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The central message that comes from the life of Alphonsa is thus only a living experience of Christ can lead us to a loving appreciation of his suffering for us and a meaningful acceptance and offering of our sufferings to the Lord in love. Because the suffering accepted with the crucified Lord is saving and redeeming.
The striking aspects of her life were her childlike simplicity and her identification with the Crucified Christ. She had lofty esteem for the passion of Christ and was eager to fulfill in her body what was lacking in the affliction of Christ. She has held up before a questioning world, her conviction of the ultimate triumph of resignation to the Will of God and her tremendous faith in the redeeming value of suffering - physical and mental - endured on behalf of Christ. The keynote of her life was death to self and life to Christ and in Christ.
St. Alphonsa stands as a challenge to the modern world who deplores their grief and miseries. She was meant by our good God to teach us in this pleasure intoxicated age this truth: ‘unless a grain of wheat fall to the ground and decay, it cannot bear any fruit’ and that ‘he who doth not carry his cross and follow our Crucified Master is not worthy of Him’.
God has sent St. Alphonsa, to show us that suffering is not only useful, but necessary. She considered suffering as a gift from God. She teaches us by her example that we must suffer not only for our own sins, but for the sins of others too, as we are all members of the same Body of Christ. As Christ suffered for us, we too must suffer for one another and thus make up for what is wanting in the sufferings of Christ, since Our Lord can suffer no more, we have to suffer.
The secret of her holy life was that she carried on her ordinary duties in an extraordinary manner. Hers was the little way of St. Therese of Lisieux.
Some Important Maxims of St. Alphonsa There are about 100 Maxims of the saint http://www.saintalphonsamma.org/Sweet_Maxims.html
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