Chapter 14
THE WORK OF SATAN, BUT JESUS IS NOT ABSENT
Temptations
Alexandrina, chosen by Jesus for so high a mission and made powerful in saving souls for Him, could not help but be a target for Satan to wound with persistence and fury.
There is reference of an initial intervention in 1933.
On 18th October 1933 Alexandrina enrols in the “Children of Mary”. In the letter to Fr Pinho of 27th October she writes:
The “little cripple” (the demon) was almost able to arrange that I was not (affiliated in the Children of Mary), but Our Lord won. C (27-10-33)
He made many attempts to prevent her from being in touch with Fr Pinho.
Rev. Fr Pinho, do you want to know what the black face of hell – because only he could make it - brought into my head? That what I sent to Your Rev. would damn me, and that this was absolutely certain. C (14-9-34)
With insistence the devil tried to convince her that everything supernatural that was happening to her was the fruit of her fancy.
The demon, today, afflicted me very much with doubts, telling me that I invent things in my head, and for vanity. He made me cry; cursed be he! C (6-8-35)
He tries repeatedly to induce her to commit suicide.
The demon wanted me to burn everything, and not send anything more to Your Reverence. He said that by doing that I could still save myself. He also said that I should kill myself, and that he could arrange a way that would cost me nothing. I am suffering very much (since 1928 when she lost hope of the cure) without any rewards, because it seems that Our Lord does not have any love for me. C (10-1-35)
Satan also used the apparent death. (C 3)
He began by saying that the time was approaching when my lies would be discovered, that the truth would be known, because I would not die at the time indicated.
- Kill yourself! Listen to me: I will choose for you a death that will cost nothing; if you don’t accept this offer, what a shame! C (14-5-36; such death happened in 7-6-36, vide Ch 3)
Assaults
During the months that he threatened me, the demon’s assaults redoubled.
It was in July 1937 that the “little cripple”, not satisfied with tormenting my conscience and saying excessively ugly things to me, began to attack me without warning from below the bed, at night, and at any hour of the day. (...)
One night he flung me – over the bed of my sister who was close to me (on a mattress) – to the ground. She got up, took me in her arms, and said: “Come to your bed.” No sooner had she had laid me down, than I was up again and hissing. (A, p. 42)
This thing happened again. Moreover she suffered other attacks that disturbed her psychologically.
I had very furious attacks twice a day, at 9 or 10 o’clock at night and in the afternoon. They lasted about an hour or more. During the attacks, I felt in myself all the anger and fury of hell. I could not bear them to talk to me about Our Lord and our heavenly Mother, nor could I look upon their images without spitting at them (…). I could also not bear to be close to my Director; I called him ugly names, I wanted to beat him and a deadly anger against him raged in me. (…) Today I wish that people might see these things if only to inspire a fear of hell and a resolve not to offend Jesus. (A, pp. 43-44)
Fr Pinho was present at some of these attacks. In the Biography he described that of 7th October 1937.
In such fights, she, paralytic and tortured by pain, drained of strength, and weighing only about 33 kg, tried violently to tear herself to pieces against the iron of the bed-head, to bite herself, etc. Four people couldn’t manage to restrain her at all. This is what we saw that day; and the demon driving her to blaspheme and use foul words of which she didn’t even know the meaning, as she later admitted to us.
To be certain that we were witnessing a diabolic attack and not one of hysteria, we commanded in Latin:
In nomine Jesu, dic mihi: tu quis es? (In the name of Jesus, tell me who you are?)
She answered immediately, without any hesitation:
— I am Satan and I hate you!
For absolute certainty, we changed the phrase, though still in Latin, and the reply, also immediate, was this:
— It’s me, it’s me, do not doubt it! (NoC, p. 92 port.)
Two weeks later, Alexandrina wrote to Fr Pinho:
I have developed a great horror of the demon’s attacks! (...) I want to suffer very much, very much for love of my beloved Jesus, but now it seems to me that I am not now capable of more. (...)
— My daughter, (she hears Jesus saying) there are many demons that afflict you, but there are also millions and millions of sinners who offend me at this point.
Courage, my daughter! It cost you much to be treated like this, I know it well. But what costs more is more consoling to your Jesus. My heart is constrained seeing you suffering in this way!
I must tell you, my daughter, that the confrontations will not be many: I will stay the demons’ access to you. I want you to be more alone with me, in your inner soul (He comes to comfort her, to give her courage). I want you in my most holy arms, with that simplicity which a little child has in the arms of its mother. C (21-10-37)
With the end of this year, 1937, these tremendous attacks finished, but her work of reparation didn’t finish.
Courage, my daughter! The attacks have finished, but they will not lose one instant to torment you in order to make you fall. Trust in Me: your soul has the whiteness and the perfume of the iris and the amaryllis. (...)
Rest, my daughter: this method of warfare is finished. You have won, and with a great victory.
The demons will not treat you in this way again. They will attack you, horribly, painfully, but in such a way that you will be able to suffer in front of people without them perceiving it. C (29-10-37)
Fr Pinho confirms:
The diabolic fights with corporal attacks had, indeed, ceased forever; never more did the demon touch her until her death. But the enemy does not disarm and will struggle using all the means within his reach against the heroic victim until the end. (NoC p. 98 port.)
Against sacred objects
Satan, being deprived those assaults, vented his anger in other ways.
The demon wants me to remove all the “bigotry” that I have at my breast and in my hand, that is my crucifix. (…) He wants me to discard the objects that he hates. C (8-3-35)
If he hates them, that means that they serve for some thing!
Some year later (we do not know with precision because Alexandrina does not speak about this in her writings) – Fr Umberto Pasquale says in his book Alexandrina, p. 140 – the demon carried off her crucifix that she had fixed with a pin in the shirt next to her heart (this shirt, with the mended rent is conserved, together with other relics, in Alexandrina’s House). About two years later it was found interred in the garden.
This precious crucifix is at present in the keeping of the “Eucharistic-Marian Group of Blessed Alexandrina”, in Gorgonzola.
Another sacred object fell in the claws of the demon: a little statue in metal of the heavenly Mother, that he stole from her on 8th December 1947 and was found on 21st October 1948, buried in the pigsty. In the diary we can read:
The tiny image of my beloved heavenly Mother, having been found, was returned to me yesterday morning. It had disappeared on 8th December last. I loved it very much and suffered greatly at its loss[1].
When I saw it, I covered it with kisses, I hugged it. I do not know how to say what I felt inside: It was more than just a feeling of joy; I had longed so much to see it and to have it again.
For a long time I could not keep my eyes off it: the pain of it made my heart bleed: how dirty it was!
Moments later, I felt as if all hell, and all its demons descended on my soul. In it I felt the roars and howl of the cursed ones and felt as if they were mauling me and all my body. (...)
Some time later, in the same diary, the explanation is given by Jesus (heard in ecstasy):
— The anger of Satan against you is very great, because he sees souls fleeing from him. (...) He wants to drive you to desperation and, as he does not achieve this, he despairs. I compelled him to give back to you the image of my Mother, which he stole on the feast of Her Immaculate Conception. Do you know why? Do you remember that during the novena his attacks on you had been forbidden? He, enraged, tried to avenge himself and he took it in his teeth. I allowed that he could not hold it for more than a moment without being obliged to put it down: he was more burnt by it than by the fire of hell itself. I allowed this in order to give to the image a higher value, greater memories. (...) They were his roars of anger, that you felt and heard when it was returned to you. The pain that you felt when seeing it in such a state is the pain that she feels in her most holy Heart when she hears the blasphemies and the heresies pronounced against her and against Me. S (22-10-48)
A sacred object used for love
Jesus uses a sacred object to give her comfort, along with other means, such as the help of angels and Holy Communions mystically made. Let’s record these episodes, where love wins.
Years ago I used always to have at my side, and mainly at night between my arms, a crucified Jesus[2]. (…)
At first I did not have it and it appeared at my side. It had been on the wall.
From Monday to Tuesday (the diary entry is for a Friday), by night also, the crucifix from the wall appeared to me again, on my breast, between my arms, under the clothes, as if it had been placed there. It impressed me: it seemed like a dream. I spoke about that spontaneously, without thinking about writing anything (but she was obliged to describe what happened and to ask Jesus its meaning). (...)
— O Jesus, accept my sacrifice! Whether I want to or not, I have to obey and to ask to you the meaning of the coming of your crucified image on my chest.
Jesus smiled sweetly, sat down, placed me on his lap, drew my head onto his divine Heart and said to me:
— I want you to speak to me without fear and with all simplicity. I do not want you to be wanting, nor to will. To want what I want is to do my will.
The reason that I detached myself from the wall and went to you was plain and simple: the Crucified One wants ever to be joined to his crucified one.
And I cannot, my daughter, dispense with your caresses of my image, and your acts of love. My Passion is at each moment renewed and, receiving your caresses and love, my sufferings disappear, I forget sins and I treat the sinners with compassion. (...)
It is yet another light that I add to all the other lights that I put into your life; these will form, in time, a radiating sun for souls the whole world over. You are, and will always be, the light of humanity. S (16-6-50)
[1] This image had been given to her by Fr. Pinho in the first years of his direction.
Alexandrina was never separated from it. Usually she had it next to her heart, putting it in charge of loving Jesus for her. During the phenomenon of the physical Passion she had it pressed in her fist in such a way that no human force was able to remove it. (...) After Alexandrina’s death, it was sent by Deolinda to Fr Pinho in Baía, in Brazil. It is not known who has it now. (C G, pp. 464-465)
[2] She had substituted the crucifix that she always had for one that Fr. Pinho had given her. Later she had offered this (it is not known to whom) and had asked that they return the first one. Whoever it was had forgotten to return it and she did not ask it again so as not to cause a fuss. Surely, however, after this extraordinary fact, it had been returned to her.
