Blessed ALEXANDRINA MARIA DA COSTA (1904-1955)
The fruitfulness of “…cetera tolle”
The vocation of a Salesian Cooperator
One Holy Saturday, in a district called “Calvary” in the town of Balasar (Portugal), marked for ever the life of this extraordinary woman who shines out among the greatest mystics in the history of the Church of our day. That day Alexandrina, her sister Deolinda and a girl apprentice are intent on their sewing when they realise that three men are trying to enter their room. Although the doors are closed the three succeed in forcing the doors and getting inside. To safeguard her threatened purity and her dignity as a woman and a daughter of God, Alexandrina does not hesitate to throw herself out of the window from a height of four metres. The consequences are terrible, even though not immediate. In fact the various medical examinations she undergoes determine with ever growing clarity that her condition is irreversible. Until she is nineteen she can still drag herself to church where all stiff, she willingly stays, to the amazement of the people. Then the paralysis continues to become worse until the pains become very severe, she loses movement in her joints and becomes completely paralysed. It is 14 April 1925 when Alexandrina takes to her bed never to leave it again for the remaining thirty years of her life. Until 1928 she never ceases to ask the Lord, through the intercession of Our Lady for the grace of a cure, promising that if she were cured she would become a missionary. But, as soon as she realises that suffering is her vocation, she embraces it promptly: “Our Lady has obtained for me an even greater grace. Firsts resignation, then complete conformity to the will of God, and finally the desire to suffer.”
The first mystical phenomena belong to this period when Alexandrina begins a life of great union with Jesus in the Tabernacle, by means of Mary Most Holy. One day when she was alone this thought came spontaneously to her: “Jesus you are a prisoner in the tabernacle and by your will I in my bed. We shall keep each other company.” From then on her first mission begins: to be the Tabernacle lamp. She spends her nights as though on pilgrimage from one tabernacle to another. In every Mass she offers herself to the Eternal Father as a victim for sinners, with Jesus and according to his intentions. Her love for suffering grows ever stronger, as gradually she feels her vocation of victim become more clear. She makes a vow to always do the more perfect thing.
Starting from 1935, with the Jesuit Father Mariano Pinho, her first spiritual director, she is the messenger of Jesus to the Holy Father so that the world threatened by the second world war and defending itself against atheism, be consecrated to the Virgin Mother. “As I asked St. Margaret Mary for the consecration of the world to my Divine Heart, so I ask you that it be consecrated to the Heart of my most holy Mother.” The sign given by the Lord to underline the divine origin of this request is his Passion re-lived in Alexandrina from Friday 3 October 1938 until 24 March 1942, in other words 182 times. Alexandrina, overcoming her usual state of paralysis, gets out of bed, and with movements and gestures accompanied by atrocious pains, reproduces the different moments of the Via Crucis, for three hours and a half. “To love, to suffer, to make reparation” is the programme the Lord points out to her.
After Pius XII consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in Alexandrina the Passion of Jesus ceased in visible form, but continued interiorly for the whole of her life. In Holy Week of the same year, 1942, she begins a total fast which will continue until her death which occurred on 13 October 1955. Her life is a living eucharistic miracle. Jesus tells her: “... I shall see to it that you live only by Me, to show to the world what the value of the Eucharist is, and what my life is in souls: light and salvation for the human race.”
In 1944 her new spiritual director, the Salesian Fr Umberto Pasquale, enrols her in the Union of Salesian Cooperators and she has her Cooperator’s diploma put “in a place where I can always keep it in view,” so as to collaborate with her pain and with her prayers in the salvation of souls, especially of the young. On 12 September the same year Fr Umberto enrols her in the Association of Mary Help of Christians.
In spite of her sufferings, she continues to take an interest in and to spend herself on behalf of the poor, for the spiritual welfare of the parishioners and of many other people who have recourse to her. On 13 October 1955, the anniversary of the last apparition of Our Lady at Fatima, she is heard crying out: “I am happy because I am going to heaven.” On her tomb these words, which she chose herself, can be read: “Sinners, if the ashes of my body can be useful in saving you, draw near, walk on them, trample them underfoot until they disappear. But do not sin any more; do not offend our Jesus any more!”. It is a summary of her life spent solely in saving souls. In Oporto in the afternoon of 15 October the flower sellers have no more white roses: they have all been sold. A floral tribute to Alexandrina, who had been the white rose of Jesus. Her heart, precisely because it had always been united to the heart of Jesus, even to mystical identification with Him, was totally opened wide and embraced everyone, was moved by everything, she identified with everything that concerned her neighbour and was always giving and she gave herself completely. At her death her fellow townspeople dressed in mourning for a month and said: “The mamma of Balasar is dead!"
