Saint Euphrasia Eluvathingal

She was born on October 17, 1877, at Kattoor, in what was then the undivided Diocese of Trichur, to Antony and Kunjethy of the Cherpukaran Eluvathingal family, which the Holy See's 2014 booklet calls aristocratic. ¹² She was baptized Rose. ² According to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, her mother raised five children, three boys and two girls, and taught them to pray the rosary. ³ The Holy See's 2006 biography says the stories her mother told her, especially of Saint Rose of Lima, left her wanting to be holy and to suffer for Jesus in a quiet, hidden way. ¹

At nine, both the Holy See and the Dicastery say, the Virgin Mary appeared to her, and she dedicated her virginity to God. ¹²³ Her father, whom the Dicastery calls strong and stubborn, wanted her married into a rich family, and his daughter was just as stubborn. ¹³ What changed his mind, in both accounts, was the sudden death of her younger sister. ¹³

The two Holy See biographies of 2006 tell her entry differently. The English says her father took her personally to the convent of the Congregation of the Mother of Carmel at Koonammavu, the first indigenous congregation of the Syro-Malabar Church. ¹ The Spanish says she went there at twelve, against his will, as a boarder in the sisters' school. ⁶ The Dicastery agrees that she began as a boarder, and adds that she waited about nine years to be admitted, because of her poor health; twice she had to go home to recover. ³ At one point, the Holy See says, the sisters had resolved to send her away for good, but she was healed after an apparition of the Holy Family. ¹³

When the Syro-Malabar vicariates were reorganized, the sisters and aspirants from Trichur moved to Ambazhakkad, on May 9, 1897, according to the Spanish biography. ³⁶ The next day she became a postulant and took the name Euphrasia of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. ¹⁶ She received the habit on January 10, 1898. ¹⁶ On May 24, 1900, when the new Saint Mary's Convent at Ollur was blessed, she made her perpetual vows, which the 2006 biography calls a day of unspeakable joy. ¹³

From 1904 to 1913 she was novice mistress, and the novices, the Holy See says, saw in her humility, poverty, penance, obedience and abandonment to God's will. ¹ Then, against her own wish to stay hidden, she was made superior of Saint Mary's. ¹³ She found it hard to accept. Her answer, in the 2006 biography, was to acquire a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, place it at the center of the convent and entrust the office of superior to him. ¹ She held the post until 1916. ¹ The Dicastery remembers her as a true mother to her sisters who corrected them when it was needed, and who took particular care of the sick and the weak. ³

Saint Mary's at Ollur was her home for almost forty-eight years. ¹⁶ The townspeople, seeing her always at prayer, called her the "Praying Mother", which is how the Holy See and Pope Francis give it; the 2014 booklet has "the Prayerful Mother". ¹²⁵ Her sisters called her the "Mobile Tabernacle", or in the booklet's words "the Moving Tabernacle", for the peace that showed in her face. ¹²

From her first years as a religious her spiritual director was Bishop John Menacherry. ¹ Because of the extraordinary things that were happening to her, the Dicastery says, he ordered her to tell him everything, and to write when she could not see him. ³ She asked him more than once to destroy the letters. He kept them. ³ His successor, Mar George Alappatt, handed them on to the congregation's superior with the words "You will need them". ¹ They are, the 2014 booklet says, the chief source for what is known of her holiness and her mystical experiences. ²

One of them, quoted by the Dicastery and translated here from its Italian, reads: "For the last four months I have noticed something special in me. Wherever I am, when I am working or busy in conversation, someone speaks lovingly in my heart without stopping and suddenly draws my mind toward that great love of the heart." ³ The Dicastery dates it June 1, 1912. ³ It also says she took Saint Teresa of Avila as her model, spent hours in prayer forgetting herself, and shared Christ's passion with penances that included the discipline and a chain of thorns worn around her waist. ³ The Spanish biography adds that she ate once a day, without meat, fish, eggs or milk. ⁶

She spent much of each day before the Blessed Sacrament, and the Holy See calls her an apostle of the Eucharist and of the rosary. ¹ She prayed for the pope, for bishops, priests and religious, and, in the 2006 biography's words, offered her mortifications and penances "for the conversion of schismatics". ¹³ People came to her with money troubles, family problems, illnesses, exams and the search for work, the Spanish biography says, sure that she would pray for them. ⁶ To anyone who did her a kindness she said: "I will not forget it, not even after death". ¹

At seventy-five, as she had foretold, the Dicastery says, she fell ill and was in bed for three days while people came from everywhere for her blessing. ³ She died at Ollur on August 29, 1952. ¹³ The 2014 booklet also gives her age as seventy-five; counted from the birth date both sources give, she was seventy-four. ²³ On January 30, 1990, her remains were moved from the convent cemetery into the chapel of Saint Mary's. ¹³

The cause opened in the Eparchy of Trichur in 1987, and John Paul II recognized her heroic virtues in 2002. ¹³ The cure approved for her beatification was of a man with sarcoma, in 1997; the one approved for her canonization was of a six-year-old boy in the Eparchy of Irinjalakuda. ³ She was beatified at Ollur on December 3, 2006, and the 2006 biography counts her the fifth blessed of Kerala and the sixth of India. ¹³ Francis canonized her in Saint Peter's Square on November 23, 2014, the Solemnity of Christ the King. ³⁴ The next day he told the pilgrims from Kerala that her life of holiness had been an example and an encouragement to the people who called her Praying Mother, and asked the consecrated women present to be known as "Praying Sisters". ⁵

None of the sources consulted for this page names a patronage for Saint Euphrasia, so none is given here. ¹²³ What they record is the trust of the people of Ollur, who brought her their needs while she lived and kept coming to her tomb after she died. ¹⁶

Saint Euphrasia's feast is kept on August 29, the anniversary of her death. ³ The Dicastery for the Causes of Saints gives it as her liturgical memorial. ³

Francis took one lesson from her and Chavara together: that God's love is the source, the support and the goal of all holiness. ⁵ In her it took the form of prayer, and the people of Ollur named her for it. ¹⁵

She did not want to be superior, and she did not want her letters kept. ¹³ Both happened anyway, and the letters are why anyone now knows what her prayer was like. ²³ Her way of being superior was to put a statue of the Sacred Heart in the middle of the house and hand the job to him. ¹

Her health kept her waiting nine years at the door of religious life, and the sisters once came close to sending her home. ³¹ Whatever else her life shows, it does not show a vocation that went smoothly.

The sentence she said most often was a promise of gratitude: "I will not forget it, not even after death". ¹ The Holy See notes that people who had her help while she lived went on asking for it at her tomb. ¹