Alexandrina Maria da Costa’s journey to heaven was not unlike that of her contemporaries, Martha Robin of France and St. Faustina of Poland. It consisted in her voluntary acceptance of suffering out of love of the Eucharistic Christ. For a period of thirteen years, the Portuguese mystic received no food or drink except for Holy Communion.
Born on March 30, 1904 in the village of Balsar in Portugal, Alexandrina received a good Christian upbringing at the hands of her mother (widowed shortly after her daughter’s birth) and older sister Deolinda. Even at the age of seven, when she made her First Holy Communion, she felt a profound love for the Blessed Sacrament. She went frequently to the local church. When physically unable to attend Mass, she made a spiritual Holy Communion. As a child of poor peasants, she was no stranger to heavy physical labor. She began working in the fields when she was barely nine years old. Four years later, she fell gravely ill. For two days her condition was critical. When her weeping mother held a cross to her lips, Alexandrina whispered: “I do not want this. I want Jesus in the Eucharist.” In the end, the girl’s health improved, but the results of the infection afflicted her throughout her adolescence. This was the first sign of what God would ask of her: to suffer as a victim soul for the conversion of sinners.
At age fourteen, Alexandrina had an experience the consequences of which she would bear to the end of her life. On Holy Saturday, while the girl was busy sewing with her sister and a friend, three men burst into the house with the intention of violating them sexually. Valuing her purity, she decided to preserve it at all cost. Her only recourse was to leap out of the window. The consequent fall from a height of four meters not only proved to be very painful, causing her numerous injuries, but also resulted in the doctors diagnosing her condition as “irreparable.” Not only would the paralysis remain, but it would get progressively worse.
Keep Me company
For the next five years, despite intense pain, Alexandrina continued to walk unaided to church. One day, while praying, she came to the realization that Christ in the tabernacle was a prisoner even as she was because to her infirmity. She desired with all her heart to make reparation to God for the pain of His solitude by offering Him her presence and providing solace to his Sacred Heart. During one of her mystical unions with Jesus, Our Lord asked her to foster a special reverence for the Eucharist. “Keep Me company in the Blessed Sarament. I remain here day and night, waiting to bestow My love and grace on all those who visit Me. But not many come. I am so desolate, lonely, and hurt. (…) Many do not believe in My existence and the fact that I abide here in the tabernacle. (…) Others believe, but do not love Me, and do not visit Me. They act as though I were not there. I have chosen you to keep Me company in this little sanctuary. (…) Like Mary, you have chosen the better part. You have chosen love for Me in the tablernacle, where you can contemplate Me not with the eyes of the body, but with those of the soul. I am truly present there, even as in heaven, i.e. in my Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.
When her paralysis reached such a point that Alexandrina was unable to rise from her bed, the priest brought the Lord Jesus to her. But soon a new priest came to the parish. He made it known that he would bring Holy Communion to the sick only once a month. This was a painful blow to the paralyzed girl, for she felt that it was only daily visits of the Eucharistic Jesus that had kept her alive until now. She begged the priest to bring the Blessed Sacrament more often. While waiting for his response, she offered up her sufferings for those who held the Bread of Life in disdain. In the end, the priest agreed to make bi-monthly visits.
Union with the Suffering Jesus
Alexandrina begged Mary for the miracle of a cure from her infirmity, promising to go to the missions if her prayer were heard. But gradually God brought her to understand that her vocation was to be a victim soul for Jesus. She heard Our Lord’s voice calling on her “to love, suffer, and make reparation.” Alexandrina accepted the will of God and stopped praying for a healing. To the end of her life, i.e. for the next thirty years, she remained bed-ridden. Her sufferings, intimately joined to the sufferings of Christ, took on a salvific dimension. The path of physical pain led her to the glory of God in the manner indicated by St. Paul: “[we are] children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom 8: 17).
In November of 1933, at the invalid’s request, the priest said Holy Mass for the first time in her room. Having waited so long for this event, Alexandrina would later recall: “Along with that first Holy Mass, the Lord began to increase His tenderness toward me, on the one hand, and the weight of my cross, on the other.” Her decision to become engaged in the work of redeeming humanity found its expression in a profound union with the suffering Redeemer. Every Friday, from October 4, 1938 to March 24, 1942, the mystic received the grace of partaking vividly in the Lord’s three-hour-long passion. The experience consisted in the girl repeating all the gestures and words of the Lord’s final hours before His death on the cross. With it, came all the physical and spiritual pain suffered by the Redeemer. Interestingly, every manifestation of paralysis left her at these times.
This exceptional intimacy with Jesus caused the invalid to be particularly hated by the devil. He attacked her, tormented her with temptations against her faith, and inflicted painful wounds on her body. The girl also suffered misunderstanding on the part of the villagers as well as estrangement from the priests who remained skeptical of her mystical experiences. The strength to overcome these painful experiences, she drew from the Eucharist.
You will no longer eat on earth
On March 27, 1942, the invalid called on Jesus: “My Eucharistic Love, I cannot live without You! O Jesus, transform me into Your Eucharist!” Deep in her heart, she heard the reply: “You will no longer eat on earth. My Body will be your food. Your blood will be My Divine Blood. Your life will be My Life. You will receive this grace when I unite My Heart with yours.” From that day forth, Holy Communion became Alexandrina’s only Bread. To the day of her death, i.e. for over a dozen years, she consumed no other food or drink. (Her weight of thirty-three kilograms never changed.)
Before long, news of the girl’s extraordinary fast began to spread throughout the district. People began to visit the mystic’s home, begging for prayers. Yet there was no lack of those who doubted the authenticity of her fast. They claimed that Alexandrina’s mother and sister fed her in secret. After several years of living exclusively on the daily Eucharist, Alexandrina agreed, at the request of the bishop, to undergo a medical examination, which would settle the matter of her extraordinary fast once and for all. Since, according to the doctors, a single visit would not be enough to determine such an exceptional case, they decided the invalid should undergo a month of observation at the hospital. Alexandrina gave her consent on three conditions: daily Holy Communion, the presence of her sister Deolinda, and no other tests apart from the daily observations.
Apart from the physical pain she suffered at the hospital, she endured humiliation on the part of the doctors and medical staff. But she remembered the words of Jesus. He had told her that she would rarely experience consolation and that, despite this, she should always wear a smile on her face. Thus, all those who had dealings with the girl saw her cheerful face and were unaware of the sufferings she endured. Throughout her stay at the hospital, Alexandrina remained under constant observation. Not for a moment was she left in peace. In vain they tried to convince her to take food. After forty days, the observations came to an end. Both the official report signed by Dr. Gomez de Araujo of the Madrid Medical Academy and the addendum submitted by Dr. Lima de Azevado of the Oporto Faculty of Medicine stated that the case “admitted of no scientific explanation (…). The laws of psychology and biochemistry are unable to explain how the patient could have survived for forty days on a total fast at the hospital. While in this state, the woman answered daily to numerous questions and held frequent conversations while manifesting a very good disposition and a perfect clarity of mind (…). We certify that throughout this entire period, her abstinence from food and drink was total. We also certify that her weight, temperature, breathing, and pulse remained constant throughout.” After carefully going over the medical reports, Dr. Ruj Joao Marques of Pernambuco stated that this certification of Alexandrina’s fast should once and for all close the lips of those who accused da Costa of fraud.
The power of the Eucharist
Alexandrina knew the power of the Eucharist. From Our Lord, she heard: “You live on the Eucharist alone, since it is My desire in this way to show the world the power of the Eucharist and the power of My life in souls.” The life of this holy Portuguese woman shows us the fruits that come from discovering God’s love in the Blessed Sacrament and from responding to it generously by imitating Christ’s love through the conquering of personal sin, selfishness, and every evil. Her journey to heaven only makes sense in the context of love. “Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it” (John Paul II, Redemptor hominis, 10). Not without reason is the Eucharist called the sacrament of love. For love exists where there is the unselfish gift of the self. The greatest gift that God offers man is eternal life, which man receives as the fruit of the Lord’s death and resurrection. Every Eucharist is a re-presentation of the Paschal events. In this way, we can say that Christ in the Eucharist responds to man’s greatest hunger—his hunger for love. Throughout her entire life Blessed Alexandrina discovered the love of God present in the Eucharist.
Christ promised the mystic that thanks to her sacrifice, many souls would become fervent in the Eucharistic life. Despite the daily pain of her illness, Alexandrina received hundreds of visitors to whom she would speak about the message of Our Lady of Fatima, urging them to seek repentance and prayer as well as make reparation to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. In 1945, prompted by her spiritual director, Silesian Father Umberto Pasquale, she formally offered up her sufferings for the sanctification and salvation of young people. In so doing, she was responding to the words Jesus had spoken to her: “Find Me souls who will love Me in the sacrament of love, that they may take your place when you go to heaven.”
Alexandrina died on October 13, 1955. She was buried in the manner she requested: “I should like to be buried with my face turned toward the church tabernacle. In life I always wished to be united with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and have my gaze fixed on the tabernacle as often as possible. That is why I wish that after my death I should continue to have my gaze turned toward the Eucharistic Jesus. I know that I shall no longer see Christ with my bodily eyes, but I wish to be laid in this position to show Him the love that I had for the Blessed Eucharist.”
Dialogue of love
Two years after her death, a small chapel was erected over Alexandrina’s grave. In 1977, her body was removed from the chapel and placed by the main altar of the parish church to acknowledge the fact that here, opposite her beloved Eucharist, was the most fitting spot for her eternal rest. During the mystic’s beatification on May 24, 2004, John Paul II recalled the scene on Lake Genesareth as the most appropriate one for portraying the life’s journey of the Portuguese woman: “Do you love me,” Jesus asked Simon Peter, and he replied, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
This dialogue of love encapsulates the life of Blessed Alexandrina Maria da Costa. Permeated and burning with the desire for love, she would refuse the Redeemer nothing. Possessed of a strong will, she accepted everything, in order that she might show Him the depth of her love. “This ‘Bride in blood’ experienced, in a mystical way, the torments of Christ and offered herself up as a victim soul for sinners, drawing her strength from the Eucharist, which became her only food for thirteen years. (…) From the example of Blessed Alexandrina, as expressed in the words “to suffer, to love, and to make reparation,’ Christians will find the incentive and motivation to ennoble everything that is painful and sad in life by making it the supreme proof of love: the offering up of one’s life for one’s beloved (John Paul II, Homily addressed at St. Peter’s Square, April 25, 2004.
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