The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ | Page 9

I should be guilty of greater disrespect did I
receive the Body of our Lord without having conversed familiarly with
him, and I was severely reprimanded. Amid all these trials, I yet lived
in peace with God and with 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