On 13th October, we remember Blessed Alexandrina Maria da Costa, a Salesian Cooperator and mystic who lived in tremendous pain for over thirty years, finding happiness in her suffering, and managing to care about the troubles of others despite her own situation. At the age of 14, she severly injured her spine jumping from a window to escape from an attempted rape, and by the age of 21, she was totally paralysed. After praying for a cure at first, she came to see her vocation as a 'victim soul', and received the grace to bear her suffering, offering it 'for the salvation of the young' and for peace in the world.

In his homily at her beatification in 2014, St John Paul II said: '"Do you love me?", Jesus asks Simon Peter, who replies: "Yes Lord, you know that I love you". The life of Blessed Alexandrina Maria da Costa can be summarised in this dialogue of love. Permeated and burning with this anxiety of love, she wished to deny nothing to her Saviour. With a strong will, she accepted everything to demonstrate her love for him. A "spouse of blood", she relived mystically Christ's passion and offered herself as a victim for sinners, receiving strength from the Eucharist: this became her only source of nourishment for the final 13 years of her life.

'With the example of Blessed Alexandrina, expressed in the trilogy "suffer, love, make reparation", Christians are able to discover the stimulus and motivation to make "noble" all that is painful and sad in life through the greatest evidence of love: sacrificing one's life for the beloved. Her secret to holiness was love for Christ.'

Her story is one of those in the Pocketbook On the Road to Sainthood, available on our website from Don Bosco Publications.

Read more about her