Rome (Italy). In line with the Synod on: Young People, Faith, and Vocational Discernment (Cf. Working Document nos. 213-214), in the month of February, we share the fifth study on the journey of accompaniment in the youth of Saints, Blesseds, Venerables, and Servants of God.
The sure guides of Sr. Eusebia Palomino
The life of Eusebia moved within a well-defined horizon: the constant company of Jesus and Mary, beacons that illumined the entire journey of her story, beginning with her first experiences in her family.
Among the people who accompanied Eusebia’s formative journey, her parents appear as fundamental ‘mediations’. From her own voice we grasp what impact they had on her from her childhood. “From my first years, I only remember that at a mission held in my town, we all went to Church, that is, my parents and the three of us. And since at that time there were no electric lights in my little town, my father carried a torch in one hand and with the other he held me close. My mother, with my sister Antonia who was very little in her arms, and holding Dolores by the hand, we went to Church. At the end, our father was waiting for us at the door and we returned our home.
Very expressive is the image of the torch held by her father that accompanied the small family and lit the road in the night. It is a symbol of what her father, Agostino, was for his daughter: the guide, the wise man who had illumined her and supported her growth and had etched in her indelible values that built her personality as a woman with a generous heart, totally given to God and to others. In a lovely little family portrait, Eusebia describes some moments spent in the company of her parents and her sisters. “When I learned the first letters of the alphabet and began to put the syllables together, at night my father, holding the speller in his hands, taught me and also my sisters. […] During the winter when night fell early and as my mother mended clothes, father sat us on his lap and taught us how to pray. He also taught us the Sacred Scripture, the story of Moses, the Pharaoh’s dreams […] and other events from Scripture”.
Mother and father worked together in the education of their daughters. My father as well as my mother had very much at heart that we should be good and they often inculcated this in us. They told us, “even if we are poor, we want you to be honorable young women, so never reach out your hand to something that is not yours, and if you find something, immediately give it to the owner, and always respect what is not yours. Be obedient and respectful toward everyone”. She highlights especially her mother who always “asked me with whom I had been or who had gone with me as I returned home during the days when I was in service, things that I never hid from her…In this way, she counseled me on what she considered proper and I strove to obey her”.
The confidence cultivated with her mother Giovanna became over the course of Eusebia’s life, total trust in Mary, the Mother of whom she could affirm, “Everything I ask of the Madonna, she gives me”. She experienced in Mary the Mother who cannot abandon her children, above all those who are in difficulty and who entrust to Her a prayer full of love and faith.
Eusebia who was ‘accompanied’ in such a special way, will herself be an excellent guide who would accompany many young people, children, persons who ran to her attracted by her simple, daily holiness.
