"In you I shall do great things"
Alexandrina’s life was the materialization of a statement
that Jesus confided to her on the first Saturday of December 1934, when He
promised: "In you I shall do great things."
Already on 27 September of that year Alexandrina had told Fr.
Pinho:
My
beloved Jesus said me that He will be my Director and my on-going, intimate
Master, my interior director just as Your reverence is my exterior director; but
that I must obey you first in everything, rather than Him. He also told me to
tell Your Reverence that my journey on Earth will not be long, but that great
things await me.
By way of overall evaluation of Alexandrina’s life, the same
Fr. Pinho wrote in his biography On the Calvary of Balasar:
The Suffering One of Balasar
(Alexandrina) bequeathed to posterity, in her numerous
writings, the richest of springs where she not only discloses to us her the
exquisite transparency of her elect and beautiful soul and the delicate and
difficult ways by which, since infancy until the death, Providence had led her
steps, but also, gushing out from them, the abundant light of precious spiritual
doctrine. And this all the more so as she approached her end.
One of the censors who officially analysed Alexandrina’s
written work, after relating "the pureness of these writings", confessed himself
surprised at some aspects of them such as the "communion with Christ Redeemer in
the calling of victim". He comments, "One would not expect to find such
references in the writings of a woman of the people who only had the benefit of
several months of primary schooling".
But let us return to Fr. Pinho, who now evaluates her
mystical journey under his direction:
It makes indeed an
impression on those who are familiar with, for example, St. John of Cross’s
doctrine, to read these writings of Alexandrina, mainly those of the last four
years of her life. It seems that in them we find a superb, and at times
mysterious, example of the teachings of the great Mystic Doctor lived,
particularly in what concerns the passive Night of the Senses, and even more the
Night of the Soul and of the Consummated Union.
It was the fulfilment of the promise Jesus made to this
peasant woman, so unlettered and yet so exalted.
"It will reach the ends of the earth"
On 22 November 1937, Jesus said to Alexandrina:
I desire that, after your death, your life may be known.
That will be done; I shall see to it. It will reach the ends of the earth, just
as the voice of the Pope consecrating the world to my beloved Mother will reach
the ends of the earth.
I desire that everything be known, so that all people will
see how I communicate Myself to the souls who seek to love Me.
About the fulfilment of this prophecy, the first Director
commented:
Not five years
have passed since the death of the one of whom we write these lines and already
five different books on her are current in the world, one of them having already
run to four different editions and another to two.
Many years later, in 1968, Fr. Umberto Pasquale spoke about
"the correspondence I receive from her admirers (among whom are journalists
asking for information concerning the Servant of God) coming to me from the four
corners of the world".
Nearer to our time, Fr. Pasquale Liberatore said nearly the
same:
Those who know
Alexandrina are ever fascinated with her. I receive letters from all over the
world with requests for images and relics.
Many other examples attesting to similar sentiments can be
found.
Also what is interesting is that all this is the fulfilment
of an unlikely statement made so long before. Who could foresee, in 1937, that
the life of this humble paralytic would be spread all over the world?
Words of John Paul II
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On her
beatification day, among others, John Paul II left us with these words,
which are also an evaluation of our Beata:
"Do you
love me?" Jesus asks Simon Peter, who replies:
"Yes
Lord, you know that I love you".
The
life of Blessed Alexandrina Maria da Costa can be summarized in this
dialogue of love. Permeated and burning with this anxiety of love, she
wished to deny nothing to her Saviour. With a strong will, she accepted
everything to demonstrate her love for Him. A "spouse of blood", she
relived mystically Christ's passion and offered herself as a victim for
sinners, receiving strength from the Eucharist: this became her only
source of nourishment for the final 13 years of her life.
With
the example of Blessed Alexandrina, expressed in the three counsels
"suffer, love, make reparation", Christians are able to discover the
stimulus and motivation to make "noble" all that is painful and sad in
life through the greatest evidence of love: sacrificing one's life for
the beloved. |
On
the Fiftieth Anniversary of Alexandrina’s Death
What we are here saying here is a reminder of the great date
we shall celebrate this month, that of the fiftieth anniversary of Alexandrina’s
death. So let us listen, in conclusion, to the testimony of Jesus Himself:
I want somebody
to do what you are unable to do.
Loose leaves, what you say is loose leaves!
You make souls aspire to Me.
You go ahead;
you reach like this to Me, you reach like this!
You touched the
Infinite,
You live by the Infinite,
You speak about the Infinite!
Oh, life of God in souls!
May the youth that reads what we write have the courage to
start to discover the "great things" that Alexandrina represents, in order to
reach out to Jesus, the sole Saviour sent by the Father.
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