The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ | Page 9

all his creatures. When I was working in the garden, the birds would come and rest on my head and shoulders, and we would together sing the praises of God. I always beheld my angel-guardian at my side, and although the devil used frequently to assault and terrify me in various ways, he was never permitted to do me much harm. My desire for the Blessed Sacrament was so irresistible, that often at night I left my cell and went to the church, if it was open; but if not, I remained at the door or by the walls, even in winter, kneeling or prostrate, with my arms extended in ecstasy. The convent chaplain, who was so charitable as to come early to give me the Holy Communion, used to find me in this state, but as soon as he was come and had opened the church, I always recovered, and hastened to the holy table, there to receive my Lord and my God. When I was sacristan, I used all on a sudden to feel myself ravished in spirit, and ascend to the highest parts of the church, on to cornices, projecting parts of the building, and mouldings, where it seemed impossible for any being to get by human means. Then I cleaned and arranged everything, and it appeared to me that I was surrounded by blessed spirits, who transported me about and held me up in their hands. Their presence did not cause me the least uneasiness, for I had been accustomed to it from my childhood, and I used to have the most sweet and familiar intercourse with them. It was only when I was in the company of certain men that I was really alone; and so great was then my feeling of loneliness that I could not help crying like a child that has strayed from home.'
We now proceed to her illnesses, omitting any description of some other remarkable phenomena of her ecstatic life, only recommending the reader to compare the accounts we have already given with what is related of St. Mary Magdalen of Pazzi.
Anne Catherine had always been weak and delicate, and yet had been, from her earliest childhood, in the habit of practising many mortifications, of fasting and of passing the night in watching and prayer in the open air. She had been accustomed to continue hard labour in the fields, at all seasons of the year, and her strength was also necessarily much tried by the exhausting and supernatural states through which she so frequently passed. At the convent she continued to work in the garden and in the house, whilst her spiritual labours and sufferings were ever on the increase, so that it is by no means surprising that she was frequently ill; but her illnesses arose from yet another cause. We have learned, from careful observations made every day for the space of four years, and also from what she herself was unwillingly forced to admit, that during the whole course of her life, and especially during that part of it which she spent at the convent, when she enjoyed the highest spiritual favours, a great portion of her illnesses and sufferings came from taking upon herself the sufferings of others. Sometimes she asked for the illness of a person who did not bear it patiently, and relieved him of the whole or of a part of his sufferings, by taking them upon herself; sometimes, wishing to expiate a sin or put an end to some suffering, she gave herself up into the hands of God, and he, accepting her sacrifice, permitted her thus, in union with the merits of his passion, to expiate the sin by suffering some illness corresponding to it. She had consequently to bear, not only her own maladies, but those also of others--to suffer in expiation of the sins of her brethren, and of the faults and negligences of certain portions of the Christian community--and, finally, to endure many and various sufferings in satisfaction for the souls of purgatory. All these sufferings appeared like real illnesses, which took the most opposite and variable forms, and she was placed entirely under the care of the doctor, who endeavoured by earthly remedies to cure illnesses which in reality were the very sources of her life. She said on this subject--'Repose in suffering has always appeared to me the most desirable condition possible. The angels themselves would envy us, were envy not an imperfection. But for sufferings to bear really meritorious we must patiently and gratefully accept unsuitable remedies and comforts, and all other additional trials. I did not myself fully understand my state, nor know what it was to lead to. In my soul I accepted my different sufferings, but in my body it was my