Tecnico

María Pilar Izquierdo Albero, the third of five children, was born in Zaragoza, (Spain) on the 27th of July 1906. Her parents, a humble couple, poor in material goods but rich in virtue, instilled aspirit of piety in the child, as well as a love for the poor, and a tender devotion to the Virgin of Pilar.She was baptized on the 5th of August, festival of Our Lady Mary of the Snows. Later in lifeshe was to say that the day of her baptism had been the greatest in her life, because that day she became a daughter of the Church. Even as a small child an exquisite love for God and the poor showedbrightly in her. At times she deprived herself of her afternoon snack and other things when she considered that she should help someone more needy than her. Because she never went to school, and didnot know how to write and almost to read, she would always consider herself“a little fool” that knew nothing more “than to suffer and love, to love and suffer.”
Soon enough she was to feel thesharpness of pain and understood the redemptive value of suffering. At the age of 12 she fell victim to a mysterious disease that no physician was able to diagnose. For health reasons, after four yearsliving in Alfamén (Zaragoza), she returned to the City of Zaragoza, where she began to work in a shoe factory. She was dearly loved by all in the factory, as much for her simple character and naturalkindness, as her goodness and work ethic. Nevertheless, the Lord wanted to take her down other paths and she began to feel the mystery of the Cross. María Pilar so loved suffering that she was often heardto say, “In this suffering I find a love so great toward our Jesus, that I at once die and do not die…because that love is that which makes me live.”
In 1926 while returning from work she fell froma streetcar and broke her pelvis. In 1929, she became paraplegic and blind as a result of a large number of cysts. This would be the beginning of a painful path she would take for twelve years from...