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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I will now give a corresponding example of her life of contemplation and ecstasy. She had been ill several times, and in a state of almost continual ecstasy, during which she often moaned, and moved her hands like a person employed in weeding. She complained one morning that her hands and arms smarted and itched, and on examination they were found to be covered with blisters, like what would have been produced by the stinging of nettles. She then begged several persons of her acquaintance to join their prayers to hers for a certain intention. The next day her hands were inflamed and painful, as they would have been after hard work; and when asked the cause, she replied: ‘Ah! I have had so many nettles to root up in the vineyard, because those whose duty it was to do it only pulled off the stems, and I was obliged to draw the roots with much difficulty out of a stony soil.’ The person who had asked her the question began to blame these careless workmen, but he felt much confused when she replied: ‘You were one of them,—those who only pull off the stems of the nettles, and leave the roots in the earth, are persons who pray carelessly.’ It was afterwards discovered that she had been praying for several dioceses which were shown to her under the figure of vineyards laid waste, and in which labour was needed. The real inflammation of her hands bore testimony to this symbolical rooting up of the nettles; and we have, perhaps, reason to hope that the churches shown to her under the appearances of vineyards experienced the good effects of her prayer and spiritual labour; for since the door is opened to those who knock, it must certainly be opened above all to those who knock with such energy as to cause their fingers to be wounded.