The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Anna Katharina Emmerich

Friday the 15th, and again on Friday the 29th, the cross on her bosom and the wound of her side bled. Before the 29th, she more than once felt as though a stream of fire were flowing rapidly from her heart to her side, and down her arms and legs to the stigmas, which looked red and inflamed. On the evening of Thursday the 28th, she fell into a state of contemplation on the Passion, and remained in it until Friday evening. Her chest, head, and side bled; all the veins of her hands were swollen, and there was a painful spot in the centre of them, which felt damp, although blood did not flow from it. No blood flowed from the stigmas excepting upon the 3rd of March, the day of the finding of the holy Cross. She had also a vision of the discovery of the true cross by St. Helena, and imagined herself to be lying in the excavation near the cross. Much blood came in the morning from her head and side, and in the afternoon from her hands and feet, and it seemed to her as though she were being made the test of whether the cross was really the Cross of Jesus Christ, and that her blood was testifying to its identity.

      In the year 1823, on Holy Thursday and Good Friday, which came on the 27th and 28th of March, she had visions of the Passion, during which blood flowed from all her wounds, causing her intense pain. Amid these awful sufferings, although ravished in spirit, she was obliged to speak and give answers concerning all her little household affairs, as if she had been perfectly strong and well, and she never let fall a complaint, although nearly dying. This was the last time that her blood gave testimony to the reality of her union with the sufferings of him who has delivered himself up wholly and entirely for our salvation. Most of the phenomena of the ecstatic life which are shown us in the lives and writings of Saints Bridget, Gertrude, Mechtilde, Hildegarde, Catherine of Sienna, Catherine of Genoa, Catherine of Bologna, Colomba da Rieti, Lidwina of Schiedam, Catherine Vanini, Teresa of Jesus, Anne of St. Bartholomew, Magdalen of Pazzi, Mary Villana, Mary Buonomi, Marina d' Escobar, Crescentia de Kaufbeuern, and many other nuns of contemplative orders, are also to be found in the history of the interior life of Anne Catherine Emmerich. The same path was marked out for her by God. Did she, like these holy women, attain the end? God alone knows. Our part is only to pray that such may have been the case, and we are allowed to hope it. Those among our readers who are not acquainted with the ecstatic life from the writings of those who have lived it, will find information on this subject in the Introduction of Goerres to the writings of Henry Suso, published at Ratisbonne in 1829.

      Since many pious Christians, in order to render their life one perpetual act of adoration, endeavour to see in their daily employments a symbolical representation of some manner of honouring God, and offer it to him in union with the merits of Christ, it cannot appear extraordinary that those holy souls who pass from an active life to one of suffering and contemplation, should sometimes see their spiritual labours under the form of those earthly occupations which formerly filled their days. Then their acts were prayers; now their prayers are acts; but the form remains the same. It was thus that Anne Catherine, in her ecstatic life, beheld the series of her prayers for the Church under the forms of parables bearing reference to agriculture, gardening, weaving, sowing, or the care of sheep. All these different occupations were arranged, according to their signification, in the different periods of the common as well as the ecclesiastical year, and were pursued under the patronage and with the assistance of the saints of each day, the special graces of the corresponding feasts of the Church being also applied to them. The signification of this circles of symbols had reference to all the active part of her interior life. One example will help to explain our meaning. When Anne Catherine, while yet a child, was employed in weeding, she besought God to root up the cockle from the field of the Church. If her hands were stung by the nettles, or if she was obliged to do afresh the work of idlers, she offered to God her pain and her fatigue, and besought him, in the name of Jesus Christ, that the pastor of souls might not become weary, and that none of them might cease to labour zealously and diligently. Thus her manual labour became a prayer.

      I will now give a corresponding example of her life of contemplation and ecstasy. She had been ill several times, and in a state of almost continual ecstasy, during which she often moaned, and moved her hands like a person employed in weeding. She complained one morning that her hands and arms smarted and itched, and on examination they were found to be covered with blisters, like what would have been produced by the stinging of nettles. She then begged several persons of her acquaintance to join their prayers to hers for a certain intention. The next day her hands were inflamed and painful, as they would have been after hard work; and when asked the cause, she replied: 'Ah! I have so many nettles to root up in the vineyard, because those whose duty it was to do it only pulled off the stems, and I was obliged to draw the roots with much difficulty out of a stony soil.' The person who had asked her the question began to blame these careless workmen, but he felt much confused when she replied: 'You were one of them—those who only pull off the stems of the nettles, and leave the roots in the earth, are persons who pray carelessly.' It was afterwards discovered that she had been praying for several dioceses which were shown to her under the figure of vineyards laid waste, and in which labour was needed. The real inflammation of her hands bore testimony to this symbolical rooting up of the nettles; and we have, perhaps, reason to hope that the churches shown to her under the appearances of vineyards experienced the good effects of her prayer and spiritual labour; for since the door is opened to those who knock, it must certainly be opened above all to those who knock with such energy as to cause their fingers to be wounded.

      Similar reactions of the spirit upon the body are often found in the lives of persons subject to ecstasies, and are by no means contrary to faith. St. Paula, if we may believe St. Jerome, visited the holy places in spirit just as if she had visited them bodily; and a like thing happened to St. Colomba of Rieti and St. Lidwina of Schiedam. The body of the latter bore tracks of this spiritual journey, as if she had really travelled; she experienced all the fatigue that a painful journey would cause: her feet were wounded and covered with marks which looked as if they had been made by stones or thorns, and finally she had a sprain from which she long suffered.

      She was led on this journey by her guardian angel, who told her that these corporeal wounds signified that she had been ravished in body and spirit.

      Similar hurts were also to be seen upon the body of Anne Catherine immediately after some of her visions. Lidwina began her ecstatic journey by following her good angel to the chapel of the Blessed Virgin before Schiedam; Anne Catherine began hers by following her angel guardian either to the chapel which was near her dwelling, or else to the Way of the Cross of Coesfeld.

      Her journeys to the Holy Land were made, according to the accounts she gave of them, by the most opposite roads; sometimes even she went all round the earth, when the task spiritually imposed upon her required it. In the course of these journeys from her home to the most distant countries, she carried assistance to many persons, exercising in their regard works of mercy, both corporal and spiritual, and this was done frequently in parables. At the end of a year she would go over the same ground again, see the same persons, and give an account of their spiritual progress or of their relapse into sin. Every part of this labour always bore some reference to the Church, and to the kingdom of God upon earth.

      The end of these daily pilgrimages which she made in spirit was invariably the Promised Land, every part of which she examined in detail, and which she saw sometimes in its present state, and sometimes as it was at different periods of sacred history; for her distinguishing characteristic and special privilege was an intuitive knowledge of the history of the Old and New Testaments, and of that of the members of the Holy Family, and of all the saints whom she was contemplating in spirit. She saw the signification of all the festival days of the ecclesiastical year under both a devotional and a historical point of view. She saw and described, day by day, with the minutest detail, and by name, places, persons, festivals, customs, and miracles, all that happened during the public life of Jesus until the Ascension, and the history of the Apostles for several weeks after the Descent of the Holy Ghost. She regarded al her visions not as mere spiritual enjoyments, but as being, so to speak, fertile fields, plentifully strewn with the merits of Christ, and which had not as yet been cultivated; she was often engaged in spirit in praying that the fruit of such and such sufferings of our Lord might be given to the Church, and she would beseech God to apply to his Church the merits of our Saviour which were its inheritance, and of which she would, as it were, take possession, in its name, with the most touching simplicity and ingenuousness.