The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. - documenta ...

The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ.Anne Catherine EmmerichInterruption of the Visions of the Passion by the Appearance of St. Joseph under the form ofa Child.213DURING the whole time of the visions which we have just narrated (that is to say, from the 18thof February until the 8th of March), Sister Emmerich continued to suffer all the mental and bodilytortures which were once endured by our Lord. Being totally immersed in these meditations, and,as it were, dead to exterior objects, she wept and groaned like a person in the hands of an executioner,trembled, shuddered, and writhed on her couch.. while her face resembled that of a man about toexpire under torture, and a bloody sweat often trickled over her chest and shoulders. She generallyperspired so profusely that her bed and clothes were saturated. Her sufferings from thirst werelikewise fearful, and she might truly be compared to a person perishing in a desert from the wantof water. Generally speaking, her mouth was so parched in the morning, and her tongue so contractedand dried up, that she could not speak, but was obliged by signs and inarticulate sounds to beg forrelief. Her constant state of fever was probably brought on by the great pains she endured, addedto which she likewise often took upon herself the illnesses and temporal calamities merited byothers. It was always necessary for her to rest for a time before relating the different scenes of thePassion, nor was it always that she could speak of what she had seen, and she was even often obligedto discontinue her narrations for the day. She was in this state of suffering on Saturday the 8th ofMarch, and with the greatest difficulty and suffering described the scourging of our Lord whichshe had seen in the vision of the previous night, and which appeared to be present to her mindduring the greatest part, of the following day. Towards evening, however, a change took place, andthere was an interruption in the course of meditations on the Passion which had latterly followedone another so regularly. We will describe this interruption, in order, in the first place, to give ourreaders a more full comprehension of the interior life of this most extraordinary person; and, in thesecond, to enable them to pause for a time to rest their minds, as I well know that meditations onthe Passion of our Lord exhaust the weak, even when they remember that it was for their salvationthat he suffered and died.The life of Sister Emmerich, both as regarded her spiritual and intellectual existence, invariablyharmonised with the spirit of the Church at different seasons of the year. It harmonised even morestrongly than man’s natural life does with the seasons, or with the hours of the day, and this causedher to be (if we may thus express ourselves) a realisation of the existence and of the various intentionsof the Church. Her union with its spirit was so complete, that no sooner did a festival day begin(that is to say, on the eve), than a perfect change took place within her, both intellectually andspiritually. As soon as the spiritual sun of these festival days of the Church was set, she directedall her thoughts towards that which would rise on the following day, and disposed all her prayers,good works, and sufferings for the attainment of the special graces attached to the feast about tocommence, like a plant which absorbs the dew, and revels in the warmth and light of the first raysof the sun. These changes did not, as will readily be believed, always take place at the exact momentwhen the sound of the Angelus announced the commencement of a festival, and summoned thefaithful to prayer; for this bell is often, either through ignorance or negligence, rung at the wrongtime; but they commenced at the time when the feast really began.122