Elena Calero, another future millennial saint?

Will there soon be a new saint for millennials? In October 2022, the Catholic Church began the process of beatification for Elena Calero Bahamonde, a young Spanish woman who died in 2014 at the age of 23, now a Servant of God. She had a short life, full of simplicity, which bore much fruit.

Elena was born in 1990 in Madrid into a Christian family. Simple, calm, cheerful, always attentive to others, she sang, danced, and dreamed with her sisters. She was a teenager with a normal life. However, there was one stage that marked her deeply: the preparation for her Confirmation. During this time, she deepened her faith and truly chose it.

An economics student, Elena had a boyfriend and plans for the future. What set her apart from others was her love for the Eucharist. “She was deeply in love with Christ; he was the center of her life,” her sister Belén testifies. Elena started by committing firmly to her parish, then found her place in a youth group where her attachment and devotion to the Real Presence matured.

Elena knew that the Church lives from the Eucharist, and that without priests there are no sacraments. Almost all her messages ended with a prayer for seminarians and vocations. Her devotion wasn’t an abstract idea, but a lived commitment. “I want to offer my suffering for priests and for new vocations,” she later wrote in one of her notebooks.

The core of Elena's spirituality lies in her attachment to prayer. For her, praying was as vital as breathing, eating, or sleeping. She attended Mass almost every day and used to spend a long time in silence before the Blessed Sacrament. Every Friday she participated in Eucharistic Adoration and often stopped at a church on her way home from class to pray.

“Prayer first. Without prayer, nothing is possible,” she often liked to repeat. This attachment in her heart bore fruit in her more concrete commitments. When the youth group she participated in ran out of steam, she discreetly watched over it so that it wouldn’t fade away.

To encourage community prayer, she emailed a quote from a saint every week. Recognized as a natural leader, Elena stood out more for her example than for her desire to lead. Many also testify to the way she paid attention to the most vulnerable, so that no one was ever marginalized.

But on June 18, 2013, after a simple blood test, she was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia. At first, the young woman hoped for a quick recovery. Little by little, Elena came to perceive her illness as a personal call from God. In her notes, she meditates on suffering: “Sometimes obstacles arise in our path. We’d like to rebel, to tell the Lord that it’s too much. But instead of handing over our sorrows to him, we waste our little strength on complaining.”

She never asked “why?” A single question accompanied her throughout her illness: “How can I offer up what’s happening?” During the most difficult months, she made a list of people and intentions for whom she offered her suffering: the pope, priests, her family, doctors...

Even in the midst of her trial, she repeated, “It’s useless to say, ‘Thy will be done,’ if I’m not willing to give you what you ask of me. How sad and empty our hearts become when we reject God's outstretched hand!”

Also, a year after her diagnosis, she wrote, “The Lord calls me to follow him ever more closely, without fear, without hesitation, only out of love.”

As her illness worsened, Elena underwent chemotherapy, a bone marrow transplant, and weeks of hospitalization, without ever complaining. On the contrary, every night she surrendered herself to God, praying before the cross in her room. Although very weak, she made a pilgrimage to Covadonga, a shrine in northern Spain, and simply said, “I'm going to see my Mother.”

Bedridden and dying in the fall of 2014, she thought even more about others. During the last days of her short life, affected by HSV encephalitis that caused fever, convulsions, and hallucinations, she still managed to ask, with gestures, for the cross and the Eucharist.

Her bishop went to visit her in the hospital: Elena's face, though marked by illness, shone with hope. With immense effort, she received Communion and the Anointing of the Sick.

On November 20, 2014, at the age of 23, Elena returned to the Father's house. Her face shone with a deep peace. Her father would later say that he saw her like Jesus in the tomb: marked by suffering, transfigured by trust.

Elena's funeral Mass brought together a multitude of young people. The atmosphere wasn’t sad, but imbued with profound hope. It was a testimony that simply said that youth is also a time to live with Christ. Even an ordinary life, in which prayer, joy, celebration, and friendships coexist, can bear great fruit.

Through her existence, Elena reminds us that our true treasure lies in the love that we offer in every little thing and in thanksgiving. It’s a way of praising God in everything, which Elena expressed with these words: “Everything I have, you have given me, Lord.”