 December 1899 in a family which was quite poor but rich in faith and harmony. Her early life was marked by daily hard work, as a child-minder with families in the countryside and then in the city.

From her father she eagerly learned the rudiments of the catechism, which enabled her to receive the "Bread of heaven " at nine years of age. At that moment Eusebia experienced deep within her something very special: she felt drawn by a deep love for Jesus in the    Holy Eucharist, and from then on every holy communion was for her a moment of "great happiness."

Overcoming numerous difficulties she fulfilled her dream of consecrating herself to the Lord, and in 1924 she became a Daughter of Mary Help of Christians. In the house of Valverde in Camino, in the diocese of Huelva, she was assigned to the kitchen and to various other community services, which she undertook with cheerfulness and joy. In the festive oratory she was entrusted with the smallest little girls, but little by little the older ones and the adults used to go to her captivated by her spirit of faith and of prayer. In her letters she spread everywhere the devotion of “Marian slavery,” according to the teaching of St. Louis M. Grignon de Montfort which she herself practised. In 1931, on the eve of the revolution, Sr Eusebia offered herself to the Lord as a victim for the salvation of her brothers and sisters in Spain and in the world.

Her offering was accepted: for three years she lived with indescribable suffering, which the doctors were unable to diagnose or to cure, until she entered into eternal Life on 10 February 1935. On 25 April 2004 the Holy Father John Paul II    proclaimed her Blessed.

From the Common of virgins. Psalms of the day as in the Ordinary.

Office of Readings

From the «Autobiography» of Blessed Eusebia Palomino

(Edited by Manuel Garrido Bonaño OSB, Seville 1985;

tr. by Domenica Grassiano FMA, Rome 1987, p. 10-11)

An irresistible and great desire to become a saint

At school I remember perfectly that along the walls there was a Bible History in pictures On one of the first days the teacher explained a picture which was in front of my bench and contained the story of Isaac. I was sitting there making little tubes of paper, but I liked the explanation very much and I didn’t miss a word.

The following day I went with my mother to the forest nearby looking for wood. She gathered together a great bundle of wood and as is usual she carried it on her back tied to her belt, with a cord round her shoulders. She also gave me a small bundle, and I came down the hill full of joy and very satisfied as I remembered the story of the sacrifice of Isaac, and along the way I told it to my mother.

When I felt tired I said to her: «Now let’s rest a little like Isaac, because we still have    a long way to go»; so we rested a little, then we carried on further until we stopped to rest a second time.

I said to my mother: «Isaac was a victim: if he had died he would have gone straight to heaven. I am not a victim, but I would very much like to be one, if it were pleasing to God, because in my heart I feel such a great desire to become a saint that I can’t stop thinking about it ».

And as my mother went on under the weight of the bundle I saw a tear run down her face. I would never have thought that, as in the picture that made such an impression on me in my early years, as time passed    I would have the same fate of consecrating myself as a victim of love for the salvation of souls and for the Kingdom of my Mother and of Jesus?!