The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Anna Katharina Emmerich
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She never considered her visions to have any reference to her exterior Christian life, nor did she regard them as being of any historical value. Exteriorly she knew and believed nothing but the catechism, the common history of the Bible, the gospels for Sundays and festivals, and the Christian almanac, which to her far-sighted vision was an inexhaustible mine of hidden riches, since it gave her in a few pages a guiding thread which led her through all time, and by means of which she passed from mystery to mystery, and solemnised each with all the saints, in order to reap the fruits of eternity in time, and to preserve and distribute them in her pilgrimage around the ecclesiastical year, that so the will of God might be accomplished on earth as it is in Heaven. She had never read the Old or the New Testaments, and when she was tired of relating her visions, she would sometimes say: 'Read that in the Bible,' and then be astonished to learn that it was not there; 'for,' she would add, 'people are constantly saying in these days that you need read nothing but the Bible, which contains everything, etc., etc.'
The real task of her life was to suffer for the Church and for some of its members, whose distress was shown her in spirit, or who asked her prayers without knowing that this poor sick nun had something more to do for them than to say the Pater noster, but that all their spiritual and corporal sufferings became her own, and that she had to endure patiently the most terrible pains, without being assisted, like the contemplatives of former days, by the sympathising prayers of an entire community. In the age when she lived, she had no other assistance than that of medicine. While thus enduring sufferings which she had taken upon herself for others, she often turned her thoughts to the corresponding sufferings of the Church, and when thus suffering for one single person, she would likewise offer all she endured for the whole Church.
The following is a remarkable instance of the sort: During several weeks she had every symptom of consumption; violent irritation of the lungs, excessive perspiration, which soaked her whole bed, a racking cough, continual expectoration, and a strong continual fever. So fearful were her sufferings that her death was hourly expected and even desired. It was remarked that she had to struggle strangely against a strong temptation to irritability. Did she yield for an instant, she burst into tears, her sufferings increased tenfold, and she seemed unable to exist unless she immediately gained pardon in the sacrament of penance.
She had also to combat a feeling of aversion to a certain person whom she had not seen for years. She was in despair because this person, with whom nevertheless she declared she had nothing in common, was always before her eyes in the most evil dispositions, and she wept bitterly, and with much anxiety of conscience, saying that she would not commit sin, that her grief must be evident to all, and other things which were quite unintelligible to the persons listening to her. Her illness continued to increase, and she was thought to be on the point of death. At this moment one of her friends saw her, to his great surprise, suddenly raise herself up on her bed, and say:
'Repeat with me the prayers for those in their last agony.' He did as requested, and she answered the Litany in a firm voice. After some little time, the bell for the agonising was heard, and a person came in to ask Anne Catherine's prayers for his sister, who was just dead. Anne Catherine asked for details concerning her illness and death, as if deeply interested in the subject, and the friend above-mentioned heard the account given by the new comer of a consumption resembling in the minutest particulars the illness of Anne Catherine herself. The deceased woman had at first been in so much pain and so disturbed in mind that she had seemed quite unable to prepare herself for death; but during the last fortnight she had been better, had made her peace with God, having in the first place been reconciled to a person with whom she was at enmity, and had died in peace, fortified by the last sacraments, and attended by her former enemy. Anne Catherine gave a small sum of money for the burial and funeral-service of this person. Her sweatings, cough, and fever now left her, and she resembled a person exhausted with fatigue, whose linen has been changed, and who has been placed on a fresh bed. Her friend said to her, 'When this fearful illness came upon you, this woman grew better, and her hatred for another was the only obstacle to her making peace with God. You took upon yourself, for the time, her feelings of hatred, she died in good dispositions, and now you seem tolerably well again. Are you still suffering on her account?' 'No, indeed!' she replied; 'that would be most unreasonable; but how can any person avoid suffering when even the end of this little finger is in pain? We are all one body in Christ.' 'By the goodness of God,' said her friend, 'you are now once more somewhat at ease.' 'Not for very long, though,' she replied with a smile; 'there are other persons who want my assistance.' Then she turned round on her bed, and rested awhile.
A very few days later, she began to feel intense pain in all her limbs, and symptoms of water on the chest manifested themselves. We discovered the sick person for whom Anne Catherine was suffering, and we saw that his sufferings suddenly diminished or immensely increased in exact inverse proportion to those of Anne Catherine.
Thus did charity compel her to take upon herself the illnesses and even the temptations of others, that they might be able in peace to prepare themselves for death. She was compelled to suffer in silence, both to conceal the weaknesses of her neighbour, and not to be regarded as mad herself; she was obliged to receive all the aid that medicine could afford her for an illness thus taken voluntarily for the relief of others, and to be reproached for temptations which were not her own; finally, it was necessary that she should appear perverted in the eyes of men; that so those for whom she was suffering might be converted before God.
One day a friend in deep affliction was sitting by her bedside, when she suddenly fell into a state of ecstasy, and began to pray aloud: 'O, my sweet Jesus, permit me to carry that heavy stone!' Her friend asked her what was the matter. 'I am on my way to Jerusalem,' she replied, 'and I see a poor man walking along with the greatest difficulty, for there is a large stone upon his breast, the weight of which nearly crushes him.' Then again, after a few moments, she exclaimed: 'Give me that heavy stone, you cannot carry it any farther; give it to me.' All on a sudden she sank down fainting, as if crushed beneath some heavy burden, and at the same moment her friend felt himself relieved from the weight of sorrow which oppressed him, and his heart overflowing with extraordinary happiness. Seeing her in such a state of suffering, he asked her what the matter was, and she looking at him with a smile, replied: 'I cannot remain here any longer. Poor man, you must take back your burden.' Instantly her friend felt all the weight of his affliction return to him, whilst she, becoming as well again as before, continued her journey in spirit to Jerusalem.
We will give one more example of her spiritual exertions. One morning she gave her friend a little bag containing some rye-flour and eggs, and pointed out to him a small house where a poor woman, who was in a consumption, was living with her husband and two little children. He was to tell her to boil and take them, as when boiled they would be good for her chest. The friend, on entering the cottage, took the bag from under his cloak, when the poor mother, who, flushed with fever, was lying on a mattress between her half-naked children fixed her eyes bright upon him, and holding out her thin hands, exclaimed: 'O, sir, it must be God or Sister Emmerich who sends you to me! You are bringing me some ryeflour and eggs.' Here the poor woman, overcome by her feelings, burst into tears, and then began to cough so violently that she had to make a sign to her husband to speak for her. He said that the previous night Gertrude had been much disturbed, and had talked a great deal in her sleep, and that on awaking she had told him her dream in these words: 'I thought that I was standing at the door with you, when the holy nun came out of the door of the next house, and I told you to look at her. She stopped in front of us, and said to me: "Ah, Gertrude, you look very ill; I will send you some rye-flour and eggs, which will relieve your chest." Then I awoke.' Such was the simple tale of the poor man; he and his wife both eagerly expressed their gratitude, and the bearer of Anne Catherine's alms left the house much overcome. He did not tell her anything of this when he saw her, but a few days after, she sent him again to the same place with a similar present, and he then asked her how it was she knew that poor woman? 'You know,' she replied, 'that I pray every evening for all those who suffer; I should like to go and relieve them, and I generally dream that I am going from one abode of suffering to another, and that I assist them to the best of my power. In this way I went in my dream to that poor woman's house; she was standing at the door with her husband, and I said to her: "Ah, Gertrude, you look very ill; I will send you some rye-flour and eggs, which will relieve