Читать книгу The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. From the Meditations of the Saint and Prophet Anne Catherine Emmerich онлайн

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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 suffering; 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.