The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus ChristEmmerich, Anna Katharina
Religion
The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ
Emmerich, Anna Katharina
Jesus Christ -- Passion -- Devotional literature
incredulity were all the vogue; marked with the stigmas of the Passion
of Christ, she was forced to wear her bloody robe in public, under the
eyes of men who scarce believed in the Wounds of Christ, far less in
those which were but their images.
Thus this holy woman, who in her youth had been in the habit of
praying for long hours before pictures of all the stages of Christ's
painful Passion, or before wayside crosses, was herself made like unto
a cross on the public road, insulted by one passer by, bathed in warm
tears of repentance by a second, regarded as a mere physical curiosity
by a third, and venerated by a fourth, whose innocent hands would bring
flowers to lay at her feet.
In 1817 her aged mother came from the country to die by her side.
Anne Catherine showed her all the love she could by comforting and
praying for her, and closing her eyes with her own hands--those hands
marked with the stigmas on the 13th of March of the same year. The
inheritance left to Anne Catherine by her mother was more than
sufficient for one so imbued with the spirit of mortification and
sufferings; and in her turn she left it unimpaired to her friends. It
consisted of these three sayings:--'Lord, thy will, not mine, be done; '
'Lord, give me patience, and then strike hard;' 'Those things which are not
good to put in the pot are at least good to put beneath it.' The meaning
of this last proverb was: If things are not fit to be eaten, they may
at least be burned, in order that food may be cooked; this suffering
does not nourish my heart, but by bearing it patiently, I may at least
increase the fire of divine love, by which alone life can profit us
anything. She often repeated these proverbs, and then thought of her
mother with gratitude. Her father had died some little time before.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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