sprain from which she long suffered.
She was led on this journey by her guardian angel, who told her that these corporeal wounds signified that she had been ravished in body and spirit.
Similar hurts were also to be seen upon the body of Anne Catherine immediately after some of her visions. Lidwina began her ecstatic journey by following her good angel to the chapel of the Blessed Virgin before Schiedam; Anne Catherine began hers by following her angel guardian either to the chapel which was near her dwelling, or else to the Way of the Cross of Coesfeld.
Her journeys to the Holy Land were made, according to the accounts she gave of them, by the most opposite roads; sometimes even she went all round the earth, when the task spiritually imposed upon her required it. In the course of these journeys from her home to the most distant countries, she carried assistance to many persons, exercising in their regard works of mercy, both corporal and spiritual, and this was done frequently in parables. At the end of a year she would go over the same ground again, see the same persons, and give an account of their spiritual progress or of their relapse into sin. Every part of this labour always bore some reference to the Church, and to the kingdom of God upon earth.
The end of these daily pilgrimages which she made in spirit was invariably the Promised Land, every part of which she examined in detail, and which she saw sometimes in its present state, and sometimes as it was at different periods of sacred history; for her distinguishing characteristic and special privilege was an intuitive knowledge of the history of the Old and New Testaments, and of that of the members of the Holy Family, and of all the saints whom she was contemplating in spirit. She saw the signification of all the festival days of the ecclesiastical year under both a devotional and a historical point of view. She saw and described, day by day, with the minutest detail, and by name, places, persons, festivals, customs, and miracles, all that happened during the public life of Jesus until the Ascension, and the history of the Apostles for several weeks after the Descent of the Holy Ghost. She regarded al her visions not as mere spiritual enjoyments, but as being, so to speak, fertile fields, plentifully strewn with the merits of Christ, and which had not as yet been cultivated; she was often engaged in spirit in praying that the fruit of such and such sufferings of our Lord might be given to the Church, and she would beseech God to apply to his Church the merits of our Saviour which were its inheritance, and of which she would, as it were, take possession, in its name, with the most touching simplicity and ingenuousness.
She never considered her visions to have any reference to her exterior Christian life, nor did she regard them as being of any historical value. Exteriorly she knew and believed nothing but the catechism, the common history of the Bible, the gospels for Sundays and festivals, and the Christian almanac, which to her far-sighted vision was an inexhaustible mine of hidden riches, since it gave her in a few pages a guiding thread which led her through all time, and by means of which she passed from mystery to mystery, and solemnised each with all the saints, in order to reap the fruits of eternity in time, and to preserve and distribute them in her pilgrimage around the ecclesiastical year, that so the will of God might be accomplished on earth as it is in Heaven. She had never read the Old or the New Testaments, and when she was tired of relating her visions, she would sometimes say: 'Read that in the Bible,' and then be astonished to learn that it was not there; 'for,' she would add, 'people are constantly saying in these days that you need read nothing but the Bible, which contains everything, etc., etc.'
The real task of her life was to suffer for the Church and for some of its members, whose distress was shown her in spirit, or who asked her prayers without knowing that this poor sick nun had something more to do for them than to say the Pater noster, but that all their spiritual and corporal sufferings became her own, and that she had to endure patiently the most terrible pains, without being assisted, like the contemplatives of former days, by the sympathising prayers of an entire community. In the age when she lived, she had no other assistance than that of medicine. While thus enduring sufferings which she had taken upon herself for others, she often turned her thoughts to the corresponding sufferings of the Church, and when thus suffering for one single person, she would likewise offer all she endured for the whole Church.
The following is a remarkable instance of the sort: During several weeks she had every symptom of consumption; violent irritation of the lungs, excessive perspiration, which soaked her whole bed, a racking cough, continual expectoration, and a strong continual fever. So fearful were her sufferings that her death was hourly expected and even desired. It was remarked that she had to struggle strangely against a strong temptation to irritability. Did she yield for an instant, she burst into tears, her sufferings increased tenfold, and she seemed unable to exist unless she immediately gained pardon in the sacrament of penance.
She had also to combat a feeling of aversion to a certain person whom she had not seen for years. She was in despair because this person, with whom nevertheless she declared she had nothing in common, was always before her eyes in the most evil dispositions, and she wept bitterly, and with much anxiety of conscience, saying that she would not commit sin, that her grief must be evident to all, and other things which were quite unintelligible to the persons listening to her. Her illness continued to increase, and she was thought to be on the point of death. At this moment one of her friends saw her, to his great surprise, suddenly raise herself up on her bed, and say:
'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 this 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.
A very few days later, she began to feel intense pain in all her limbs, and symptoms of water on the chest manifested themselves. We discovered the sick person for whom Anne Catherine was suffering, and we saw that his sufferings suddenly diminished or immensely increased in exact inverse proportion to those of Anne Catherine.
Thus did charity compel her to take upon herself the illnesses and even the temptations of others, that they might be able in peace to prepare themselves for death. She was compelled to suffer in silence, both to conceal the weaknesses of her neighbour, and not to be regarded as mad herself; she was obliged to receive all the aid that medicine could afford her for an illness thus taken voluntarily for the relief of others, and to be reproached for temptations which were not her own; finally, it was necessary that she should appear perverted in the eyes of men; that so those for whom she was suffering might be converted before God.
One day a friend in deep affliction was sitting by her bedside, when she suddenly fell into a state of ecstasy, and began to pray aloud: 'O, my sweet Jesus, permit me to carry that heavy
