Sr. Alphonsa: The Saint who took the Path of Endurance

 Feast of St. Alphonsa - 28th July

In the pitch dark and solitude of life, we are oblivious of the unknown diabolic force with which we are entangled in a wrestle.   Isn’t this the reflex thought that emerges when remembering St. Alphonsa?  By the time we are in the know of the gruesome force, it would have inflicted casualty on us.  Over a sublime moment, we realize that we were pitched against God and that in the darkness of the night, deluded were we, to take Him for an incomprehensible self.  In the final analysis, the wrestle ought to be directed at self.  There is the invisible hand of God in effecting the death of  “I” in me and in its stead, the rise of God.   The inevitable endurance is nothing but the indispensable wrestle.  The venue for the wrestle is the corporal body.  Being able-bodied, St. Francis Assisi used to torment himself, whipping.  St. Alphonsa was at the whipping end of chronic ailments.  In both cases, there is the resurrection of a more refined version of Human and God.  In the case of Jesus, the endurance and self-tempering was in the shape of crucifixion. 

There is no room for despair, sorrow and death in the face of the conviction that endurance is the inalienable chalice of life and God has graciously endowed us with the strength to accept it. That is why in Christian vision, tragedy is a non-entity.

At the outset Assisi bewailed, “Do not ply me, I may crumble”.  A rethinking prompts him to muse, “When you are the plier, why should I be scared of being crumbled?”  On acquiring the strength of viewing endurance in bright light, free from the veil of darkness, Blessed Alphonsa mustered the strength to perceive it as a bosom friend whose frequenting was prayed for.  Tennyson’s adapted version of Tithonus prayed for immortality, but failed to pray for eternal youthfulness.  Old age conquered him, turning the very boon of immortality into a bane.   When does a boon become a bane?  - it is when we fail to acquire the virtue which is compatible to the boon.  Boon is the gift of God; virtue, we need to earn.

St. Alphonsa teaches us to get reconciled to reality.  Oftentimes, we are bewildered at the disparity between reality and illusion. In worldly life, we are not endowed with infinite youthfulness.  It belongs to the mind scape.

Joy and happiness are not infinite and attitude is its mother.  The protracted years of endurance seldom eclipsed her into hell-like torment. The long years of endurance, if in the company of Jesus, boils down to a split second. St. Alphonso felt like the psalmist who experienced scores of years as evanescent as a single day.   

When this virgin started looking at her nunnery as the abode of God and her caretakers as the guardian angels, her house of endurance turned out to be the abode of God. 

Before death swallows us, we have the responsibility to enrich life.  That is why Jesus reminded his followers that his final call was not yet due and that the inevitable chalice was outstanding yet.

Tennyson makes the celebrated reminder, “the best is yet to come”.  Alphonsa maintained that even in the midst of the ferocious strife to recall her life, coveting death is uncalled for.  For, more beautiful things are yet to come by and turn out.  That is why St. Alphonsa had the divine whisper in her, “ beautiful is the endurance that was; and those yet to come, are even more”.

The ailment-stricken body posited St. Alphonsa in front of death and kept reminding her that life is transient.  One’s spirituality becomes intense at the thought that the longevity of life is just a few weeks, days or hours.  It heightens the liking for the world, harbours the complaint that love is not yet loved out.  Nevertheless, one can see in St. Alphonsa,  the preparedness to court death any moment sans begging for its deferment.

She tempered the body to temper the soul.  She maintained singular rapport with God; she was trying to equip herself to court God as her beloved man.  Upagupta kept telling his amorous fan Vasavadatta, “it is not yet time”.  St. Alphonso considered the tempering and endurance as the inevitable preparation that precedes the face-to-face with God.