Bl. Alexandrina Maria da Costa

On Holy Saturday of 1918, Alexandrina Maria da Costa, a fourteen-year-old native of Balasar, Portugal, was sewing when three men broke into her home, threatening to violate her chastity. Resolute to preserve her purity, she fled by jumping out a window. The thirteen-foot plunge to the ground crippled her for life. At the age of twenty-one, she became totally paralyzed and permanently bedridden. Alexandrina accepted this affliction as God's will for her and an opportunity to offer herself totally as a "victim soul" for the conversion of sinners. For a period of three and a half years, she received the mystical gift of experiencing each Friday the pains of Christ on the cross. For thirteen years, she was imbued with the mystical phenomenon of being nourished solely by the Eucharist. Out of zeal to convert sinners, Alexandrina requested for her tombstone these words: "Sinners, how much I want to tell you...Do not risk losing Jesus for all eternity, for he is so good. Enough with sin. Love Jesus, love him!" On October 13, 1955, before breathing her last, Alexandrina declared, "I am happy, because I am going to heaven."