Tribute to Eugénie Signorile and Leo Madigan (3)

ALEXANDRINA, I WANT TO LEARN FROM YOU!

A short synthesis of practical passages from Alexandrina’s work

By C.E. SIGNORILE

Chapter II

ALEXANDRINA AND THE DIVINE LIFE

Conformity with the God’s will

Let’s remember:

“… but my happiness and my contentment are solely 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

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)

Humility

A basic and very insistent note in Alexandrina’s spiritual symphony is the humility.  

Her poor rising, in a poor and ignored place, her almost null instruction (no more than one year of the elementary school) will have contributed for her humble attitude. But her virtue is in remaining always humble even when her fame is spread.

Instead, the notoriety makes her to suffer!

In her mystical life, extraordinary, so rich of virtues, she does not attribute anything of good to herself, but everything to Jesus; and she defends herself always when Jesus praises her.   

Jesus, there is in me some thing of good, praiseworthy? I do not feel it, I do not know it.  But, if there is, belongs to You, it is not mine. S (22-01-45) 

My Jesus, count always on me as your victim.  Do not count on my love, but on yours, because it is with it that I love You; do not count on my generosity and my force, but on yours: it is your generosity, is your force that takes me to accept with joy all the suffering. S (05-04-47) 

I have lived only for You and thanks to You. I have never, never trusted on myself.   I trusted never, never on me; for your grace, I didn’t attribute me whatever.  My nothing, my immense misery, my uselessness is what is always, always present to me. S (03-07-53) 

And, turned towards Our Lady, she says: 

You know, dear Mother, how little I feel myself in yours most holy presence.
How many times I have said to You that I am not worthy to kiss your most holy feet, but also the soil, not where they had settled, but where they had made shade! S (02-08-47) 

Of course, her humility faces always also the next one.  

However, she always signs “the poor Alexandrina”. 

After that, let us hear the following phrases: 

I do not desire to be more than the other souls. I want for all what I want for me: the purest love, more burning hot, more saint love. L (26-07-39) 

If the pain of some souls that wound me with thorns afflicts me, I strengthen for not thinking about their faults and say:  
Oh Jesus, shape them, resemble to Yours their hearts. 
Shape them and resemble at first my heart, because it is that what more needs.
Jesus, celestial and beloved Mother, I am your most unworthy and smallest daughter among those You have in the world. S (12-07-45) 

Let us have present that this to feel herself “small” does not hinder her to search to be useful for the good, to become saint developing her mission of salvation of the souls. 

My God, I want to be small at the world’s eyes, but great at your divine eyes. L (04-11-35).  

She trusts on Jesus: 

He can of the nothing make everything. And to the most unworthy and poor daughter can give the biggest graces and full her with the biggest wealth.
I am the most useless instrument in her divine hands. If it is of her divine will, he will be able to make me useful for everything and all. C (06-09-41) 

Jesus, blessed be You! I am small, I am nothing. Use this nothing in favour of the humanity.  Receive the prayer of the most unworthy of your daughters! S (24-09-54) 

Let’s see some replies of Jesus: 

I love the simple, teeny souls and for this reason the neediest ones I raise them to the biggest highness.
The humility, the humility, beloved daughter, how much it consoles Me! It is for that I love you (...). S (04-05-46) 

Win, win in your smallness! 

All the humble and anxious soul of living hidden is great with its Lord, wins with its Lord, raises itself with its Lord.
The humiliated for loving Jesus is exalted in the Jesus’ love. S (28-08-53) 

Let us finish with a fragment of dialogue between Jesus and Alexandrina: 

— Oh my beloved Jesus, I would want to give You love, to give You repair and to remove from the world all the badness. My desires are yours: I have nothing mine, but with what he is Yours I can make much thing.
Give me light, give me your grace!
— Have confidence, my son daughter: with nothing I made everything.
In the teeny things I make the biggest wonders. The humble soul is everything for my divine Heart.
From your nothing I raise you to the biggest highness; in your blindness you have all the light. S (17-09-48)

Confidence, surrender

God is love, and for us God is a father.

Therefore, a father who loves. 

Not only this, but he is also all powerful, so he is able to make everything work for our good. 

The true Christian, as a son, must do everything he can to repay such love. 

He must try to manage, in all situations, to surrender himself to the love of the Father and to be “quiet and calm as a child weaned in the arms of its mother” (Ps 130). 

Without a doubt, it is very difficult in most cases to reach this state of spirit! It is necessary to intensify our love and our prayer asking for aid toward this objective. And the aid will not be wanting, when the opportune time comes! God’s time is not our time and certain long delays are according to the Supreme Will for our sanctification, and other reasons that we do not know. 

In this matter, too, Alexandrina is our great master.   

I trust only in my Jesus: seeing me like this, so weak and insignificant, he gives me more help and he inclines himself to me.
Jesus, I want to be always small to be always in your divine arms: that way I have no fear of falling.
With you I can take the cross. C (07-09-39) 

You gave me the grace of knowing the abyss of my misery, but at the same time I see that bigger, infinitely bigger, is the abyss of your love, your mercy and compassion.
I trust in You blindly; in You is my hope. S (27-03-42) 

I delivered myself, I abandoned myself (...) Jesus and the Heavenly Mother take care of me, even when I do not feel it.
I believe in You, I believe in You, my God! I believe in You. S (06-10-50)   

In this persistent affirmation, repeated, we feel a conflict doubt.
It is a fight that we must face with the aid of prayer.  
But I trust, my Jesus, I trust, even against all odds, against the death of all my hopes. 
I trust on you, Lord, and I will not be confounded! S (29-08-47) 

I establish myself in Jesus, I hug the Crucifix and I try to live the life of each moment without thinking about what will come, so that I will have no earthly preoccupation: to suffer, to want to trust and to love, to see in everything the will of the Lord. S (17-09-48) 

I delivered to Jesus and to my heavenly Mother my incompressible life: They, in their divine wisdom that understands all things, accept me.  To me it only belongs to suffer and to follow them blindly.   May the will of the Lord be done in all things! S (28-05-48)   

This is the true attitude of the victim soul. We are not all called to the mystic heights; but all Christians must look in that direction.

It is a continuous fight against doubts!   

Alexandrina, as late as 1953, was still asking for aid, but at the same time she always reaffirmed her confidence:   

Help me, my Lord, help me!  

I put my entire trust in you.
Even when I see everything banking up against me may my abandonment be total, even when I see the earth being destroyed, and even the sky, I will no cease to trust in you! S (27-11-53) 

Will I be capable of continuing my life? …  I am able to do all things in Him who comforts me, I can do all things with the help of Jesus and my dear Mother. S (01-04-55)   

Let us remember the affirmation of S. Paul:

I can do all things in Him who strengthens me (Fil 4,13).

Inhabitation

With baptism the Christian receives the embryo of the divine life; but in order for this to be developed and become effective, his active contribution is needed.

Jesus says:

If somebody loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make out home in him. (Jn 14,23)

It is this ‘living within’ of the most Holy Trinity in the heart of the Christian, made a “son of God”, that we called “indwelling”.

However, in the daily life of most Christians, awareness of this extraordinary truth is clouded. Alexandrina is among those elect souls who are so spiritually elevated that they live in constant awareness of divine intimacy. Jesus says to her:

Your heart is the throne of love, of purity, of the delights of the divine Trinity: The Trinity lives in you, ever enriching you with grace and divine wealth.
Go with the strength of your Jesus and tell everything, so that nothing remains hidden. S (24-05-46)

A few months later, Alexandrina dictates:

I try to live always, as far as possible, inside my soul. And how do I live? On my knees (spiritually), with hands joined, head inclined, adoring, loving the most Holy Trinity.
I adore, I love with my desires alone: for in my wretchedness I can do nothing more. If I could manage to convince all souls to live the inner life with this divine Treasure, how they would adore and love! S (05-10-46)

Awareness of indwelling continues also during one’s daily occupations:

I want to live inside this body that does not exist (she is already physically destroyed, after five year of total fast, not to mention all her other physical and moral sufferings); I so want to live there, deep inside, the interior life, the intimate life with God Father, Son, Holy Spirit; that I do not want to leave. I want to look after the exterior life without ever leaving the interior.
My Jesus, my Jesus, do not let the world separate me from You! S (17-01-47)

Almost two years later Jesus says to her:

The Father speaks in you, with His power and wisdom, the Son with His redemption and love, the Holy Spirit with His light. Everything is for souls: from you everything shines out and is poured into them (....) S (05-11-48)

And again:

Listen to me: you have heaven in your heart, the Divine Trinity that did not arrive suddenly but has always been dwelling in you. It is delighted when you speak of It.What glory, what glory you give It! How many souls live the interior life, the life of the most Holy Trinity through you!” S (22-07-55)

Through her, in her school, then, also let us pledge ourselves never to ignore the divine Treasure which we have in us!

And thus, little by little, we will manage to realize the desire that Jesus makes known to Alexandrina, but which we can take as addressed to ourselves:

I want everything that it is mine to shine through you:
I want your looks to have my purity;
I want your lips to have the sweetness of my smile;
I want your heart to have the tenderness, the charity and the love which mine has;
in short: I want you to reflect me in everything. S (13-06-47)