The Life and Revelations of Anne Catherine Emmerich

Book 2

Very Rev. K. E. Schmoger

• Publisher: TAN Books
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781618907486
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Definitive life of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824); a German Augustinian nun-mystic; stigmatist; visionary; prophet; victim soul. Prophecies and amazing revelations on every aspect of the Faith. Extremely edifying; makes the Gospels come alive with details you never knew before! 2 Volume Set. Impr. 2 vol set- 1, 297 pgs;

Chapter 1

SPIRITUAL LABORS AND SUFFERINGS FOR THE CHURCH. THE NUPTIAL HOUSE. ACTION IN VISION.

IN November, 1820, Sister Emmerich remarked: “It is now twenty years since my Spouse led me into the Nuptial House and laid me upon the hard bridal bed on which I still lie”; thus did she designate her labors for the Church, labors imposed upon her from her entrance into Agnetenberg. No account had ever been demanded of this hidden operation, no director had even been willing to listen to her on the subject, and it is only now, toward the close of her career, that she testifies to the ways by which God had led her for the good of the Church; now, for the first time, does she raise the veil which conceals that mysterious action which, though operated in contemplation, derives its origin and merit, its importance and results from the divine virtue of faith. Before her entrance into religion, her principal task consisted in expiatory sufferings referring to the religious vocation and vows; but, when she had embraced the conventual life, her action was extended to the whole Church. What this task embodied she characterized by these striking words: “My Heavenly Bridegroom brought me into the Nuptial House,” for such is the relation that the Church holds with Jesus Christ, her Spouse and Head—a relation which was shown to Sister Emmerich as an immense sphere, embracing the most varied and opposite states, for whose individual failings she was to supply by her sufferings. Jesus is continually renewing His indissoluble union with the Church, His Spouse, and that He may present her spotless to His Father, He incessantly pours out upon her the torrents of His graces. But every grace must be accounted for, and few among those who receive them would be found ready for this, if the Heavenly Spouse did not at all times prepare chosen souls to gather up what others waste, to utilize the talents that others bury, and to discharge the debts contracted by the negligent. Before manifesting Himself in the flesh, in order to ratify the New Alliance with His Blood, He had by the Immaculate Conception of Mary prepared her to be the immaculate type of the Church. He had poured upon her the plenitude of His graces, that her prayers might hasten the Messiah’s advent, her purity and fidelity retain Him among the very men who received Him not, who resisted and persecuted Him. When Jesus, the Good Shepherd, began to gather His flock together it was Mary who cared for them, particularly for the poorest, the most abandoned, in order to lead them into the way of salvation; she was the faithful stewardess, she was the support of all. After the return of her Son to His Eternal Father, she remained many years upon earth to strengthen and protect the infant Church. And until the second coming of her Son, the Church will never be without members who, following in her footsteps, will be so many sources of benediction to their brethren. It is Mary, the Mother of Mercy, who assigns to these privileged souls their tasks for the ecclesiastical year; and, in accordance with this order, Sister Emmerich received, in what she denominates the “Nuptial House,” her yearly portion of expiation for the Church. Every detail was made known to her, all was to be finished in a certain time, for choice and duration of suffering are at the option of none. This order was indicated by the different parts of the Nuptial House, which had both a symbolical and historical signification. It was the house of Jesse near Bethlehem, the house in which David was born, in which he had been trained by God Himself for his future career as a prophet. It was from this house, also, that the Divine Spouse Himself had sprung in His Holy Humanity. It was the house of the royal race of the Immaculate Virgin, Mother of the Church, and the paternal house of St. Joseph. It was fitting that Sister Emmerich should contemplate therein the present state of the Church and receive her mission for it, since its former holy occupants had hailed in spirit the advent of the Redeemer, had gazed upon the Church’s career through coming ages, and had received their share in the good works that were to hasten Redemption.

This house with its numerous apartments, its spacious surroundings of gardens, fields, and meadows, was a symbol of the spiritual government of the Church; with its various parts, its functionaries, with the intruders who laid it waste, it presented to the soul allowed to contemplate it a perfect representation of the Church in her different relations with the state and the country, with certain dioceses and institutions, in fine, with all the affairs connected with her government. The wrongs done her in her hierarchy, rights, and treasures, in the integrity of her faith, discipline, and morals, by the negligence, slothfulness and disloyalty of her own children; all that intruders, that is, false science, pretended lights, irreligious education, connivance with the errors of the day, with worldly maxims and projects, etc., endanger or destroy—all were shown to Sister Emmerich in visions of wonderful depth and simplicity. The scenes of these visions were the Nuptial House and its dependencies, and thither was she conducted by her angel to receive her expiatory mission.

Before considering the details of this action in vision, let us first glance at its hidden nature and signification. We have already remarked that what Sister Emmerich did and suffered in contemplation was as real and meritorious in itself and its results, as were the actions and sufferings of the natural waking state. This double operation sprang from one common source; but for the perfect understanding of it, we must study her gift of contemplation. Her own communications will throw the greatest light upon the question, since they are both numerous and detailed. We can compare them with the testimony of others favored with the same graces, with the decisions of the holy Doctors, and with the principles that guide the Church in her judgment of such phenomena.

Sister Emmerich tells us that the gift of contemplation had been bestowed upon her in Baptism and that, from her entrance into life, she had been prepared in body and soul to make use of it. Once she denominated this preparation, “A mystery of a nature very difficult for fallen man to comprehend, one by which the pure in soul and body are brought into intimate and mysterious communication with one another.”

The undimmed splendor of baptismal grace is then according to her the first, the chief condition for the reception of the light of prophecy, for the developing of a faculty in man, obscured by Adam’s fall: viz., capability of communicating with the world of spirit without interrupting the harmonious and natural relation of body and soul. Every man possesses this capability; but, if we may so speak, it is hidden in his soul;¹ he cannot of himself over-leap the barrier which separates the regions of sense from those beyond. God alone by the infusion of superior light, can remove this barrier from the path of His elect; but seldom is such light granted, for few there are who rigorously fulfill the conditions exacted.

We may here remark that, according to the teachings of the great theologians, the principles and theory of contemplation laid down by Pope Benedict XIV to serve as a basis for the judgment of the Church, there exists no such thing as natural contemplation. Pope Benedict in no way requires a natural disposition thereto as a favorable condition for the infusion of prophetic light, the light of prophecy.² There is no such thing as the development of a natural faculty into the so-called clairvoyance. All phenomena produced in this region are, without exception, either simply the result of morbid perturbations, as in animal somnambulism, and consequently, in themselves something extremely imperfect or even abnormal; or they are an over excitation of the mental powers and, thereby, an extension of the sensible faculty of apperception artificially produced by the action of mesmerism at the expense of the more elevated powers of the soul; or, in fine, we may recognize in them a demoniacal clairvoyance to which mesmeric clairvoyance necessarily and inevitably tends, since the dangerous illusion and profound degradation into which the human soul is plunged by mesmeric influence can have no other result. It is only in abandoning the truth: viz., the doctrine of the human soul, as set forth by the great Doctors, upheld and followed by the Church in her process of canonization, that we can fall into the erroneous and dangerous hypothesis of natural clairvoyance and support false theories upon facts less certain, less positively attested.

Before considering Sister Emmerich’s physical training in preparation for her action in vision, we shall glance at St. Hildegarde, that great mistress of the mystical life, since there exists so striking a resemblance between them. The latter, being directed by Almighty God to reduce her visions to writing, heard these words:³

“I who am the Living Light enlightening all that is in darkness, have freely chosen and called thee by My own good pleasure for marvelous things, for things far greater than those shown by Me to men of ancient times; but, that thou mayest not exalt thyself in the pride of thy heart, I have humbled thee to the dust. The world shall find in thee neither joy nor satisfaction, nor shalt thou mingle in its affairs, for I have shielded thee against proud presumption, I have pierced thee with fear, I have overwhelmed thee with pain. Thou bearest thy sorrows in the marrow of thy bones, in the veins of thy flesh. Thy soul and thy senses are bound, thou must endure countless bodily pains that false security may not take possession of thee, but that, on the contrary, thou mayest regard thyself as faulty in all thou dost. I have shielded thy heart from its wanderings, I have put a bridle upon thee that thy spirit may not proudly and vaingloriously exalt itself, but that in all things it may experience more fear and anxiety than joy and complacency. Write, then, what thou seest and hearest, O thou creature, who receivest not in the agitation of delusion, but in the purity of simplicity, what is designed to manifest hidden things.”

Her contemporary and biographer, the Abbot Theodoric renders this testimony:⁴ “From her youngest years her purity shone so conspicuously that she seemed exempt from the weakness of the flesh. When she had bound herself to Christ by the religious vows, she mounted from virtue to virtue. Charity burned in her breast for all mankind, and the tower of her virginity was protected by the rampart of humility, whence sprang abstinence in diet, poverty in clothing, etc. As the vase is tried in the furnace of the potter, as strength is made perfect in infirmity, so from her earliest infancy, frequent, almost continual sufferings were never wanting to her. Very rarely was she able to walk and, as her body ever seemed near its dissolution, her life presented the picture of a precious death. But in proportion as her physical strength failed, was her soul possessed by the spirit of knowledge and fortitude; as her body was consumed, her spiritual fervor became inflamed.”

Hildegarde herself laid down as a law established by God, that the prophetic light was never received without constant and extraordinary sufferings.⁵ “The soul by its nature tends toward eternal life, but the body, holding in itself this passing life, is not in accordance with it; for, though both unite to form man, yet they are distinct in themselves, they are two. For this reason, when God pours His Spirit out on a man by the light of prophecy, the gift of wisdom, or miracles, He afflicts his body by frequent sufferings, that the Holy Spirit may dwell in him. If the flesh be not subdued by pain, it too readily follows the ways of the world, as happened to Samson, Solomon, and others who, inclining to the pleasures of the senses, ceased to hearken to the inspirations of the spirit; for prophecy, wisdom, and the gift of miracles give birth to delight and joy. Know, O thou poor creature, that I have loved and called by preference those that have crucified their flesh in spirit.” St. Hildegarde continues: “I seek not repose, I am overwhelmed by countless sufferings, while the Almighty pours upon me the dew of His grace. My body is broken by labor and pain, like clay mixed with water.”

And again, “It is not of myself that I utter the following words; the veritable Wisdom pronounces them by my mouth. It speaks to me thus: ‘Hear these words, O creature, and repeat them not as from thyself. But as from Me, and taught by Me, do thou declare what follows:’ In the moment of my conception, when God awoke me by the breath of life in my mother’s womb,⁶ He endowed my soul with the gift of contemplation. My parents offered me to God at my birth and in my third year I perceived in myself so great a light that my soul trembled; but unable yet to speak, I could say nothing of all these things. In my eighth year I was again offered to God and destined for the religious life, and up to my fifteenth year I saw many things that I recounted in all simplicity. They who listened asked in amazement whence or from whom I had received them. Then I began to wonder within myself at this that, although seeing everything in my inmost soul, yet at the same time I perceived exterior objects by the sense of sight, and, as I never heard the like of others, I commenced to hide my visions as best I could. I am ignorant of many things around me, on account of the state of constant sickness in which I have lain from my birth to the present moment, my body consumed, my strength utterly wasted. When inundated with the light of contemplation, I have said many things that sounded strange to my hearers; but, when this light had grown a little dim, and I comported myself more like a child than one of my real age, I became confused, I wept, and longed to be able to keep silence. The fear I had of men was such that I dared not impart to anyone what I saw.”⁷

How strikingly do not the above words characterize Sister Emmerich! Her body was from her birth a vessel of sufferings and like Hildegarde, she too was told by the Celestial Spouse why she endured them: “Thy body is weighed down by pain and sickness that thy soul may labor more actively, for he who is in good health carries his body as a heavy burden.” And when, during the investigation, the Vicar-General expressed astonishment that she could have received a wound in the breast unknown to herself, she replied simply: “I did feel as if my breast had been scalded, but I never looked to see what it was; I am too timid for that. From my childhood I have always been too timid to look upon my person. I have never seen it, I never think of it, I know nothing about it.” This was literally true, for Sister Emmerich had never thought of her body excepting to mortify it and burden it with suffering. In vain do we strive to understand her great love for penance and mortification. We may form some idea of it as witnessed in a monk in all the vigor of manhood, or in one advanced in years to whom but little sleep and food are necessary, or in the cloistered contemplative; but in a young and delicate child, lively and ardent, employed in hard labor from her earliest years, having no example of the kind before her, it is truly astonishing! How powerful must have been the strength infused into her young heart by the grace of the Holy Ghost! We are prone to represent the Saints to ourselves at immeasurable heights above us, and not amid weakness and miseries such as our own. We see their sanctity, without reflecting on their heroic efforts in its attainment; we forget that the nature of these valiant conquerors was the same as our own, that they reached the goal only by patient struggling. The practice of heroic virtue was as difficult for Sister Emmerich as for Blessed Clair Gambacorta, of Pisa (1362-1419), who tells us that fasting was so painful to her that once in her childhood she struck herself in the stomach with a stool, in order to benumb the pangs of hunger by pains of another kind. Like all children, she was exceedingly fond of fruit; to abstain from it cost her the greatest efforts. And have we not seen our own little Anne Catherine struggling against nature until penance and renunciation became, as it were, her only nourishment and the gift of angelic purity natural to her? By pain and mortification her body became in a measure spiritualized, dependent on the soul for its support, and endued with the capability of serving the latter as an instrument in the labors accomplished in vision. The following truth cannot be too strongly insisted upon: in those regions, to which intuitive light opens the way, the soul acts not alone as if separated from the body, but soul and body act together, according to the order established by God. This truth flows of necessity from faith, which teaches that man can merit, expiate, suffer for another only as long as he is a viator acting in and with the body. Nothing throws more light upon this subject than the facts recorded in the life of St. Lidwina:⁸ “When Lidwina,” says an eyewitness, “returned from visiting the Holy Places, Mt. Olivet or Mt. Calvary, for instance, her lips were blistered, her limbs scratched, her knees bruised, her whole person bore not only the wounds made by her passage through briers, but even the thorns themselves remained in the flesh. Her angel told her that she retained them as a visible, palpable proof that she had been to the Holy Places not merely in dreams or in imagination, but really and truly bearing with her the faculty of receiving sensible, corporeal impressions. Once in vision she had to cross a slippery road on which she fell and dislocated her right limb and, when returned to consciousness, she found one eye bruised and inflamed. The pain in the limb and other members was violent for several days. In these far-off journeys she wounded sometimes her hands, sometimes her feet, and the marvelous perfume exhaled by her person betrayed to her friends whither she had been conducted. By a divine dispensation her soul not only communicated to her body the superabundant consolations it experienced, but it also employed the latter as an instrument, as a beast of burden in its journeys, and made it a sharer in the fatigue and accidents resulting therefrom. The soul of the saintly virgin struggled in her body, and her body struggled conjointly with her soul up to the moment of her last agony. They ran together the same career; they endured together the same hardships, like companions under the same roof. We must not, then, be surprised if they journey together, rejoice together in the Lord and, during the pilgrimage of this earthly life, receive together a fore-taste of the glory that is to come, the first fruits of the Spirit, the abundant dew that falls from Heaven.

“In all her supernatural journeys the angel was her companion and she treated with him as a friend with a friend. He constantly appeared to her surrounded by a wonderful light which surpassed the brilliancy of a thousand suns. On his forehead shone the Sign of the Cross, that Lidwina might not be deceived by the evil one, who often appears as an angel of light. At first she used to experience so great an oppression on her chest that she thought herself dying; but the feeling passed as she became accustomed to the ecstatic state. She lay like a corpse perfectly insensible to external impressions while her spirit obeying the angelic voice, after a short visit to the Blessed Virgin’s altar in the parish church of Schiedam whither the angel always led her first, set out on the journey imposed upon her. Now, Lidwina’s sufferings were such as never to allow her to leave her bed; and yet many circumstances combined to certify to the truth of her spiritual and corporal ravishment. She tells us that more than once she was raised, bed and all, to the ceiling of her room by the force of the spirit; and the bruises she bore on her person after her journeys lend strength to her angel’s testimony that her body, as well as her soul, had shared in the rapture. How this was effected the angel alone knew.”

There can, however, be no question here of t...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Approbation
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Author’s Preface
• 1. Spiritual Labors and Sufferings for the Church. The Nuptial House. Action in Vision
• 2. Various Forms of Active Prayer, or Labors in the Nuptial House
• 3. Journeys to the Nuptial House. Sufferings on Account of the Profanation of the Blessed Sacrament
• 4. The Souls in Purgatory. The Angels. The Heavenly Jerusalem
• 5. Prayer and Suffering for Pope Pius VII, for the Ecclesiastical Provinces of the Upper Rhine, For the Conversion of Sinners, and for the Dying. Tableaux of Feasts
• 6. Sister Emmerich’s Gift of Recognizing Relics and Blessed Objects
• 7. Sister Emmerich’s Situation, 1820-24. The Life of Our Lord. Clement Brentano’s Notes. Father Limberg. Death of Abbé Lambert
• 8. Sister Emmerich Is Removed to a New Abode. Sufferings for Souls in Temptation, for the Agonizing, etc
• 9. Sister Emmerich’s Last Days and Death
• Notes
• Back Cover
• A COLLECTION OF CLASSIC ARTWORK
• Brief Life of Christ
• Tan Classics
• Become a Tan Missionary!
• Share the Faith with Tan Books!
• Tan Books