Emma Üffing

Emma Üffing was born on 8 April 1914 at Halverde, in the district of Steinfurt in Westphalia, and was baptized that same day in the parish church of her village. She was a child of the second marriage of August Üffing and Maria Schnitt, and grew up with ten brothers and sisters in the ordinary world of a small country parish, where a large, deeply believing family and the rhythm of the Church shaped her childhood and youth. A form of rickets slowed her physical growth and left her in delicate health for the rest of her life. Yet she never complained, never grew indignant when she was treated unjustly, and whenever she could she quietly took the unpleasant chores from her brothers and sisters. At the village elementary school she had to work hard; with diligence and perseverance she earned the report card of a good pupil and was nearly always second in her class.

On 27 April 1924 Emma made her First Communion, and on 3 September of the same year she was confirmed by Bishop Johannes Poggenburg. From then on she went daily to Holy Mass. She was a devout and silent child, but serene, and those around her were struck by how completely absorbed she became in prayer. Already at the age of fourteen she said openly that she wished to be a religious sister.

On 1 November 1931 she began training as an apprentice in domestic science at the nearby St. Anne's Hospital in Hopsten. There she came to know the Sisters of Mercy of Münster. The superior of the house, Sister Euthymia Linnenkämper, valued the girl's unfailing readiness to serve. A schoolmate testified: "For Emma Üffing no work was too lowly. She was appreciated and respected by everyone in the house. She was never seen irritated or in a bad mood, and so she was loved everywhere." On 8 December 1932 her father died. Days before, she had gone home to help her mother nurse him in his grave illness; it was the first time Emma cared for a dying man and was present at the Anointing of the Sick — a service she would render countless times afterward at the bedsides of the dying.

Her apprenticeship finished, she returned to her mother's house on 1 May 1933. In March 1934, with her mother's consent, she wrote to the motherhouse in Münster asking to be admitted to the Sisters of Mercy. Because of her earlier rickets the twenty-year-old was of fragile constitution, as the medical certificate confirmed, and the superiors hesitated before accepting her. On 23 July 1934 Emma Üffing entered the congregation at Münster as one of forty-seven postulants. She received the habit on 2 October 1935 and, with it, the name she had so ardently desired, Euthymia, in memory of the superior of Hopsten. Her longing for a life given to God and to men was fulfilled on 11 October 1936, when she pronounced her first vows after a postulancy and novitiate of intense and conscientious preparation. To her mother she wrote joyfully: "I have found him whom my heart loves; I want to hold him and never let him go."

On 30 October 1936 Sister Maria Euthymia was sent to St. Vincent's Hospital in Dinslaken. After a short time on the women's ward she was given the patients of the isolation unit, housed in a wooden barrack dedicated to St. Barbara. With her characteristic perseverance and exactness she prepared for the theoretical and practical nursing examinations, and on 3 September 1939 she received her nursing diploma with the highest marks. A year later, on 15 September 1940, she bound herself definitively to God and to her community by solemn vows.

The war years made the care of the sick harder, for poverty pressed upon everything. In 1941 Sister Maria Euthymia was entrusted with sick prisoners of war and foreign laborers — English, French, Russian, Polish, Ukrainian — and she gave herself to them with untiring solicitude and warmth. The French priest Emile Eche, who spent several years as a prisoner of war in the Dinslaken hospital, left an extraordinary testimony of her: in her contact with the sick she was filled with a charity and gentleness that came from the heart, and nothing was ever too much for her. She knew that the imprisoned sick suffered more than bodily pain, and by her human sympathy and nearness she gave them the sense of being safe and at home. She prayed with them and took care that they could receive the sacraments. Soon they were calling her "the Angel of St. Barbara." Many around her saw in these prisoners the adversary and the enemy; for Sister Maria Euthymia they were simply men who needed her help. When she saw prisoners driven by hunger digging in the rubbish bins, she begged insistently for bread, made buttered sandwiches, and laid them in the bins she had first scrubbed clean, so that the starving would find them there. She did good even under threat of punishment. "The life of Sister Maria Euthymia," said Father Eche, "was a canticle of hope in the midst of war."

After the war this sister who had loved nursing so passionately was given charge of the laundry at Dinslaken, and three years later, on 14 January 1948, of the great laundry of the motherhouse and of St. Raphael's Clinic in Münster. Renouncing the bedside cost her much, but she adjusted without complaint. "It is all for almighty God," was her only reaction. Despite an overwhelming and physically exhausting workload, she remained the same gentle and available religious, with a friendly smile and a good word for everyone, at the side of anyone who asked her help in any matter at all. She lived the ordinary day in a wholly extraordinary way. What little free time she had she spent in prayer before the tabernacle, and many who knew her were already asking her then to intercede for them.

In July 1955, after a sudden collapse at work in the washhouse, she was found to have advanced cancer. At the end of August a violent fever confined her to bed, and she asked for the Anointing of the Sick. After long weeks of illness she died on the morning of 9 September 1955, at the age of forty-one. Veneration began at once. Her grave in Münster became a place of pilgrimage, and people far beyond the borders of Germany began to ask her intercession and to find consolation.

Her cause was opened on 9 January 1976; her remains were examined and re-entombed in 1985; John Paul II declared her Venerable on 1 September 1988 and beatified her in St. Peter's Square on 7 October 2001, together with six other servants of God, saying that these new blesseds had "translated their indomitable faith in Christ into an extraordinary experience of love for God and service of neighbor." Already during his visit to Münster on 1 May 1987 the same Pope had said of her: "In the seemingly obscure places of her self-forgetting service, this simple religious showed in an exemplary way for many how a life inspired by faith and the Gospel has a power capable of changing the world. The strength of her imitation of Christ was such that from her nearness the prisoners of war entrusted to her drew the feeling of being protected in their own home. Love conquers hatred."

May Blessed Maria Euthymia obtain for us the grace to serve the stranger and the enemy as she did, and to say over every hidden, thankless task today: "It is all for almighty God."

"You who live in Münster in the places where Sister Maria Euthymia, of the Sisters of Mercy, worked and was buried, and which are destinations for pilgrimage of crowds of people in need of help. In the places apparently little visible of her service full of self-denial, this simple religious woman showed in an exemplary way for many how a life inspired by faith and the Gospel has a force capable of changing the world. The force of her imitation of Christ was such that from her presence the prisoners of war entrusted to her drew the feeling of being protected in their own home. Love conquers hatred" (Pope John Paul II, during his visit to Münster on May 1, 1987).

PAPAL CHAPEL FOR THE BEATIFICATION OF 7 SERVANTS OF GOD

HOMILY OF THE HOLY FATHER

Sunday, October 7, 2001

1. "The just shall live by faith" (Hab 2, 4): with these words full of confidence and hope the prophet Habakkuk addresses the people of Israel in a particularly troubled moment of their history. Read anew by the Apostle Paul in the light of the mystery of Christ, these same words are used to express a universal principle: it is with faith that man opens himself to the salvation that comes to him from God.

Today we have the joy of contemplating this great mystery of salvation actualized in the new Blessed. They are the just who through their faith live beside God eternally: Ignatius Maloyan, Bishop and martyr; Nikolaus Gross, father of family and martyr; Alfonso Maria Fusco, presbyter; Tommaso Maria Fusco, presbyter; Émilie Tavernier Gamelin, religious; Eugenia Picco, virgin; Maria Euthymia Üffing, virgin.

These illustrious brothers of ours, now elevated to the glory of the altars, knew how to translate their indomitable faith in Christ into an extraordinary experience of love toward God and of service toward their neighbor.

2. Monsignor Ignace Maloyan, who died a martyr at the age of 46, reminds us of the spiritual battle of every Christian, whose faith is exposed to the attacks of evil. It was in the Eucharist that he drew, day after day, the strength necessary to carry out with generosity and passion his ministry as a priest, dedicating himself to preaching, to the pastoral care of the sacraments, and to service of the poorest.

In the course of his existence he lived fully the words of Saint Paul: "God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of strength, love and wisdom" (2 Tim 7). In the face of the dangers of persecution, Blessed Ignace accepted no compromise, declaring to those who pressed him: "It does not please God that I deny Jesus my Savior. To shed my blood for my faith is the most vivid desire of my heart!". May his example illuminate today all those who wish to be witnesses to the Gospel, for the glory of God and for the salvation of the brethren!

3. In her life as mother of a family and as religious foundress of the Sisters of Providence, Émilie Tavernier Gamelin was a model of courageous abandonment to Divine Providence. Her attention to persons and situations led her to invent new forms of charity. She had a heart open to every suffering, serving especially the poor and the little ones, whom she wished to treat as kings.

Believing she had received everything from the Lord, she gave without limits. Such was the secret of her profound joy, even in adversities. In a spirit of total trust in God and with an acute sense of obedience, like the "servant" of the Gospel, she fulfilled her duty as a divine commandment, wishing to do in all things the will of the Lord. May the new Blessed be a model of contemplation and action for the Sisters of her Institute and for the people who work with them!

4. Both of the new German blessed bring us back to a dark moment of the twentieth century. We turn our gaze to Blessed Nikolaus Gross, journalist and father of a family. With acumen he understood that National Socialist ideology could not be reconciled with Christian faith. He courageously took up the pen to defend the dignity of persons. Nikolaus Gross greatly loved his wife and his children. Yet, not for a moment did the bond that united him to his family cause him to abandon Christ and his Church. He knew well that "If today we do not commit our lives, how will we then pretend to stand before God and our people?".

For this conviction of his he was led to the gallows, but the gates of heaven opened wide before him. In Blessed martyr Nikolaus Gross is realized what the prophet had foretold: "The just shall live by faith" (Hab, 2, 4).

5. Sister Euthymia offered testimony of quite a different kind. The Clementine nun dedicated herself to caring for the sick, particularly prisoners of war and immigrants. She was also called "Mama Euthymia". After the war she had to work in a laundry instead of caring for the sick. She would certainly have preferred to serve people rather than machines. Nevertheless, she remained a nun full of empathy who had a friendly smile and kind word for everyone. She expressed her desire thus: "The Lord must use me as a ray of sunshine that illuminates every day". She lived according to the motto: whatever we do, we are always only "unprofitable servants. We have done what we were obliged to do" (Lk 17, 10). Her greatness lies in faith in small things.

6. "If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed...", exclaims Jesus in conversation with the disciples (Lk 17,6).

It was genuine and tenacious faith that guided the life and work of Blessed Don Alfonso Maria Fusco, founder of the Sisters of Saint John the Baptist. Since boyhood, the Lord had placed in his heart the passionate desire to dedicate his life to serving the poorest, especially children and young people, whom he encountered in great numbers in his native city of Angri, in Campania. For this reason he undertook the path to the Priesthood and became, in a certain sense, "the Don Bosco of the South".

From the very beginning he wished to involve in his work some young women who shared his ideal, proposing to them as a motto the words of Saint John the Baptist: "Prepare the way of the Lord", "Prepare the way of the Lord" (Lk 3,4). Trusting in divine Providence, Blessed Alfonso Maria and the Baptistine Sisters accomplished a work far superior to their own expectations. From a simple reception house arose an Institute that today is present in sixteen countries and four continents, beside the "little ones" and the "last".

7. The singular vitality of faith, attested by today's Gospel, also emerges in the life and activity of Don Tommaso Maria Fusco, founder of the Institute of the Daughters of Charity of the Most Precious Blood. By virtue of faith he knew how to live, in the world, the reality of the Kingdom of God in a wholly special way. Among his ejaculations, there was one that was particularly dear to him: "I believe in you, my God; increase my faith". This is precisely the request that the Apostles address to Jesus in today's Gospel (cf. Lk 17,6). Blessed Tommaso Maria had indeed understood that faith is above all a gift, a grace. No one can conquer it or earn it alone. One can only ask for it, implore it from on High. Therefore, illuminated by the precious teaching of the new Blessed, let us never cease to invoke the gift of faith, because "the righteous will live by faith" (Hab 1,4).

8. The vital synthesis between contemplation and action, assimilated beginning from daily participation in the Eucharist, was the foundation of the spiritual experience and impulse of charity of Eugenia Picco.

In her life she always strove to listen to the voice of the Lord, according to the invitation of today's Sunday liturgy (cf. Rit. to Psalm Resp.), never withdrawing from the services that love of neighbor required of her. In Parma she took charge of the poverty of the people, responding to the needs of young people and indigent families and assisting the victims of war that was bloodying Europe in that period. Even in the face of suffering, with the inevitable moments of difficulty and bewilderment that it brings, Blessed Eugenia Picco knew how to transform the experience of pain into an occasion for purification and interior growth. From the new Blessed we learn the art of listening to the voice of the Lord, so as to be credible witnesses of the Gospel of charity in this first part of the millennium.

9. "God is marvelous in his saints!". With the Communities in which the new Blessed lived and for which they spent their finest human and spiritual energies, we wish to thank God, "marvelous in his saints". At the same time, we ask Him, through their intercession, to help us respond with renewed fervor to the universal vocation to holiness.

Amen!