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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‘Repeat with me the prayers for those in their last agony.’ He did as requested, and she answered the Litany in a firm voice. After some little time, the bell for the agonising was heard, and a person came in to ask Anne Catherine’s prayers for his sister, who was just dead. Anne Catherine asked for details concerning her illness and death, as if deeply interested in the subject, and the friend above-mentioned heard the account given by the new comer of a consumption resembling in the minutest particulars the illness of Anne Catherine herself. The deceased woman had at first been in so much pain and so disturbed in mind that she had seemed quite unable to prepare herself for death; but during the last fortnight she had been better, had made her peace with God, having in the first place been reconciled to a person with whom she was at enmity, and had died in peace, fortified by the last sacraments, and attended by her former enemy. Anne Catherine gave a small sum of money for the burial and funeral-service of this person. Her sweatings, cough, and fever now left her, and she resembled a person exhausted with fatigue, whose linen has been changed, and who has been placed on a fresh bed. Her friend said to her, ‘When this fearful illness came upon you, this woman grew better, and her hatred for another was the only obstacle to her making peace with God. You took upon yourself, for the time, her feelings of hatred, she died in good dispositions, and now you seem tolerably well again. Are you still suffering on her account?’ ‘No, indeed!’ she replied; ‘that would be most unreasonable; but how can any person avoid suffering when even the end of his little finger is in pain? We are all one body in Christ.’ ‘By the goodness of God,’ said her friend, ‘you are now once more somewhat at ease.’ ‘Not for very long, though,’ she replied with a smile; ‘there are other persons who want my assistance.’ Then she turned round on her bed, and rested awhile.