ALEXANDRINA AND YOUTH

August 2006

“ALEXANDRINA, I WANT TO LEARN FROM YOU” (3)   

We pass now to the second chapter of our vademecum, which has the title “Alexandrina and the divine life”; the first of its five sub-headings speaks of “Conformity with the God’s will” and begins in this way:

“… but my happiness and my contentment are soley in the suffering and the fulfilment of the Lord’s will.” 

Here is an essential component of Alexandrina’s spirituality: conformity with God’s will. 

Alexandrina’s primary impulse is to love God, and the oblation of self-will is a characteristic element of that love. 

This love of Jesus is often expressed as a smile of the soul.

Alexandrina explains this well in the letter of 18-06-46 to her director Fr. Pinho: 

“But it is a very different smile from that of my lips. I have it and I feel it constantly; it is not a smile for the world, it is an interior smile; a sweet smile, a tender smile, smile which kisses and hugs the Lord’s will; a smile that embraces the cross with all the pain that entails. It is a smile that means acceptance of the cross because it is Jesus who is offering it.

This smile is real, it is not deceptive: it is the smile to the cross, and to the will of Him who sent it”. 

Here are some other sentences that express the same conformity: 

“And, among so many thorns, so many sufferings, so heavy a cross, I feel the joy of the soul that smiles at everything that comes from Lord’s hands.  

I can groan, I can cry with the eyes of the body, but those of the soul are glad, ready to receive all the martyrdom that Heaven sends”. C (02-06-48) 

“I have joy in nothing save in the continuous effort of wanting to do with the Lord’s will perfectly.

I want to smile at everything, but my nature is so weak! It wilts, it faints and it dies. C (22-09-51)

“Here I am (in the fatigue of having to dictate this diary),resigning myself, subject to obedience, contradicting my will, obeying blindly, without having a will of my own, only wanting what Jesus wants.  

I don’t want to say anything more; I just want to blank out completely the movements of my own will. (…) Jesus would be sad: to this I cannot assent!

I obey blindly, I obey for love”. S (23 - 02-51) 

“I cannot speak. To Heaven I send my sacrifice of blind obedience”. S (21-01-55, year of her death) 

We are thankful to the Blessed Alexandrina for her heroic conformity with the God’s will; if not, we would be deprived of thousands of pages of very rich treasures, so beneficial for us!   

“Alexandrina and the reward” is the next subject that Prof. Eugenie takes up. She writes:

The true Christian does not follow the straight path moved by the fear of punishment, or by the desire of reward, but only by love of Jesus, whom he loves by becoming always more like Him. Alexandrina affirms: 

“I do not suffer in expectation of reward: I suffer because my heart is thirsty for Jesus and in Him alone can it be satisfied”. C (23-03-40) 

“I don’t search for my honour, or for my glory (we are in 1947 and she had already acquired a degree of fame), but Yours,

Jesus. I do not suffer with a view to reward for myself, but with the aim of saving souls”. S (10-01-47) 

 “My Jesus, my Jesus, I do not want my soul pure to avoid the sufferings of purgatory: I want it pure to console You, I want it pure because I do not want wound You, I want it pure in order that with such purity I may save souls for You.  

This is the reason of my suffering; it is for it that I accept everything, my Jesus”. S (21-02-47) 

“I wanted to love to the point of madness, I want to love my Jesus without a thought of Heavenly reward as the outcome. 

The reward that Jesus gives does not interest me: I want to love Him; only Him above all, because He is worthy of love. 

He is the reward of my life. Jesus and souls are the reward of my pain; but it is always Jesus, because souls belong to Him”. S (28-02-47)