Blessed Alexandrina Maria da Costa is a 20th-century mystic, an apostle of the Eucharist and a keeper of the devotion of the first six Thursdays of the month. Her life, spent mostly in bed, conveys joy, peace, love, faith, and hope. Her smile, enriched by an exceptional spiritual experience, reaches thousands of people and, even today, remains an unmistakable sign of God's presence among humanity.
She is born in Balasar, in the district of Porto, on March 30, 1904. She remains with her family until the age of 7, then is sent to Póvoa do Varzim, to the home of a carpenter, to attend elementary school. After eighteen months, she returns home to her mother and sister Deolinda.
She has a lively childhood: endowed with an outgoing nature, she is loved by all her classmates. At the age of 12, she falls ill: a serious infection - perhaps typhoid fever - threatens her life. Although she overcomes the danger, she will bear the marks of this illness forever.
On Holy Saturday in 1918, Alexandrina is 14 years old and is at home with Deolinda and an apprentice girl: they are sewing. They notice that three men are trying to enter their room. Although the doors are closed, the three men manage to force them open: to preserve her purity, Alexandrina throws herself out of the window, falling four meters. The consequences are terrible: medical examinations reveal a spinal injury. Until the age of 19, she is still able to drag herself to church, but as the paralysis progresses, she becomes completely immobilized. From April 14, 1925, Alexandrina is confined to bed and will remain there for the remaining thirty years of her life.
Until 1928, she continues asking the Lord, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, to heal her, promising that, if she were healed, she would become a missionary. But when she realizes that suffering is her vocation, she surrenders to God's will. “To love, suffer, make reparation” is the program the Lord gives her.
From Friday, October 3, 1938, to March 24, 1942, she relived the sufferings of the Passion every Friday 182 times: overcoming her paralysis, she got out of bed and, through movements and gestures accompanied by great pain, reproduced the various moments of the Way of the Cross for three and a half hours.
Alexandrina, apostle of the Eucharist, can be associated with Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque and Sister Lucia of Fatima: the former was an apostle of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and of reparation Communion on the first nine Fridays of the month, and the latter an apostle of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and of Communion on the first five Saturdays of the month in reparation for offenses committed against the Blessed Virgin.
Jesus entrusted Alexandrina with the task of spreading love for the Eucharist and Communion on the first six Thursdays of the month, inviting people to adore his real presence in the “mystery of faith” and to contemplate his perpetual sacrifice by recalling his holy wounds.
On February 25, 1949, Jesus made requests and promises to Alexandrina; he asked her to have him loved, consoled, and offered reparation to in the Most Holy Eucharist, and clearly indicated the practice of the first six Thursdays of the month: “My daughter, my dear spouse, see to it that I am loved, consoled, and offered reparation to in my Eucharist. In my name, tell all those who receive Holy Communion properly, with sincere humility, fervor, and love, on the first six consecutive Thursdays and spend an hour in adoration before my tabernacle in intimate union with me: I promise them heaven. And, through the Eucharist, to honor my holy wounds, honoring first the wound of my sacred shoulder, which is so little remembered.
“Those who, when recalling my wounds, also recall the sorrows of my blessed Mother and ask us for spiritual and bodily graces through them have my promise that these will be granted, unless they would harm their souls. At the moment of their death, I will take my most holy Mother with me to defend them.”
The invitation Jesus addresses to us through his apostle is to live always united with him, extending this intimate and familiar union into every moment of life and preserving the gift of his presence in our inner home through love of neighbor, silence, and prayer.
The Bridegroom tells her to spread love for the Eucharist, nourishment and sustenance for the inner life. And that the Eucharist can work miracles in a person’s life is proven by Alexandrina’s living experience: she spends thirty years bedridden and paralyzed, suffering excruciating pain because of myelitis in her spinal cord, yet she becomes a beacon of light for those who meet her and for the whole world; she makes her existence a gift of love to the Father, to come to the aid of and cooperate in the salvation of sinners, in intimate union with the crucified and risen Christ. She never stops loving, radiating hope, joy, and peace through her smile and her gaze to those who are blessed to draw near to her.
In her, the Lord brings to fullness the mystery expressed by Saint Paul in his Letter to the Galatians: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (2:20); and the action of Jesus in the Eucharist is not limited to her inner life, but becomes an authentic “medicine of immortality,” enabling her to live on it alone, in a total fast from food and water for thirteen years.
In 1950, Alexandrina celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of her immobility, and on January 7, 1955, she is told in advance that that would be the year of her death. A few months before she dies, the Mother of God gives her this message: “Speak to souls. Speak about the Eucharist! Speak to them about the Rosary! Let them nourish themselves on the Flesh of Christ, prayer, and my Rosary!”.
On October 12, she asks to receive the Anointing of the Sick, and on October 13, the anniversary of Our Lady’s last apparition at Fatima, she exclaims: “I am happy because I am going to heaven.” She dies at 7:30 p.m.
