The Catholic World, Vol. 08, October, 1868, to March, 1869.Various
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 08, October, 1868, to March, 1869.
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
Such was her condition during about two years, when her
confessor, Father Capistran, a quiet, prudent man, and for years
a true friend of the distressed family, observed "that at certain
times, when she was interrogated by him, she did not answer, and
seemed to be out of herself." When he questioned her nurses and
others on this point, they informed him that such was always the
case when she received the holy communion. This was the first
symptom of her _ecstatic_ state, into which she entered in
her twentieth year, and which soon became more and more striking.
On the feast of Corpus Christi, 1832, which in Kaltern, as
throughout the whole Tyrol, is celebrated with unusual solemnity,
Father Capistran, for special reasons, gave her the holy
sacrament at three A.M., and immediately she fell into an ecstasy
which lasted, to his personal knowledge, for several hours! He
left her to attend to other duties; and when he returned, at noon
on the following day, he found the ecstatic still kneeling in the
same place where he had left her thirty-six hours before; and
heard, to his astonishment, that she had remained the whole time
thus undisturbed in contemplation. The good Franciscan now
comprehended for the first time that ecstasy had become almost a
second nature to her; and undertook the regulation of this
supernatural condition of his saintly penitent.
The power of the perceptive faculties increased wonderfully with
her ecstasies, as several presentiments and prophecies
demonstrated in a surprising manner. Her fame was soon noised
abroad. The report of her ecstatic kneeling and prayer spread
through the Tyrol, and great excitement was created throughout
the whole land. Crowds of people flocked to see her, and to be
edified by the sight. From different and distant places numbers
came as pilgrims to Kaltern. During the summer of 1833, more than
forty thousand persons, of all classes, visited her, without the
slightest disorder or scandal, although sometimes two or three
thousand people in a day passed through the room of the rapt
maiden, kneeling undisturbed in contemplation. Many sinners were
moved and converted by the spectacle.
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