Alphonsa built a mansion in Heaven with stones of suffering and sacrifices.
“I am a daughter of suffering. We build our mansions in Heaven with stones of suffering and sacrifices.” St Alphonsa.
During the beatification ceremony of Alphonsa at Kottayam on February 08, 1986, Pope John Paul II highlighted the transformative power of Alphonsa’s suffering: “From early in her life, Sister Alphonsa experienced great suffering. With the passing of the years, the heavenly Father gave her an ever fuller share in the Passion of his beloved Son. We recall how she experienced not only the physical pain of great intensity but also the spiritual suffering of being misunderstood and misjudged by others… She came to love suffering because she loved the suffering Christ. She learned to love the Cross through her love of the crucified Lord.”
The central message from Alphonsa’s life is that only a living experience of Christ can lead us to a loving appreciation of his suffering and a meaningful acceptance and offering of our sufferings to the Lord in love. Because the suffering accepted by the crucified Lord is saving and redeeming.
Again, when Pope Benedict XVI canonized Alphonsa on October 12, 2008, in Vatican City, he used a statement from St Alphonsa’s spiritual diary twice: “A day without suffering is a day lost.” In a small book on Alphonsa by Fr Aloysius Kattady, St Alphonsa: An Icon of Suffering, he says that St Alphonsa’s spirituality was built on four solid pillars of prayer, love, suffering, and service. Of all these, it was through suffering embraced in love that she expressed her love for Jesus.
The passion flower of India stands out as the role model for all who drink from the cup of suffering in their day-to-day life, offering guidance and support in their struggles. After the final profession, Alphonsa wrote: “From that time, it seems, I was entrusted with a part of the Cross of Christ. There are abundant occasions of suffering…I have a great desire to suffer with joy. It seems that my Spouse wishes to fulfill this desire.”
On another occasion, Alphonsa wrote of her sufferings: “I feel that the Lord has destined me to be an oblation, a sacrifice of suffering…I consider a day in which I have not suffered as a day lost to me.”
The life of Alphonsa is an example of how, through suffering, she followed in the footsteps of her crucified Saviour, embracing the crosses in her life tightly. The great American archbishop Fulton J Sheen once said: “𝐏𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐮𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐚𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐞.” Alphonsa suffered with Christ; thus, her suffering and pain became a real sacrifice, and she built her mansion in Heaven with stones of suffering and sacrifices.
Fr Jaison Kunnel MCBS