1 Anne Catherine's visions clearly fall in the category of private revelation. Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition are infallible; private revelation is fallible. However, her visions are neither mere human meditations nor pious fiction. Her account of events in the lives of Jesus and Mary were revealed to her by God. Although God cannot err in anything He does, errors can be introduced into private revelation by a misunderstanding on the part of the person who receives the revelation, or by an error made by the person who writes down or transmits the revelation. Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition are immune from these types of error; private revelation is not. Anne Catherine's visions come from God, but they are fallible because they come to us through fallible human persons.

2 Her name in German, her native language, is Anna Katharina Emmerick. With the decree of April 24, 2001, the servant of God Anna Katharina Emmerick has been awarded the degree of heroic virtue (Decretum super virtutibus), with which she has been awarded by Church practice the title "Venerable."

3 In more modern times, holy persons who also had the stigmata include: Audrey Marie Santo (Worcester, Massachusetts), Venerable Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, Venerable Anna Maria Taigi, Theresa Neumann, and many others.

4 In her book, The Life of Jesus Christ and Biblical Revelations, Anne Catherine Emmerich details the events of the 31/2-year Ministry of Jesus Christ. Although she explicitly states that Christ's Ministry lasted 31/2 years (Vol.1, p.496), the astute reader of that work will notice a gap of about one year.

5 She here again explained the manner in which the families assembled together, and in what numbers. But the writer has forgotten her words.

6 She was not certain that the Blessed Sacrament was administered in that order, for on another occasion she had seen John the last to receive.

7 It was not without surprise that the editor, some years after these things had been related by Sister Emmerich, read, in the Latin edition of the Roman Catechism (Mayence, Muller), in reference to the Sacrament of Confirmation, that, according to the tradition of the holy pope Fabian, Jesus taught his Apostles in what manner they were to prepare the Holy Chrism, after the institution of the Blessed Sacrament. The Pope says expressly, in the 54th paragraph of his Second Epistle to the Bishops of the East: 'Our predecessors received from the Apostles and delivered to us that our Saviour Jesus Christ, after having made the Last Supper with his Apostles and washed their feet, taught them how to prepare the Holy Chrism.'

8 On the 11th of December 1812, in her visions of the public life of Jesus, she saw our Lord permit the devils whom he had expelled from the men of Gergesa to enter into a herd of swine, she also saw, on this particular occasion that the possessed men first overturned a large vat filled with some fermented liquid.

9 Dulmen is a small town in Westphalia, where Sister Emmerich lived at this time.

10 Mary of Heli is often spoken of in this relation. According to Sister Emmerich, she was the daughter of St. Joachim and St. Anne, and was born nearly twenty years before the Blessed Virgin. She was not the child of promise, and is called Mary of Heli, by which she is distinguished from the other of the same name, because she was the daughter of Joachim, or Heliachim. Her husband bore the name of Cleophas, and her daughter that of Mary of Cleophas. This daughter was, however, older than her aunt, the Blessed Virgin, and had been married first to Alpheus, by whom she had three sons, afterwards the Apostles Simon, James the Less and Thaddeus. She had one son by her second husband, Sabat, and another called Simon, by her third husband, Jonas. Simon was afterwards Bishop of Jerusalem.

11 These meditations on the sufferings of Jesus filled Sister Emmerich with such feelings of compassion that she begged of God to allow her to suffer as he had done. She instantly became feverish and parched with thirst, and, by morning, was speechless from the contraction of her tongue and of her lips. She was in this state when her friend came to her in the morning, and she looked like a victim which had just been sacrificed. Those around succeeded, with some difficulty, in moistening her mouth with a little water, but it was long before she could give any further details concerning her meditations on the Passion.

12 The Zacharias here referred to was the father of John the Baptist, who was tortured and afterwards put to death by Herod, because he would not betray John into the hands of the tyrant. He was buried by his friends within the precincts of the Temple.

13 Sister Emmerich added: 'Cassius was baptised by the name of Longinus; and was ordained deacon, and preached the faith. He always kept some of the blood of Christ, -- it dried up, but was found in his coffin in Italy. He was buried in a town at no great distance from the locality where St. Clare passed her life. There is a lake with an island upon it near this town, and the body of Longinus must have been taken there.' Sister Emmerich appears to designate Mantua by this description, and there is a tradition preserved in that town to the effect. I do not know which St. Clare lived in the neighbourhood.

14 We must here remark that, in the four years during which Sister Emmerich had her visions, she described everything that had happened to the holy places from the earliest times down to our own. More than once she beheld them profaned and laid waste, but always venerated, either publicly or privately. She saw many stones and pieces of rock, which had been silent witnesses of the Passion and Resurrection of our Lord, placed by St. Helena in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre upon occasion of the foundation of that sacred building. When Sister Emmerich visited it in spirit she was accustomed to venerate the spots where the Cross had stood and the Holy Sepulchre been situated. It must be observed, however, that she used sometimes to see a greater distance between the actual position of the Tomb and the spot where the Cross stood than there is between the chapels which bear their names in the church at Jerusalem.

15 On Good Friday, March 30th, 1820, as Sister Emmerich was contemplating the descent from the Cross she suddenly fainted, in the presence of the writer of these lines, and appeared to be really dead. But after a time she recovered her senses and gave the following explanation, although still in a state of great suffering: 'As I was contemplating the body of Jesus lying on the knees of the Blessed Virgin I said to myself: "How great is her strength! She has not fainted even once!" My guide reproached me for this thought -- in which there was more astonishment than compassion -- and said to me, "Suffer then what she has suffered!" And at the same moment a sensation of the sharpest anguish transfixed me like a sword, so that I believed I must have died from it.' She had had an illness which reduced her almost to the brink of the grave.

16 Sister Emmerich said that the shape of these pincers reminded her of the scissors with which Samson's hair was cut off. In her visions of the third year of the public life of Jesus she had seen our Lord keep the Sabbathday at Misael -- a town belonging to the Levites, of the tribe of Aser -- and as a portion of the Book of Judges was read in the synagogue, Sister Emmerich beheld upon that occasion the life of Samson.

17 Sister Emmerich was accustomed, when speaking of persons of historical importance, to explain how they divided their hair. 'Eve,' she said, 'divided her hair in two parts, but Mary into three.' And she appeared to attach importance to these words. No opportunity presented itself for her to give any explanation upon the subject, which probably would have shown what was done with the hair in sacrifices, funerals, consecrations, or vows, etc. She once said of Samson: 'His fair hair, which was long and thick, was gathered up on his head in seven tresses, like a helmet, and the ends of these tresses were fastened upon his forehead and temples. His hair was not in itself the source of his strength, but only as the witness to the vow which he had made to let it grow in God's honour. The powers which depended upon these seven tresses were the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. He must have already broken his vows and lost many graces, when he allowed this sign of being a Nazarene to be cut off. I did not see Dalila cut off all his hair, and I think one lock remained on his forehead. He retained the grace to do penance and of that repentance by which he recovered strength sufficient to destroy his enemies. The life of Samson is figurative and prophetic.'

18 This refers to a custom of the Diocese of Munster. During Lent there was hung up in the churches a curtain, embroidered in open work, representing the Five Wounds, the instruments of the Passion, etc.

19 Apparently Sister Emmerich here spoke of the ancient cases in which her poor countrymen keep their clothes. The lower part of these cases is smaller than the upper, and this gives them some likeness to a tomb. She had one of these cases, which she called her chest. She often described the stone by this comparison, but her descriptions have not, nevertheless, given us a very clear idea of its shape.

20 The above relation was given later, and it is impossible to say whether it relates to the day of the Resurrection or to the following Sunday.