She claimed that she had been offered a choice of either remaining in heaven or returning to earth to perform penance in order to deliver souls from the flames of Purgatory.

Christina renounced all of life's comforts, reduced herself to extreme destitution, dressed in rags, lived without home or hearth, and not content with these privations eagerly sought out all that could cause her suffering.

[4] Thomas of Cantimpré, then a canon regular who was a professor of theology, wrote a report eight years after her death, based on the accounts of those who knew her.

Thus, argues Bellarmine, "God willed to silence those libertines who make open profession of believing in nothing, and who have the audacity to ask in scorn, Who has returned from the other world?

In winter she would plunge into the frozen Meuse River for hours and even days and weeks at a time, all the while praying to God and imploring his mercy.

She sometimes allowed herself to be carried by the currents downriver to a mill where the wheel "whirled her round in a manner frightful to behold", yet she never suffered any dislocations or broken bones.

She was placed in the calendar of the saints by at least two bishops of the Catholic Church in two different centuries (17th & 19th) that also recognized her life in a religious order and preservation of her relics.

[Literary 2] Veneration of Christina the Astonishing has never been formally approved by the Catholic Church, but there remains a strong devotion to her in her native region of Limburg.