St. Alphonsa was born of Joseph and Mary Muttathupadathu, on August 19, 1910. She was christened Anna and was called Annakutty, which is a pet name in Malayalam. She lost her mother while yet she was a little child and thus she came to be brought up by her maternal aunt Annamma at the Murickal house, Muttuchira. She was brought back to her own home when she was old enough to attend the primary school. At the age of seven she received her first holy communion and the  sacrament of  confirmation. When she was ten, her aunt fetched her back to the Murickal house, where she remained till she joined the Clarist convent at Bharananganam. Her aunt wanted to give her lovely niece, who was extraordinarily good looking, in marriage to some suitable groom and there was a flood of marriage proposals. Here Alphonsa met the first major challenge of her spiritual life. She yearned ardently for a religious life, so as to become a saint like St. Therese of Lisieux but her foster mother would not allow her to be a nun. Marriage negotiations reached such a crucial stage that it seemed to Alphonsa that the only way to stall them was to involve herself in some little accident. She stepped into a burning ash pit intending to disfigure herself slightly but her feet sank deep into the pit and both her legs got burnt badly. This however put an end to all negotiations and she was now free to choose her own her life. She joined the Franciscan Clarist convent at Bharananganam in May 1927. She received the postulants veil in 1928 and accepted the name Alphonsa, in honour of St. Alphonsus Ligouri. In 1929 she proceeded to Changnacherry for higher studies. On 19th May 1930 she received the religious habit at Bharananganam from Mar   James   Kalassery,  Bishop of Changancherry. After becoming a nun, she worked as a teacher for a year at Vakakkad. In 1935 she underwent her novitiate at Changnacherry and on the completion of the novitiate she took her perpetual vows on August 12, 1936.

The last twelve years of her life were years of unrelieved suffering which she bore heroically for the greater glory of God. She considered herself a sacrificial offering that God was pleased to consume with the fire of suffering. The more she suffered, the closer it brought her to God. Suffering was grist to her spiritual mill, so to say. Not everybody sympathized with her either;  she  met  the  harsh words and the unsympathetic treatment of her critics with boundless patience and a smile on the face. During her novitiate days, as she revealed to her friends later, Blessed Kuriakose Elias Chavara appeared to her in a vision and granted her a miraculous cure. He however revealed to her that it was God’s will she should continue to suffer till the very end of her life. St. Alphonsa passed away in the odour of sanctity on 28th July, 1946.

To the world outside she did not exist at all or was at best just a sickly nun who was mostly bed-ridden. Her spiritual heroism remained hidden from  all  except  those  who moved closely with her. Her death went practically unnoticed by the people. The first public testimony to her holiness was the sermon preached on the occasion of her funeral, which was a simple, thinly attended affair. Referring obviously to the thin attendance on that occasion, the preacher Fr. Romulus told the mourners that if the world had really known how holy Aphonsa was in her deed and thought, there would have been a huge concourse of mourners to attend her last rites.

Fr. Romulus proved prophetic. Soon after her death, the renown of her sanctity spread like a wild fire. People started to flock to her tomb and they had stories of miraculous cures and other favours to tell. Favours of all kinds were reported continually from all over India and even from abroad.

St. Alphonsa, the passionflower of Bharananganam, proclaims to the world that temporal sufferings accepted with faith and love have a value for eternity. In the life of St. Alphonsa there shines the mystery of the cross, the cross which was foolishness and a stumbling block not only to the Greeks and the Gentiles of the apostolic times but also to worldly men of every age. No other member of her congregation had probably ever suffered more than she did. Far from considering sufferings an evil to be avoided at all cost, Alphonsa found in them an effective means of sanctification. She accepted without complaint the physical and mental sufferings that filled her life; which is more, she thanked God for them and even asked for more. The salvific value of suffering as reparation for sin and for the conversion of sinners is emphatically reasserted in the life of St. Alphonsa.

Blessed Alphonsa was Canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on 12th October 2008. Her feast is celebrated on 28th July.