The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ | Page 6

sick,
and when she did not know of anyone to give them to, she offered them
to God in a spirit of child-like faith, begging him to give them to some
person who was more in need than herself. When there was anything to
be seen or heard which had no reference to God or religion, she found
some excuse for avoiding the spot to which others were hastening, or, if
there, closed her eyes and ears. She was accustomed to say that useless
actions were sinful, and that when we denied our bodily senses any

gratification of this kind, we were amply repaid by the progress which
we made in the interior life, in the same manner as pruning renders
vines and other fruittrees more productive. From her early youth, and
wherever she went, she had frequent symbolical visions, which showed
her in parables, as it were, the object of her existence, the means of
attaining it, and her future sufferings, together with the dangers and
conflicts which she would have to go through.
She was in her sixteenth year, when one day, whilst at work in the
fields with her parents and sisters, she heard the bell ringing at the
Convent of the Sisters of the Annunciation, at Coesfeld. This sound so
inflamed her secret desire to become a nun, and had so great an effect
upon her, that she fainted away, and remained ill and weak for a long
time after. When in her eighteenth year she was apprenticed at Coesfeld
to a dressmaker, with whom she passed two years, and then returned to
her parents. She asked to be received at the Convents of the
Augustinians at Borken, of the Trappists at Darfeld, and of the Poor
Clares at Munster; but her poverty, and that of these convents, always
presented an insuperable obstacle to her being received. At the age of
twenty, having saved twenty thalers (about 3l. English), which she had
earned by her sewing, she went with this little sum--a perfect fortune
for a poor peasant-girl--to a pious organist of Coesfeld, whose daughter
she had known when she first lived in the town. Her hope was that, by
learning to play on the organ, she might succeed in obtaining
admittance into a convent. But her irresistible desire to serve the poor
and give them everything she possessed left her no time to learn music,
and before long she had so completely stripped herself of everything,
that her good mother was obliged to bring her bread, milk, and eggs,
for her own wants and those of the poor, with whom she shared
everything. Then her mother said: 'Your desire to leave your father and
myself, and enter a convent, gives us much pain; but you are still my
beloved child, and when I look at your vacant seat at home, and reflect
that you have given away all your savings, so as to be now in want, my
heart is filled with sorrow, and I have now brought you enough to keep
you for some time.' Anne Catherine replied: 'Yes, dear mother, it is true
that I have nothing at all left, because it was the holy will of God that
others should be assisted by me; and since I have given all to him, he
will now take care of me, and bestow his divine assistance upon us all.'

She remained some years at Coesfeld, employed in labour, good works,
and prayer, being always guided by the same inward inspirations. She
was docile and submissive as a child in the hands of her
guardian-angel.
Although in this brief sketch of her life we are obliged to omit many
interesting circumstances, there is one which we must not pass over in
silence. When about twenty-four years of age, she received a favour
from our Lord, which has been granted to many persons devoted in an
especial manner to meditation on his painful Passion; namely, to
experience the actual and visible sufferings of his sacred Head, when
crowned with thorns. The following is the account she herself has given
of the circumstances under which so mysterious a favour was bestowed
upon her: 'About four years previous to my admittance into the convent,
consequently in 1798, it happened that I was in the Jesuits' Church at
Coesfeld, at about twelve o'clock in the day, kneeling before a crucifix
and absorbed in meditation, when all on a sudden I felt a strong but
pleasant heat in my head, and I saw my Divine Spouse, under the form
of a young man clothed with light, come towards me from the altar,
where the Blessed Sacrament was preserved in the tabernacle. In his
left hand he held a crown of flowers, in his right hand a crown of thorns,
and he bade