Imagine just for a minute you’re a zestful teenager with your whole life in front of you, including the desire for love, marriage, children, career, a family, and all the adventures that are available in life. We all wanted that in our youth, and still want it.
And then one terrible day you are forced to jump out a two story window to prevent being raped, breaking your back in the fall, to become paralyzed. In a moment, you’ve gone from a joyful, pleasing path in life to an indefinite, intensely sorrowful path in life.
It would be comparatively like being taken one day from the pleasures and comforts of the garden of Eden and placed in a penitential cell in purgatory immersed in fire until God knew when. Imagine the horror of that change, that certainly is what Alexandrina experienced, and countless others suffering tragedies like hers.
I can only begin to imagine Alexandrina’s grief over the loss of her health and youthful vitality, to become a bedridden invalid whose body was taken over by constant pain. The same would hold for the countless cases of tragic accidents and diseases rendering the person disabled and in pain.
I remember one time on a road trip getting a bad enough leg cramp that I felt panicky anxiety needing to pull off to the side of the highway to get out and relieve the pain. In my memory, it was horrible. At the time anyway. Yet Alexandrina must have endured countless episodes stuck in that bed with leg cramps, besides nerve pain and every imaginable discomfort.
Long term penance of that kind is mystifying. It is a supernatural testament of the objective truth that this life is finite, and relative to eternity after we die, really but a passing second. A passing second in which if we endure with God, there is a reward in heaven beyond our imagination.
The seemingly never-ending passion Alexandrina endured in that bed for thirty years was really but a passing second compared to her eternal, infinite reward, there never being an end to heavenly joy awaiting us.
Yet at the same time reason demands that such a penitential life be viewed still as an extreme state compared to most people. Most teenagers after all are at school and following their pleasurable pursuits, not lying upstairs in their parents house alone most of the time, gazing at religious pictures on the wall, waiting for their sister to get them off the bed pan, unable to move their legs, immersed in a mystifying kind of suffering.
Relative to this side of life, that kind of suffering seems enormous. But compared to the point of view of the next life, when we will look back on judgment day, after we die and see our whole life, and when we receive our eternal reward or punishment, it is not even a second. When secularism tells us life is just this life, it can be hard to see the raw truth beyond that lie, that in truth this life is a mere beginning of our never-ending existence determined by how we live this very short life, especially if we suffer humbly and in willing penance for our sins.
For the first few years in her bedridden state, Alexandrina begged God for healing. She suffered with anxiety not wanting her level of suffering. But then at some point she realized God was not going to heal her, and she completely resigned herself to His will. She came to a radically full acceptance, thereby finding complete peace in her cross.
When life puts you in a tough place like that—and I’m sure there are some people reading this either in that kind of place, or having been at one time in that kind of place, or cared for someone in that kind of place— we have a choice God gives you out of love, giving us the gift of free will, to choose the path of faith, hope, love, and prayer, or the path of doubt, despair, hatred, and impiety. If one cares about their life and existence there is really no good choice except the path of God, even when darkness tries to envelope you as I’m sure it tried to do with Alexandrina. The devil after all would even physically attack her in the night and cast her out of bed. Surely she felt not merely some fear in those occasions but outright terror, being tossed out of bed in her state by the devil himself, which would be a normal psychological response, but still she responded in prayer giving her love to God.
One of the worst negative sensations I’ve ever felt besides physical pain is an intense itch and the inability to scratch it. Especially when it’s in the middle of my back and I can’t reach it with anything. That consumes you. You deep breath and wait for it to pass. She must have had that singular discomfort happen to her literally thousands of times. And she knew each morning she woke up that torment, or any other kind of torment, could happen. And odds are would.
Have you ever had a Charlie Horse? In the middle of the night? That too must have occurred literally thousands of times in her long term passion. The pains, discomforts, and hardships being too many to catalogue and count in those thirty years. Only God can fathom that state. Even her guardian angel must have found her state beyond comprehension, except for the supernatural end of it.
So if I step back for a minute from pondering that scene in her bedroom and ponder the whole of life, how can I not look up at God in heaven and raise questions about His plan, searching for faith and hope in that divine plan when it is paradoxical. Original sin affects me despite my baptism, so searching for clarity and resolute certainty in God’s plan, in the mystery of suffering, is part of my own path of sanctification. To push through any remnant of doubt and find perfect faith.
Christ immensely loved Alexandrina. But He made her a victim soul. He asked her to live His Passion every Friday giving her the mystical ability to get out of bed and walk around the room, despite a spinal cord injury, mystically carrying the cross of Good Friday. For decades, He asked her to do a total fast except for the Holy Eucharist. Imagine the hunger pains, severe hunger being one of the worst pains, perhaps even worse than cancer pain. Yet she felt it daily for decades.
It all is a mystery. Sooner or later most of us, if not all of us, will taste the bitter root of life. But I myself beg God daily for the grace to carry my own cross. To the very end. So that I, and those I offer it up for, especially my wife, mom, sister, and family may all have eternal life. To join Blessed Alexandrina, and all the saints, all those who held on with faith and love to the very end, despite however intense their own crosses, at the eternal banquet. To have every want and desire perfectly fulfilled without end, in God Himself.
After her suffering ended, I have no doubt Blessed Alexandrina went straight to heaven, where she will walk again, have perfect health, and experience perfectly the fulfillment we all desire in this life, but without end.
Blessed Alexandrina, pray for us.
Amen.
PS Email me if you’re experiencing your own health hardship to ask me to pray for you. I’d also be glad to talk to you and give you support.
JosephOstermeir@gmail.com