"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

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.