Henri Grialou (his secular name) was born into a modest mining family in Aveyron, in central France. Attracted by God from an early age, he wanted to be a priest. In the minor seminary he discovered the little Therese of the Child Jesus. It was then 1908, he was 13 years old: he was touched in a decisive way by this supernatural friendship, which would influence his life and his mission.

At the major seminary he discovered St. John of the Cross and felt strongly impressed by the Spanish Carmelite reformer of the sixteenth century: he understood that he was called to follow him and resembled him. On his deathbed he confessed: «In the depths of my soul, it is with Saint John of the Cross that I live».

This was how he entered the Carmelite novitiate just after his priestly ordination, in February 1922. There, he learned to know Teresa of Avila, the great reformer of Carmel, and found in her the mother of the spiritual.

1923, 1925, 1926, was the period of the beatification and canonization of Thérèse of Lisieux, then of the proclamation of John of the Cross as a Doctor of the Church. Our young Carmelite (28-31 years old) preached a lot in different French circles and perceived everywhere, especially among the laity, a spiritual thirst that found an adequate response in the teaching of Carmel. He then understood that his mission was to «lead souls to God» and to form them in the union of contemplation and action, showing them the path of prayer and life in the Spirit.

1929. Some young women who wanted to give themselves to God asked him to guide them. They gradually realized the thought that he had, of forming a group where action and contemplation in the world were united, to bring God where people do not know him. The donation of the sanctuary of Notre-Dame de Vie, in Provence (Venasque), allows him to begin his work. The Institute of Our Lady of Life was born (1923).

1937: Father Maria Eugenio was elected Definitor General of the Carmelites in Rome and remained so for 17 years, until the Chapter of 1955. It was during this period in Rome that Pius XII appointed him Apostolic Visitator of the Carmelite Nuns of France and asked him to unite them in a federation. A tireless worker, he also found time to publish in two volumes his masterpiece "I want to see God" (1949-1951).

In 1955 he returned to France, where he was able to take care more closely of his foundation, without forgetting his Carmelite province of Avignon, since he was exercising his third mandate as provincial of the Carmelites, when he died on March 27, 1967.

The beatification ceremony was held on November 19, 2016.