Posted on 04/08/2004 6:21:26 PM PDT by narses
An Augustinian nun, stigmatic, and ecstatic, born 8 September, 1774, at Flamsche, near Coesfeld, in the Diocese of Münster, Westphalia, Germany; died at Dulmen, 9 February, 1824.
Her parents, both peasants, were very poor and pious. At twelve she was bound out to a farmer, and later was a seamstress for several years. Very delicate all the time, she was sent to study music, but finding the organist's family very poor she gave them the little she had saved to enter a convent, and actually waited on them as a servant for several years. Moreover, she was at times so pressed for something to eat that her mother brought her bread at intervals, parts of which went to her master's family. In her twenty-eighth year (1802) she entered the Augustinian convent at Agnetenberg, Dulmen. Here she was content to be regarded as the lowest in the house. Her zeal, however, disturbed the tepid sisters, who were puzzled and annoyed at her strange powers and her weak health, and notwithstanding her ecstasies in church, cell, or at work, treated her with some antipathy. Despite her excessive frailty, she discharged her duties cheerfully and faithfully. When Jerome Bonaparte closed the convent in 1812 she was compelled to find refuge in a poor widow's house. In 1813 she became bedridden. She foresaw the downfall of Napoleon twelve years in advance, and counseled in a mysterious way the successor of St. Peter. Even in her childhood the supernatural was so ordinary to her that in her innocent ignorance she thought all other children enjoyed the same favours that she did, i.e. to converse familiarly with the Child Jesus, etc. She displayed a marvellous knowledge when the sick and poor came to the "bright little sister" seeking aid; she knew their diseases and prescribed remedies that did not fail. By nature she was quick and lively and easily moved to great sympathy by the sight of the sufferings of others. This feeling passed into her spiritual being with the result that she prayed and suffered much for the souls of Purgatory whom she often saw, and for the salvation of sinners whose miseries were known to her even when far away. Soon after she was confined to bed (1813) the stigmata came externally, even to the marks of the thorns. All this she unsuccessfully tried to conceal as she had concealed the crosses impressed upon her breast.
Then followed what she dreaded on account of its publicity, an episcopal commission to inquire into her life, and the reality of these wonderful signs. The examination was very strict, as the utmost care was necessary to furnish no pretext for ridicule and insult on the part of the enemies of the Church. The vicar-general, the famous Overberg, and three physicians conducted the investigation with scrupulous care and became convinced of the sanctity of the "pious Beguine", as she was called, and the genuineness of the stigmata. At the end of 1818 God granted her earnest prayer to be relieved of the stigmata, and the wounds in her hands and feet closed, but the others remained, and on Good Friday were all wont to reopen. In 1819 the government sent a committee of investigation which discharged its commission most brutally. Sick unto death as she was, she was forcibly removed to a large room in another house and kept under the strictest surveillance day and night for three weeks, away from all her friends except her confessor. She was insulted, threatened, and even flattered, but in vain. The commission departed without finding anything suspicious, and remained silent until its president, taunted about his reticence, declared that there was fraud, to which the obvious reply was: In what respect? and why delay in publishing it? About this time Klemens Brentano, the famous poet, was induced to visit her; to his great amazement she recognized him, and told him he had been pointed out to her as the man who was to enable her to fulfil God's command, namely, to write down for the good of innumerable souls the revelations made to her. He took down briefly in writing the main points, and, as she spoke the Westphalian dialect, he immediately rewrote them in ordinary German. He would read what he wrote to her, and change and efface until she gave her complete approval. Like so many others, he was won by her evident purity, her exceeding humility and patience under sufferings indescribable. With Overberg, Sailer of Ratisbon, Clement Augustus of Cologne, Stollberg, Louisa Hensel, etc., he reverenced her as a chosen bride of Christ.
In 1833 appeared the first-fruits of Brentano's toil, "The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to the Meditations of Anne Catherine Emmerich" (Sulzbach). Brentano prepared for publication "The Life of The Blessed Virgin Mary", but this appeared at Munich only in 1852. From the manuscript of Brentano Father Schmoeger published in three volumes "The Life of Our Lord" (Ratisbon, 1858-80), and in 1881 a large illustrated edition of the same. The latter also wrote her life in two volumes (Freiburg, 867-70, new edition, 1884). Her visions go into details, often slight, which give them a vividness that strongly holds the reader's interest as one graphic scene follows another in rapid succession as if visible to the physical eye. Other mystics are more concerned with ideas, she with events; others stop to meditate aloud and to guide the reader's thoughts, she lets the facts speak for themselves with the simplicity, brevity, and security of a Gospel narrative. Her treatment of that difficult subject, the twofold nature of Christ, is admirable. His humanity stands out clear and distinct, but through it shines always a gleam of the Divine. The rapid and silent spread of her works through Germany, France, Italy, and elsewhere speaks well for their merit. Strangely enough they produced no controversy. Dom Guéranger extolls their merits in the highest terms (Le Monde, 15 April, 1860).
Sister Emmerich lived during one of the saddest and least glorious periods of the Church's history, when revolution triumphed, impiety flourished, and several of the fairest provinces of its domain were overrun by infidels and cast into such ruinous condition that the Faith seemed about to be completely extinguished. Her mission in part seems to have been by her prayers and sufferings to aid in restoring Church discipline, especially in Westphalia, and at the same time to strengthen at least the little ones of the flock in their belief. Besides all this she saved many souls and recalled to the Christian world that the supernatural is around about it to a degree sometimes forgotten. A rumour that the body was stolen caused her grave to be opened six weeks after her death. The body was found fresh, without any sign of corruption. In 1892 the process of her beatification was introduced by the Bishop of Münster.
WEGENER, tr. McGOWAN, Sister Anne Katherine Emmerich (New York, 1907); DeCAZALES, Life of A. C. Emmerich prefixed to the 2d ed. of The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord (London, 1907); URBANY in Kirchenlexikon, s.v.; MIGNE, Dict. de mystique chrétienne (Paris, 1858).
E.P. GRAHAM
Transcribed by Michael T. Barrett
Dedicated to the Poor Souls in Purgatory
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume V
Copyright © 1909 by Robert Appleton Company
Online Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. Knight
Nihil Obstat, May 1, 1909. Remy Lafort, Censor
Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York
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She still has not been canonized.
Because nothing has happened for seventy-six years!
Leo Cardinal Scheffczk, who was made a cardinal by Pope John Paul II in February 2001, and who has been involved in the Emmerich beatification case, compared this servant of God to St. Teresa of Avila while he spoke at the 1990 episcopal Emmerich symposium in Munster. Referring to her stigmata, Scheffczyk remarked that her life can be seen as a "path of union with the suffering of Christ and her person as a paradigm of mystical suffering worthy of being entered into the ranks of a Teresa of Avila."
In his address, this now prince of the Church examined the signs that speak for the authenticity and supernatural origin and character of Emmerich’s stigmata, childhood life of penance, and visions. These are "not to be explained by a natural religious inclination" in Emmerich, and they can "without the working of a special grace scarcely be explained.... Her mystical grace was of the highest order.... Emmerich was marked with the highest mystical grace, represented as the ‘mystical betrothal’ and the ‘spiritual wedding.’ The knowledge and spiritual instructions which she communicated in conversations and speeches with her contemporaries and which she could not have gathered through reading or self-study, are also an indirect proof for the authenticity of her elevated mystical state?’
The recorded visions of Emmerich were praised and recommended by, among others, St. John Neumann, St. Sophie Madeleine Barat (canonized 1925), St. Mary Euphrasia (canonized 1940), and Leon Dupont, the famous "holy man of Tours."
In further comments, Scheffczyk stated that Emmerich’s was an anima ecciesiastica and that her calling was to suffer for souls and for the Church as a whole. It was furthermore "not without significance" that historically Emmerich’s visions concerning the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ, so closely anticipated the renewed interest among theologians in this aspect of the Church in the first four decades of the 20th century, which of course found its culmination in Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Mystici Corporis.
In his final remarks, Scheffczyk noted the importance of Emmerich "in an epoch of advances in science and civilization. . . in which the meaning of the transcendence of human life is generally obscured, but in which especially the meaning of suffering has almost vanished. Without the wisdom of the cross, a supernatural healing cannot be achieved. The great bearer of suffering Anne Catherine Emmerich can teach us precisely this."
Sources
"Bischöfliches Offizialat Münster" (October 20, 2000) .
Göckener, Norbert, "Akte mit ‘wunderbarem’ Inhalt Seligsprechungsverfahren für Emmerick in entacheidender Phase" (March 24, 2001) .
" 'Mystikerin der Münsterlandes.’ Das ‘Wunderverfahren’ für Anna Katharina Emmerick hat begonnen" (October 23, 2000) http:// www.bistum-muenster.de .
Scheffczyk, Leo, "Die Mystik der Anna Katharina Emmerick," in: Anna Katharina Emmerick. Die Mystikerin des Münsterlandes. Symposion 1990 der Bischöflichen Kommission "Anna Katharina Emmerick" Münster. Clemens Engling, Hubert Festring, Hermann Flothkötter (Herausgeber). (Dülmen: Laumann-Verlagsgesellschaft, 1991), 39-62.
Seller, Hermann Josef, Im Banne des Kreuzes. Lebensbild der stigmatisierten Augustinerie A.K. Emmerick (Würzburg: Augustinus-Verlag, 1949), 451-457. (This source records various miracles effected through the intercession of Emmerich.)
From http://www.emmerich1.com/VenerableEmmerich.htm
Times like we are in now. Lord, send us great saints!
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