Blessed Eustáquio van Lieshout was a pastor of souls and a model parish priest bearing with humility and fortitude the many misunderstandings he suffered.
Newsdesk (01/09/2022 9:10 PM, Gaudium Press) Born in Holland on November 3rd, 1890 and ordained a priest in 1919, Blessed Eustáquio disembarked in Rio de Janeiro on 12 May 1925. His destination: the village of Água Suja, in the Triângulo Mineiro (western part of the State of Minas Gerais).
Situated on the banks of the Bagagem River, that place suffered from the evils common to very remote mining regions, and was marked by enormous spiritual and material needs. The beacon that illuminated the hard life of the miners was the old shrine of Nossa Senhora da Abadia (Our Lady of the Abbey), the place where this priest from Europe settled.
During his ten years in Água Suja – whose name was changed to Romaria – he began the building of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Abbey , which became a great centre of pilgrimage.
Father of the poor and the sick
In Romaria, as in the towns where he worked afterwards, he dedicated himself with extreme care to the poor and the sick. In his visits to the homes of his parishioners, he even served as doctor and nurse to the sick.
One day, in a hut in Romaria, he found a child whose body was a single sore. Even the child’s mother didn’t have the courage to take care of the poor child. Father Eustáquio took on the task himself: he bathed him every day, washed his clothes, used tweezers to remove the worms that were eating away at his flesh, which gave off an unbearable stench, and applied the ointments that he himself had prepared. In a little over a month the boy was cured.
On another occasion, when the parish priest was having lunch with his assistants in the modest dining-room of the parish house, the bell rang and one of them went to answer it. He returned shortly afterwards and sat down without saying anything.
– What happened? – asked Blessed Eustáquio.
– Nothing – nothing urgent. I’ve told them to wait in the drawing room.
– No! Never tell them to wait! The parish priest is the slave of his parishioners.
Having said this, he left the unfinished meal on the table and went to attend to his visitors.
This was how Father Eustáquio behaved during his 24 years in the priesthood. With a difference: he was the slave of all those in need, and not only of his parishioners.
The charism of healing
In Romaria, Father Eustáquio had already performed some healings considered miraculous. But it was in Poá (São Paolo State), where he was transferred, taking office as parish priest in February 1935, that this gift began to shine with greater intensity, and his reputation for holiness began to spread irresistibly throughout Brazil.
One of the greatest benefits that Father Eustáquio did for the population of that region was to overcome religious indifferentism and to rescue numerous souls who were becoming entangled in the webs of the spiritist sect.
Increasing crowds assiduously sought the man of God to ask for the relief of their spiritual and physical sufferings. The influx of people was so great that up to ten thousand people a day would pass through Poá.
The civil and religious authorities were concerned about this. By the intervention of the Archbishop of São Paulo, the archdiocese to which Poá then belonged, Father Eustáquio’s superiors were forced to transfer him.
Our Blessed was stricken by the news. He could not understand how he could be prevented from exercising a charism which God had clearly granted him for the good of the people. But, like the virtuous person that he was, he obeyed without blinking.
Feeling unwanted
Dejected, he left his beloved Poá on 13 May 1941 without even saying goodbye to the people closest to him.
He had to live for some time in hiding in the city of São Paulo, in a humiliating situation, under the surveillance of his superiors, even being forbidden to visit his friends.
From the time he left Poá, Blessed Eustáquio’s life was like that of a migrant. Wherever he went there were people who came to him for help, consolation and healing. Soon the crowds would follow him, and this caused displeasure and misunderstandings. Almost invariably, shortly afterwards, he was invited to leave the place. It is true that he also received signs of affection, as from the Archbishop of Campinas. But there were also embarrassing scenes, as when he was obliged to leave Rio de Janeiro without delay, not even giving him time to say his breviary.
Back to Minas Gerais
Called by the young superior of the Congregation’s community in Patrocínio, Father Eustáquio was finally able to find peace. Having arrived in the city in October 1941, he felt truly relieved, for his brothers in vocation, besides not putting obstacles in his way, also helped him in his apostolic labours. There he received the communication that the Archbishop of Belo Horizonte wanted his presence in his archdiocese.
In the capital of Minas Gerais, where he arrived on 3 April 1942, Father Eustáquio took charge of the Parish of the Sacred Hearts, where he remained until 30 August 1943, the day of his death. After a beginning with some restrictions, which made him fear the return of sanctions already applied elsewhere, the Blessed was able to exercise in all freedom the charisms of healing and counseling, fulfilling the vocation for which the Lord had destined him.
Above all, a pastor of souls
This exemplary priest, who always sought to remedy bodily ills, never forgot that his main mission was to save souls. And in this apostolate “he achieved results that recall the times of the early Church“, writes his biographer, Fr Venancio, SSCC.
The press covered sensationally the miracles attributed to Father Eustáquio and there are documents of various cures for which science has no explanation. But he worked far more important “miracles”, and in such numbers that they “recall the times of the early Church”: the conversion of thousands of sinners.
He spent six hours a day hearing confessions. He had no oratorical gifts, but he possessed to a high degree the gift of the flaming word that moves people to repentance and change of life. In the parish of Poá, three curates were often not enough to attend to the penitents who queued up in front of the confessionals after hearing a teaching from this man of God.
During a triduum of preaching in the largest church of Belo Horizonte, an unheard of event occurred on three days: after the sermon, hundreds of men of all classes and ages ran to the confessionals, vying for the privilege of being the first to be reconciled with God. An even greater movement took place at the public servants’ Easter: more than five thousand people forced twelve priests to help him hear confessions.
Where did this power to bring sinners to conversion come from? From the radiance of his holiness.
An exemplary interior life
Blessed Eustáquio knew that the soul of every apostolate is the interior life. For this reason, even when he spent a sleepless night, he would begin his day at five in the morning, so as not to deprive himself of an hour of daily meditation. He prayed the Rosary. He spent hours in adoration before the Eucharistic Jesus. He never dispensed himself from making his examination of conscience nor from praying the breviary.
On one occasion, after an exhausting day, it was late at night and he had to leave immediately. Seeing how tired he was, a bishop said to him
– Father Eustáquio, I exempt you from praying the breviary today.
– I cannot, Your Excellency. All day long I have worked for others, now I need to think a little about myself.
For this exemplary religious, prayer was not a tedious obligation, but rather the nourishment that restored his energies. Strengthened by it, he was able to realize the powerful motto of his Congregation of the Sacred Hearts: “My work — to be useful to my neighbour for the honour and glory of the Sacred Hearts”
A peaceful death in the midst of excruciating pain
On 20 August 1943, while attending to a patient suffering from typhus, Fr. Eustáquio contracted this serious and then incurable illness.
In ten days he was to leave for eternity. Prostrate in his hospital bed, on the way to death – which he himself had prophesied – he always remained serene in the midst of atrocious suffering, so that his last days were among the most edifying of his life.
Several times he was seen praying the prayer that he himself used to teach others:
“O my Jesus, I love You. I love You with your Cross, with your suffering, with your immense love. O Jesus, through the blood you shed and the tears of your Blessed Mother, give sight to the blind, movement to the paralyzed, health to the sick, peace to all who suffer and are in pain. My Jesus, I want to follow your footsteps, your words to speak, your thoughts to think, your Cross to bear, your Body to eat, your Blood to drink, sin to abhor and Heaven to reach.”
In his last moments, he renewed his religious vows, and only breathed his last after seeing his Provincial Superior enter the room, who was weeping and tired from a long and strenuous journey, having wanted to be with the blessed before the he died. It was August 30th, 1943.
Text taken from the magazine Heralds of the Gospel n. 54, June 2006.
Compiled by Roberta MacEwan
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