Rome (Italy). On 1 February 2024, in the 4th online appointment of Salesian Thursdays at Auxilium, by the Studies Center on the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians of the Pontifical Faculty of Education Sciences “Auxilium” in Rome. The 2023/2024 program, in continuity with the insights realized for the 150th Anniversary of the FMA Institute, has as its unifying theme: Preventive System. Salesian Education yesterday and today.
“Tú serás mi hija” (You will be my daughter) is the theme of the encounter. Sister Teresa de Jesús Rubio García, Animator of the Mother Angela Vespa House, of the Preprovince Mary Mother of the Church (RMC), presents the figure of Blessed Eusebia Palomino Yenes (1899-1935), Daughter of Mary Help of Christians of Spain. This year marks the 20th anniversary of her beatification and the centenary of her Religious Profession in the FMA Institute.
Her relationship with the Virgin Mary from an early age, was gradually defined and took shape in the choice of an Institute with an educational charism, the Salesians of Don Bosco, whom she knew providentially in Salamanca (Spain). The young woman, of lower-class extraction, not yet twenty, hears the promising voice of Mary, “You will be my daughter.” A short time later, She confirms it, “Here is where I want you.” Working in the kitchen, in the laundry, and accompanying the resident students of the Regular School, Eusebia comes into contact with the FMA in the Castilian city of famous university tradition, learning the educational value of Salesian assistance.
In Valverde del Camino (Huelva), the only place of her mission for ten years, although without a school education, she expressed her filiality as did the Founder, “with feet on the ground and heart in heaven.” She became an ambassador of the Father among the little ones, the great ones, the students, parents, former students, seminarians, and priests, embodying with transparency and naturalness the spirit of the beatitudes.
Sister Eusebia assimilated and translated the Salesian spirit with the imprint of the “extraordinary” in the simplicity of the ordinary, developing a creative fidelity to the Charism. She accompanies girls to their vocational choice and works to find and offer the material means to realize the mission, aware that what has been received freely must be given freely.
The kitchen, wardrobe, vegetable garden, assistance in the courtyard in school time and in the oratory, were the ‘chair’ of her teaching. There remain many letters addressed mainly to her parents, but also to other people, as well as various letters to spread widely in dioceses and parishes, the apostolate of a prayer understandable for every social class, with the devotions of the time: the slavery of Mary, of St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort, Merciful Love, and the Lord’s Wounds.
During the illness that physically undermined her, bedridden, she maintained until a short time before her death both her correspondence and her relationship with the people who sought her guidance, counsel, light, and mediation with the Lord in their situations.
Love and service, nourished in prayer before the Mother, Jesus in the Sacrament and the Cross, find the sublime seal in the offering of life for peace in Valverde del Camino and everywhere in her homeland, troubled by difficult internal conflict.
