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HONORED BY A BRIEF OF HER SAINTÉE LEON XIII

ÉDITÉS CHEZ DELHOMME ET BRICUET : MYSTIQUE DIVINE DISTINGUÉE

DIABOLIC ANALOGIES OF HUMAN ANALOGIES

PAR M. J. HONORARY CHANOINE RIBET — "5 — MYSTICAL PHENOMENES------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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LES PHÉNOMÈNES MYSTIQUES

PART TWO MYSTICAL PHENOMENES

DISTINCTS

DE LA CONTEMPLATION

en

PREAMBLE These phenomena are grouped under the three intellectual, emotional,

corporel. We describe the multiple aspects of mystical life; later we will discuss the causes. In the first volume, we studied the mysteries of the Contemplation, which is like the substance, the centre and the end of mystical life. In this one, we propose to enumerate and group the mystical phenomena distinct from the Contemplation. These supernatural phenomena, of which man is the subject, appear in his soul and body. The soul is a showy activity: it sees and acts;

200333 she sees to act, from which it results as two principles of life, one of which is intended to feed the second and to enlighten him by showing him his term.

The body consists of a set of organs that connect the soul with intelligence and action with the outside world.

Intellectual life, emotional life, organic life form the three aspects of human life.

God's supernatural and mystical action on man is addressed primarily and ultimately to the will, to provoke it and subject it to the ineffable union of charity. But, in accordance with the order that governs every reasonable nature, this action goes first through intelligence, and again goes back to it through the luminous rejailing of love. And then, one and the other, the intellectual movement and the emotional movement, obeying the law that binds the soul to the body, exerts on the organs a glorious radiance, just as in their turn the senses send to the soul, from the outside, countless influences.

However, depending on whether the action has its focus and its main seat in the mind, heart or body, the facts are classified and characterized by this predominant aspect.

All mystical phenomena can therefore be classified under one of these three forms: intellectual life, moral life and sensitive life. This classification, we must not forget, has nothing rigorous or exclusive, because most of these facts have a simultaneous impact or CHAPTER I MYSTICAL PHENOMENES IN THE INTELLECTUAL ORDER

LES VISIONS

GENERAL POINT OF VIEW Various points of view under which the phenomena of order are grouped

intellectuel. — Les visions ; leur notion. — Three species: body vision, imaginary vision, intellectual vision. — Ces trois sortes de

visions, far from excluding, are often mellow together. — Leur excellence respective. — The degree of holiness they assume in the subject

qui les reçoit. - Conduct to be held in visions. — Elles constituent

de vrais miracles.

[. — We place in the category of intellectual facts those who appear and are circumscribed in the circle of thought. One could give them the common name of visions, since intelligence is at the bottom only the eye of the soul, and that the act proper of the eye is vision. But since this expression is reserved in mystical terms to designate the supernatural manifestations of an object by presence or by representation, this special and traditional meaning must be respected.

18. Tuox. 14. P., q. 67. à. 1. It must be said that one may speak of a given name in two ways: in one way according to its first imposition; in another way according to the use of the name. Sicut patet in nomine visionis, quod primo impositum est ad significandum actus sensus visus, sed propter dignitatem Intellectual life also takes the form of hearing, which has given the thinking faculty the name of understanding, and the object of thought, that of speech.

Most mystical communications are accomplished by visions or words.

Visions and words that reveal naturally unknown facts are revelations.

Finally, in addition to these ordinary forms of mystical life, it still occurs in the mind, through supernatural infusion, of lights and mental facilities for the sciences and the arts, which hold prodigy.

The study of the mystical phenomena of the intellectual order will embrace all these points of view: Visions, Words, Revelations and Infuse Aptitudes.

This first chapter and the following will be devoted to Visions: Serious and thorny matter on which it is important that spiritual directors be fully informed, in order to also keep in mind, and against systematic denials, and against excessive credulity.

IL. — There is a supernatural vision when a person or something that, in the circumstances given, cannot be seen naturally, appears in the eyes of the soul or body in their own reality or in an image that represents them.

The vision can therefore be defined: the supernatural manifestation of a being by true presence or by repreSchram! seems to us to restrict the field of vision too much, admitting only celestial or divine objects. As soon as any object, naturally absent or invisible, reveals itself, in reality or in figure, in the eyes of the soul or body, by virtue of a manifestation or representation that is outside the laws of nature, there is vision.

Some mystics, among them the pious Cardinal Bona?, distinguish between vision and appearance. According to this author, there would appear when we see an unknown figure; and vision, when the mind has the intelligence of what it sees. Generally these two words are taken one for the other, and, if one had to distinguish between them, it seems that the appearance relates best to the manifested thing, and the vision to the subject that contemplates it.

IT. — The different kinds of vision refer to the classification adopted by St. Augustine in the twelfth and last book, devoted entirely to this subject, of his literal Commentary on Genesis. According to the holy doctor #, visions are bodily, spiritual or intellectual, depending on whether they are addressed to the eyes of the body, imagination or pure intelligence. To the expression of spirit, clearly explained elsewhere by St Augustine, the imaginary one has been substituted.

Now vision is a knowledge not owed to us, which occurs with the presentation of heavenly or divine things.

It should be observed that although vision and apparition are commonly taken as one and the same thing, some distinction is nevertheless found between the two. For it is called an apparition when only the likeness of the one appearing presents itself to our sight, but we do not know who it is that appears; but when understanding of it is joined to the outward apparition, then it is called a vision.

8 De Gen. ad litt. 1. 42, c. 7, n. 16. These are the three kinds of visions... Let us call the first, then, corporeal, because it is perceived through the body, and is presented to the bodily senses. Second, spiritual: for whatever is not a body, and yet is something, is now rightly called spirit; and it is by no means a body, although it is similar to a body — the image of an absent body — nor is it that very gaze by which it is perceived. The third, however, is intellectual, [named] from the intellect. There would be tyranny to sever from a generally followed division, according to Schram!, and, after Alvarez de Paz?, with complete unanimity, by the Fathers and theologians.

IV. — Far from excluding themselves, these kinds of visions may stand together and have the same object, but considered in three different points of view: in the external vision, as a body; in the imaginary, as a sensitive representation; in the intellectual, as a truth heard.

According to St Augustine, the body vision presupposes the other two; the imaginary vision presupposes the intellectual; alone, the intellectual remains without the first two. In front of an external appearance, his image is formed in the mind, and at the same time the hearing grasps the pure truth of the object manifested, which makes a triple vision: the first, body; the second, imaginary; the third, intellectual. The holy doctor, who seems to us to yield to his penchant for the antithesis and bring them closer1 Theol. myst. $ 494, schol. 1, t. 2, p. 197: Juxta S. Augustinum, S. Isidorum, S. Thomam, Rich. a S. Victor., S. Bonaventure, and commonly the SS. [Fathers]... ...the Fathers and Theologians, visions are divided: first, into corporeal or sensible visions, which occur by the ministry of bodily sight; second, into imaginary or spiritual visions, as Augustine says, which come about through species or figures and images of things existing in the imagination, which can happen either while awake or in sleep; third, into intellectual visions, which are the clearest manifestation of divine things, accomplished in the intellect alone, without figures and images.

2 De grad. contempl. It is certain, among all the Fathers as well as the Theologians, that there are three kinds of apparitions: corporeal, imaginary, and intellectual.

3 De Genes. a litter. 1.192, c. 11, n. 22, p. 581. Bodily vision, indeed, presides over none of these kinds; but what is perceived through it is reported to the spiritual [vision], as to that which presides. For when something is perceived with the eyes, an image of it immediately arises in the spirit, but it is not recognized as having been made except when, the eyes having been withdrawn from that which we were seeing through them, we find its image [still present]. And if the spirit is irrational, as that of a beast, the eyes report only this much. But if the soul is rational, it is reported also to the intellect, which presides over the spirit as well, so that — just as what the eyes took in, and reported to the spirit so that an image of it might arise there, is a sign of some thing — either its meaning is understood at once, or it is sought; since it can be neither understood nor sought except by the office of the mind. [Fragment, apparently unrelated French text follows:] ...subtle minds, takes care to clarify his assertions with several examples, of which that of Balthasar is without question the happiest. This king of Babylon sees a hand that writes on the wall the end of divine justice: this is the bodily vision. The shape of the mysterious characters is fixed in his mind; it is the imaginary vision that succeeds the previous one. The intellectual vision is in the explanation that the prophet Daniel will bring.

Hence Saint Augustine concludes that the body vision relates to the imagination, and this one, to the intellectual!.

Interpretation is more subtle than true, and it will confuse the natural exercise of thought with supernatural vision. Thus, when the unmistakable Balthasar sees the mysterious hand plotting the terrible sentence, he makes himself a supernatural bodily vision; but the image of the characters that is grave in the mind is more than a natural act of imagination or memory. Similarly the explanation he receives from these signs, through Daniel, is for this prince only a mere act of intelligence. There are indeed 1c1 two supernatural visions: the first, body, which addresses the king of Babylon; the second, intellectual, in the prophet Daniel, but, in relation to the subject, one is independent of the other.

These visions can therefore be linked, as they may not be. A remarkable example of the supernatural vision in all three forms in the same subject, although the last object is different, is found in the Magi?: a star appears to them appreciably; at the same time they receive the meaning of this external sign, and, after having recognized and worshipped the Child God, they are warned, during their sleep, to return to their country by another way.

That body vision and imaginary vision usually need, to be heard, a corresponding intellectual vision, cannot be challenged; but if the first two occur in naturally known and sufficiently explicit forms, the intelligence of these manifestations will not constitute a phenomenon of supernatural order.

V. — If the three visions are brought together to assign them an order of dignity and excellence, the intellectual is placed first, and the one which occurs in the imagination is higher than that which is purely external.

The mystical authors, following St Augustine, agreed to put the three visions in this order.

This hierarchy takes on the objects and effects of these different visions.

The world of material realities is inferior in perfection and dignity to the ideal world that serves it as a type, and the purely intelligible world, considered by the only aspect of truth that is the first attribute of being, is superior to any other world and to any other aspect. That is why St Thomas adds this reason, that the intellectual vision draws closer to the glorious vision of the homeland, where one will contemplate without veils all truth, in the divine essence.

The gradation in the objects of these visions naturally determines another proportional one, in the eflets they produce. In itself, by the effects of grace that accompany them, imaginary vision prevails over the body, and intellectual vision over the other two.

What we have just said about the relative perfection of the three kinds of visions taken in general, does not prevent such sensitive vision from being higher than any other, imaginary or even intellectual, because of the superminence of the object, the brightness of the light. Thus the actual appearance of the Saviour who is at the gates of Damascus, Saul, the future apostle of the Gentiles ‘, seems to us more precious and greater than the imaginary vision? by which the Lord sends the disciple Anania to the persecutor transformed into an election vessel.

Let us also note, with Scaramelli?, that when visions mix and complement each other, there is one that is the main one, and that this role is not always devoted to intellectual vision, which it can just as well suit material and imaginary visions. When Moses, for example, saw the burning bush of the desert, and received in his mind the meaning of this mysterious flame, the sensitive and outer appearance formed the main object, and the inner illumination subordinated to this symbol, the secondary object. And as the act draws its perfection from its main form, and not from what is accessory to it, it follows

1 Act. 1x, 3 et seq.

2 Ibid. 10: And dixit ad illum in visu Dominus. again from thence that, in visions, the superiority of one species over another should not be estimated speculatively by absolute principles on the relative perfection of the different orders of knowledge, but by the nature and circumstances of each particular apparition.

The general principle remains no less; intellectual visions occupy the first place; imaginary visions the second, and bodily visions the last.

VI. — This principle becomes a practical rule when it comes to appreciating the perfection of the subject to whom God bestows these favors. The illuminations of the intellectual order, higher of their nature, go, as by normal destination, to the most perfect; the sensitive apparitions, which are at the bottom of the scale, are suitable for the least perfect; and the imaginary visions, which hold the middle, naturally find their place between the extremes, and must be those which accommodate best to all degrees!.

But how should these extremes and intermediaries be heard? It is important here to explain clearly in order to avoid any inaccurate, excessive conclusion.

We said that mystical life referred regularly to the highest state of spiritual ascension, to the one-way path, but was not entirely excluded from the lower degrees. This doctrine is based on solid foundations: we will not contradict it.

1 Purzrpp. À SS. TRiIN. Theol. myst. P. 2, Tr. 3, D. 4, a. 1,t. 2, p. 397: P. Scaramelli, faithfully reproduced by his abbreviations!, poses in principle that the body vision is the proper beginnings?, that the imaginary vision is the part of those who begin and of those who progress in spiritual life, although. one and the other are granted, by exception, to the most advanced; that, only, the intellectual vision is the lot of the perfects."

This doctrine on the relative perfection of the three visions is not unique to the Italian author we have just quoted. Joseph Lopez Ezquerra *, from whom he borrows, says of these same visions that they are commonly viewed by mystics as the regular part of beginners and progressors.

These assertions, thus extended, may be subject to some corrective measures.

From the admission of all, intellectual vision usually occurs only in the high peaks of mystical life, and it is only rarely and transiently that it is granted to the lower states of perfection.

v

1 Voss, Direct. myst. 1. 2, P. 2, c. 1, à. 1, p. 359. — à. 2, p. 373. — à. 3, p. 382.

P. Serapuin. Prince. de Théol. myst., n. 376, p. 323; n. 398, p. 338.

C. VBRHAEGE, Manuel de Théol. myst., 1. 2, ©. 1, 8 1, p. 258. — & 2, p. 372. — $ 3, p. 280.

2 Dirett. Mist. Corporeal visions are favors proper to beginners, who are starting to walk in the way of the spirit. I do not mean to say by this that God does not sometimes, for his own particular purposes, grant such graces also to persons far advanced in perfection, etc.

3 Jhid. c. 7, n. 102, p. 286. Imaginary visions... are proper to beginners and proficients, who are not yet well purged, although they are often granted by God, for his own particular purposes, even to the perfect.

4 Dirett. Myst. Tratt. 4, c. 5, n. 417, p. 292. Le visioni intellettuali sono proprie di quelli che si trovano già in istato di perfezione. Nevertheless, they can sometimes be granted to the less perfect.

& Eucern. myst. Tract. 5, C. 3, n. 49, p. 88: Hæ imaginariæ visiones regulariter eveniunt vel incipientibus vel proficientibus nondum pure beneAnother point also out of dispute is that bodily apparitions, according to the expression of Alvarez de Paz!, do not belong to true holiness. We can have these visions and not be holy, as we can be holy and not have one. If they brought holiness by themselves, Balaam and his donkey, according to the pleasant remark of Saint Bonaventure, would have been holy, since both had also the vision of the angel. They meet in the good and in the wicked, with this difference however that they become suspicious and must be put on account of the lying spirit, if they address themselves frequently and without any vestige of conversion to sinners obstinate in evil.

Let us add that the demon frequently resorts to these kinds of manifestations, either because he exercises a greater empire on material objects than on souls, or because these prestiges are better suited to tempting the flesh.

This is why, when these apparitions occur, we must not rush to see the testimony of a virtuous insignia.

These concessions made, here are some reservations.

The assertion that restricts the appearances sensitive to the beginnings of spiritual life seems to us to have little historical basis. To question only Scripture, the most remarkable external apparitions mentioned therein are addressed to Abraham t and Jacob ?, Moses *, Tobias # and his family, the Blessed Virgin Mary *, Zechariah 5, St. Peter *. Will it be said that these characters, including the most holy Mother of the Saviour, were still in the labors of purgative life, when they saw angels dressed in human form or other sensitive wonders?

It is true, Scripture relates some facts of material visions into notorious sinners, such as the Sodomites &, Balaam *, Balthazar *, Heliodorus, and several others whose high virtue is not clearly indicated enough to make them perfect, for example, Agar #, Loth's family, Gideon*, Samson's father and mother. . The ecclesiastical and hagiographic history reproduces the same facts and in the same proportions, namely: the greatest number of body apparitions for the benefit of the saints, some made to sinners who amend or harden; others in subjects whose degree of virtue it would be difficult to specify.

This is even more true and easier demonstration, applied to imaginary visions.

These inner illuminations by sensitive images constitute transient and accidental acts, or periodic states of prayer.

In the second case, it is contemplation; and the usual contemplation presupposes that the soul that enjoys it has gone through the passive trials we have spoken of; heroic struggles, where the soul depurates, lightens and reaches, if not at the highest peaks, at least at the first avenues of the united path.

Passing phenomena may occur independently of passive purifications; and, therefore, in souls that are not yet purified, either from the filth of mortal sin, or from the impetuousness of sensual passions, or from the stains of venial sin and voluntary imperfections, i.e.: in sinners themselves, in those who begin, in those who progress in spiritual ways. But, apart from contemplative prayer, it is mainly to the more perfect souls that God grants these kinds of favors.

In evidence, the only way to open the Bible is to open it.

Laban!, Pharaoh?, Nebuchadnezzar, have had imaginary visions; but these visions are otherwise numerous and brilliant among the holy biblical characters Abraham *, Jacob, Joseph, most of the holy prophets, Judas Machhabaeus; and, in the New Testament: the glorious Saint Joseph #, the Magi?, the Prince of the Apostles #?, Saint John #, Saint Paul #, Saint Ananie of Damascus.

The lives of the saints overabund in fact of this kind, and, for an imaginary appearance granted to the weak and imperfect, he meets one hundred in souls illustrated by their holiness. Let us read the writings where the Brigittes, the Gertrudes, the Teresus, the Marguerite-Maries, the Marys of Agréda, recount the supernatural communications they received from heaven, and we will see how often God reveals himself in this so human form of imagination, not only in the first trials, but until the climax of spiritual life. What to conclude from these facts, except that the imaginary visions, and even the external visions, although of all the least perfect, remain insignia graces, which God sometimes grants to sinners to convert them; less rarely to those who take the first steps in virtue, in order to excite them to struggle and walk with courage; more often to those who are in progress, to hasten their course; but in a normal way to the clean souls who are introduced and advanced in the mystical ways, which are, therefore, already entered into the unitary state.

These conclusions, in agreement with the facts, fully reflect the nature of these phenomena. These are real miracles in the order of sanctification, and they thus constitute reported rewards or exceptional favors, which suppose the soul already emerged from the vulgar paths and on its way to the high peaks. Caution, however, requires great reserve in particular decisions, because, once again, these kinds of wonders can be produced by God in sinners or beginnings; and, what is more to fear, they can be the work of the lying angel, or pure illusions of the clean spirit.

VIT. — A question naturally arises here: what conduct should be held in the presence of these apparitions of which the demon may be the author?

Alvarez de Paz‘, who formulates on this point the common opinion of the mystics, wants to be paid the respective tributes due to the objects they represent: to God and to Jesus Christ, worship; to the Most Holy Virgin and to the saints, the worship that suits them. Even then, he adds, that the demon would be the author of these representations, the honors that are given to them come back, not to this spirit of lies, but to the realities that they express. Saint Thomas! wants the reservation to be formulated, the vision to be truly divine.

It is not doubtful, at least, that one should not abstain, even when there is suspicion of evil deception, from any irreverence towards these holy images. Saint Térèse, to whom inexperienced confessors had imposed in time a contrary conduct, strongly blames any demonstration of contempt in these encounters, and wants his daughters not to obey those who would advise them or order similar practices. The reasons for this are peremptory.

"In the thought that Our Lord is doing you these great favors," she said to them? "you will strive to satisfy him best and always have his face before your eyes. This made a learned man say that if the demon, who is a skillful painter, was a vivid image of the Saviour, he would not be angry; that he would be used to give life to his devotion, and to fight the enemy with his own weapons. Although a painter is a bad man, he added, we must not let respect for the painting that he traces, if our property is there. That's why he found bad the advice given by some to welcome visions with signs of mockery, because wherever we see it, we must revere the image of our King. In this he was right; for even among men, if one person cherished another, she could not without pain see his portrait outraged; how much more must we respect the image of Our Lord crucified, or any other person who represents him to us! I like to repeat here what I said elsewhere on this point, because I knew a very distressed person who was being ordered to use this remedy. I don't know who could have imagined it: it is only good to torment a soul to whom the confessor gives such advice and who thinks he is lost if he does not conform. Mine is that if you are given it, you humbly represent these reasons, and you do not follow it."

However, when it is evident that the appearance is a lie of Satan, we must refrain from any act of veneration, and reject it with indignation and contempt!

Saint Philip of Neri?, to whom God had communicated to a remarkable degree the gift of discerning spirits, repeatedly gave the advice to spit on apparitions that he knew came from lying angel. In particular, this is what happened to one of his disciples, FrançoisMarie de Ferrare. One night he thought he saw the very Holy Virgin, all shining with light, and in the morning he told the Father about this vision. "What you have seen is not the "Mother of God," said the Blessed, but a wicked "demon; therefore, if the apparition comes back, spit out "on him."The next night, the false virgin reappeared, and the faithful disciple punctually executed what had been commanded him. To this sign of contempt the deceptive vision ssevanouit. At some point, while this brother was praying, the Mother of God appeared to him in reality, and as he was once again trying to spit, "Shive, then, if you can," she said to him. He made vain efforts to draw from his tongue and palace the smallest drop of saliva. The Blessed Virgin then said to her, "You did well to obey the Father's counsel," and she disappeared, leaving her servant flooded with heavenly consolations.

VIT. — These apparitions, as we have just said, constitute real miracles, as well as the teaching, together with Saint Thomas, the common of the Doctors? According to the established order, our world must remain in the shadows of faith; therefore, according to the laws of nature, God does not manifest himself significantly, and the righteous who enjoy bliss only appear among their traveling brothers to meet extraordinary purposes of divine Providence. This made St Augustine say that martyrs could only assist the living by the effect of God's power, and not by a proper and natural virtue. This must also be understood as angelic apparitions. The law that separates the two worlds is general and applies to God, Our Lord, glorious souls and heavenly spirits. In itself, the work produced may be natural; but, in relation to us, it amounts to a miracle, since it contradicts this law of nature that does not allow man to put himself in direct and conscious contact with superior beings other than by faith and prayer. So when God, angels or saints reveal themselves to us, in mental or external vision, for their natural action, we are no longer in the regular and constant course of nature.

However, the miracle varies according to the different visions. The body appearance does not present anything wonderful in the subject that receives it: it sees, it hears, it touches, by a natural exercise of its senses; the prodigy is all in the outer manifestation of an object that does not regularly belong to our world. In the intellectual vision, on the contrary, the prodigy is in the very act of knowledge and. in the faculty that accomplishes it: the object may not doubt that it is the term of a supernatural perception. For the imaginary vision, it seems miraculous by this double aspect: the subject exercises his inner senses there with elements or at least under conditions which rennet him from his natural sphere: on the other hand, the external agent who impresses the imagination, although he acts, in itself, in a manner consistent with his nature, nevertheless establishes with the subject of the vision a relationship which is not in the normal and common course of Providence, relion which must therefore be considered miraculous. CHAPITRE II

CORPORAL VISION What it consists of, and if it is addressed to all senses. — Deux manières

to occur: by a prestigious action on the organs, or by the real and truly external appearance of an organized or fantastic body. — Precautions not to confuse body vision with

la vision imaginaire.

I. — Body vision is the supernatural manifestation, and in a sensitive form, of an external object in the eyes of the body. It therefore takes these two conditions: a real impression of the sense of sight, in which it offers nothing but natural; and an impression by an object which is not naturally found in the visual ray of the seeing subject, and therefore appears there only by virtue of a miracle. The whole supernatural vision is in this last point.

Some authors, including Saint Bonaventure! and Cardinal Bona?, extend body visions to all the sensitive impressions that affect organs other than sight. Cette interprétation répond au

To this can be referred the experience of any of the senses whatsoever, such as hearing and taste, smell and touch, since sight can be posited in place of any sense.

The name of corporeal (vision) is given both to that which occurs by sight and to that which occurs by the ministry of the other senses. Nomen quippe visionis primo impositum est ad actum visus significandum, ad omnem quoque aliorum sensuum functionem , propter ejus certitudinem et dignitatem extensum est. common feeling, which describes as vision any external prodigy by which God warns man of his supernatural intervention. We do not believe, however, that we should follow it. The matter we are dealing with is complicated enough so that we do not mingle sufficiently distinct elements. We will point out the impressions that strike the ouie, at the place where we will deal with supernatural words, and those of taste and smell, when these are mystical phenomena in organic life.

But we would gladly qualify as bodily appearances the concussion produced on the sense of tact by external objects that would hide from sight. When, for example, Heliodorus! was flogged by the angels in the temple of Jerusalem, at the time when he was ready to plunder its treasure, it can be said that there was a real appearance there, even though the heavenly executors would have accused their presence only by the blows they had put on the desecrator.

IL. — The supernatural phenomenon of body vision can occur in two ways: by virtue of an immediate action, exercised by an external agent on the senses, to affect them in the way of the ambient bodies, without there being outside any reality corresponding to the organic impression; or by the true intervention of a body that strikes the retina and determines the physical phenomenon of vision.

We cannot discover a metaphysical repugnance for God, angels or even demons to act on the organs, absolutely as would a real body, under the common conditions of sensation and perception?. However this purely sensational operation, assuming it distinct from the imaginary vision, would disturb the normal order of nature; and, exercised especially on several at the same time, it is better suited to the disturbing and false habits of the demon, than to the divine and angelic intervention!

When the vision presents, what is the common law, a true body, this body is natural and organized, if it is a living human person that appears, or fakes and composed for the circumstance.

We will examine later whether these apparitions are personal; and therefore, when it comes to Jesus Christ and his most holy Mother, or to living men, if they are there with their true body. = When there is no organized body, either because those who are naturally clothed in them do not appear in person, or because the beings who manifest themselves lack them, like pure spirits* and holy souls, the fantastic bodies that offer themselves to the eyes are formed with the help of external elements assembled and arranged for this purpose. * Namely in such a way that the Angel appearing assumes no body, but only alters the eye of the one seeing and impresses some likeness of the thing which he wishes to be seen.

But although this sometimes happens, nevertheless, when an Angel in an assumed body is seen indifferently by all, it is an almost evident indication that the vision is not merely imaginary, but externally sensible. Nor is it likely either that it happens solely through the deception of the external senses, because tricks of this kind do not occur without a disturbance of the senses — which does not always occur, nor can it be affirmed with foundation that it always occurs thus — although it must not be denied that it can happen sometimes, as Richard explains at length above.

2 SCHRAM, $ 497, sch. 1, t. 2, p. 206: Angeli Boni, live represent In speaking of the appearances of demons and damnations, we will tell how they compose their COrpS, and what elements they use.

Whatever their destination, the principles that shape or move them, these bodies are not organized in the manner of the human body informed by the soul. These are simple instruments and masks with the help of which the spiritual power manifests its presence and action. It is in no way necessary for this that these bodies, which have the appearances of life, be constituted alive, an operation which moreover exceeds the angelic power?; nor even that they receive the inner structure of the human deer, whether they have flesh and bones.

HT. -— One understands how easy it is to make one's illusion and to take for an outward appearance what is only in the imagination. How can we get to the certainty that the vision is body, and that its object really exists?

A first precaution is to check the testimony of the eyes by that of the other senses, mainly by that of tact. But this control is often impracticable, because the objects of vision do not lend themselves to these experiments. And, if they lend it, it would not be, absoJuely speaking, decisive: for the imagination can mislead a

1 S. The assumed body is united to the angel, not indeed as to a form, nor merely as to a mover, but as to a mover represented through the assumed movable body.

? Suarez, De Angelis, book 4, ch. 35, n. 4, p. 544: The Angel will therefore be able to assume a similar body, and move it in such a way that it seems [perceptible] to sight, hearing, and touch, and even deceive all these senses together, through rapture or through a great exaltation.

However these kinds of illusions cannot be of long duration; if therefore the appearance perseveres a notable time and undergoes the test of mutual control of the senses, it must be regarded as objective and body ,

The most effective sign is that the apparition occurs in front of many and in the eyes of all indistinctly?, as it happened at the manifestation of the Cross before the army of Constantine, at the descent of the two angels to Sodom, and in the mission of the angel Raphael to the young Tobia. This is the remark of St.Thomas, who serves to establish that angels sometimes take true bodies.

However, if the public manifestation common to many is proof of the external objectivity of the vision, the opposite is not a peremptory reason to challenge it; for an appearance that remains invisible to the

1 Boxa. De Discr. spir. c. 19, n. 6, p. 300. Likewise that assumption of a body must be reckoned true which is perceived by touch, as when Abraham washed the feet of angels appearing in human form; when they themselves, taking Lot by the hand, led him out of the city about to be burned; when Jacob wrestled all night with one of them. It has also been found by many experiences that demons are sometimes wicked toward women. Likewise they have frequently appeared to holy men, not through illusions and deceptions, but in assumed bodies, etc.

If a vision or apparition is perceived indifferently by all who are present, it is an almost certain sign that the vision or apparition is externally sensible, or corporeal.

8 Sum. 1. P., q. 51, a. 2: Some have said that angels never assume bodies, but that all things which are read in the divine Scriptures concerning the apparitions of angels occurred in prophetic vision, that is, according to the imagination. But this is contrary to the intention of Scripture. For that which is seen by an imaginary vision exists only in the imagination of the one seeing it; hence it is not seen indifferently by all. For divine Scripture sometimes introduces angels appearing in such a way that they were commonly seen by all, as the angels appearing to Abraham were seen by him, and by his whole household, and by Lot, and by the citizens of Sodom. Likewise the angel who appeared to Tobias was seen by all. From which it is manifest that this occurred according to a corporeal vision, whereby that which is placed outside the seer is seen; hence it can be seen by all. Tali cnim visiones non vialtur nisi corpus. large number, and is seen only by a few, can nevertheless be external and real.

This is the teaching of theologians and mystics, especially Cardinal Bona', and after him of Benedict XIV*?. One and the other claim in support the apparition of Our Lord to St Paul on the way to Damascus: "Those who accompanied him, it is said in the book of Acres, were amazed, hearing only one voice and seeing no one." Saul himself perceives the Saviour present only from the look of the spirit. It should not be hastened, therefore, to take away from a vision of any objective character lived, on the pretext that the person who attests to it would have been alone, among many, to see and hear. Wisdom requires, as the learned pontiff "of which we have just invoked authority, that one be assured of the good faith and correctness of mind of the witness, and that one decide, according to the circumstances of the account, whether the vision has been external or only imaginary. Because, that she can be sensitive to one another, without being for the other, he

1 De Discret. spirit. c. 19, n. 6, p. 308. Asserit S. Thomas, [holds] that an imaginary apparition is perceived only by him to whom it is made; but an external and corporeal one all perceive, for what is placed outside the seer, all can see. This sign is not, however, infallible: for Christ appeared to Paul corporeally, yet the men who were traveling with him stood amazed, hearing indeed a voice, but seeing no one. And it is proper to a glorified body that it can manifest itself to one alone, its presence being withdrawn from the rest, although no obstacle is interposed.

2 De servorum Dei beatif., etc., 1. 4, P. 1, c. 32, n. 5, p. 240.

3 Act. 1x, 7.

4 De servor. Speaking of those who testify to apparitions made to them, it often happens that, though they occurred in the presence of others, one saw and the others did not see, one heard a voice and the others did not hear, and hence arises the doubt whether credence should be withdrawn from one asserting that he saw or heard, on the ground that others did not see or hear... From which it is accordingly inferred that, if the good faith of him who reports an apparition made to him is proven, granted that it occurred while he was with others and the others did not see it, no firm argument can be drawn from this against the truth of the apparition, because it could have been imaginary, or because, if it was corporeal, God could have brought it about that one saw and the rest did not see him who appeared. [there is no serious reason to doubt it.] For this reason, it is sufficient that the agent who operates the vision outside prevents or diverts the natural radiation from the object manifested. Such effects certainly do not exceed the power of God, nor the virtue of angels, nor, at least for misappropriation, that of the devil; and they are part of the privileges of glorified bodies which may appear or disappear at the will of souls."

Here, as in most of the circumstances in which the supernatural is at stake, it is important not to rush to conclude that it is impossible, but to weigh carefully all the elements and to pronounce after all. CHAPITRE III

IMAGINARY VISION What it is, and how it differs from natural imaginations. — Sa

courte durée. - It occurs frequently during sleep time. — When she arrives the day before, she does not always take

l'aliénation des sens. — It is representative or symbolic. — Les

elements which concur in its formation.

I. — The imaginary vision is a sensitive representation, entirely circumscribed within the limits of imagination, and which presents itself supernaturally to the mind with as much vivacity and clarity as the physical realities themselves!

Between the visions representative of the mystical order and the purely natural imaginary facts, there is this difference that these arise from the spontaneous work of the mind, arise from previous thoughts, or at least respond to an expectation or desire, and faint with attention; while these occur suddenly, without preparation or feeling, and disappear likewise, some effort that is made to prolong them.

These visions, when they come from God, still have

? S, JEAN DE LA Croix, Montée du Carmel, 1. %, c. 16, p. 184, trad. by ALFRED GILLY: We mean here by imaginary vision all the objects that the imagination can supernaturally receive under any resemblance, figure or appearance, and this, in a more perfect way and more for character to attach deeply in the mind. However, this memory can erase at times, in times of drought and spiritual aridity, and even disappear completely ©.

Apart from the imprint they mark in memory, real visions are still distinguished from natural hallucinations by the grace effects that follow them, as we will often have the opportunity to notice.

Moreover, contrary to what is happening in the voluntary imaginations which one considers and which one prolongs at his will, imaginary supernatural visions only manifest to the extent that God pleases to assign them.

Holy Teresis { and the other mystics observe that

1 St.TERÈSE, His Life, c. 28:11 is true that one forgets what one has seen afterward; nevertheless this majesty and beauty remain so imprinted in the soul that there is no way to lose the memory of it, except that Our Lord wants the soul to be subjected to a trial which I must speak of and in which it is plagued by a drought, so dreadful solitude, that it loses to the thought of God.

2 Josepx Lopez EZQUERRA , Lucern. myst. Tract. 5, c. 5, n. 40, p. 88: This impression of the image lasts only so long as it serves the intended effect of God (whatever others may think): because this is everywhere observed and experience teaches it, and reason persuades it; because divine providence disposes nothing in the aforesaid souls that is not directed to their profit. Therefore the effect and memory of the vision will last only so long as is necessary for the soul's profit.

83 Ste TÉRÈSE, sa Vie, c. 28. The soul, after this vision, is completely changed; always it is in a sweet intoxication: it feels a new love of God that ignites it to a very high degree.

4 Sa Vie, c. 29. When it pleases Our Lord to show us this image, we cannot see it in the way that it represents us and in the degree that it wants, without it being in our power to take away from it, nor to add to it, to fix or divert our gaze, and if we want to consider something in particular, the vision immediately ceases.

Our Lord gave me this grace in the space of two and a half years almost usually... While he was speaking to me and I was contemplating this sovereign beauty and the sweetness with which this beautiful and divine mouth uttered these words (although sometimes it does not leave to show rigor), whatever desire I had, at this moment, to notice the color and the greatness of his eyes, in order to speak of it, I have never deserved this grace, and all my industries to succeed in it have been useless: all my efforts have been used only to make the vision disappear completely. vainly try to see more clearly and fix certain aspects of the vision. These efforts almost always result in no more than stopping or absconding the appearance.

IT. — This appearance is of very short duration. Holy Térèse! says that she passes in a blink of an eye and like a flash; it is a shooting star.

The authors provide two reasons for the brevity of these visions.

The first is due to the vivacity of their radiance?, which is such that the organism could not long support the tremors and transports of the soul under the blows of its rapture.

Sainte. Teresis, to whom these kinds of favors were as familiar, speaking of the admirable light in which Our Lord revealed to him the divine beauty of his humanity, "this light, she writes, exceeds infinitely that here below, and with its rays that flood the gleaming eye of the soul, those of the sun lose so much their chandelier, that it would only not want to open the eyes to look at them... This light is a day without night, always bright, always bright, without anything being able to darken. Finally it is such that the most penetrating mind could not, in all its life, form an idea of it. God shows it so suddenly that if it were necessary to see only opening the eyes, it would not be a pleasure. But it doesn't matter whether they're open or closed: when Our Lord wants us to see, willingly, unwillingly, you have to see. There is no distraction, resistance, care or diligence that can prevent it. I know this through a good experience."

The second alleged reason is that the imaginary vision usually succeeds the intellectual vision. When it pleases God to give the intelligence of the sensitive appearance, the soul soon remains more captivated by the sense of vision than by the vision itself, and it thus passes from the sensitive contemplation to the purely intellectual contemplation.

Sainte Terèse! affirms that "these two kinds of visions always come together". The saint speaks in this place of the supernatural manifestations of Jesus Christ through imagination, which usually bring with them the light that reveals its meaning to the intelligence. But imaginary visions often occur without any simultaneous or subsequent intervention of intellectual vision, either that the first of these visions suffice itself, or that it remains enigmatic and unexplained, or that it receives a later interpretation.

The last hypothesis is often realized in miraculous dreams, God showing some symbolic images, and giving others the intellectual view of what they express.

III. — Imaginary visions occur, indeed, during sleep or in the state of sleep.

There are some who distinguish between dreams and dreams. Dreams are the divagations of the mind during sleep; dreams would designate intentional and supernatural manifestations. In any case, the reality of visions cannot be challenged in the form of dreams. ‘ These visions can be intellectual, and this was probably the one where King Solomon asked and obtained from God the gift of wisdom?. The common law is that visions that occur during sleep are rather imaginary. In general, when Scripture speaks of apparitions performed during the night, or of divine communications made in vision, these manifestations can be considered imaginary.

Cardinal Bona * demonstrates, through all sorts of authorities, the existence of imaginary visions in the time of sleep. He quotes more than twelve passages from Scripture where dreams were the expression of God's will and the prophetic announcement of wonderful events. Just remember the two famous dreams of Pharaoh # and Nebuchadnezzar‘, the first interpreted by Joseph, the second by Daniel. This learned author goes so far as to claim that God best communicates to man during sleep, and the reasons he brings are worthy of attention.

"There are various causes," he said, "for which there are more appearances and revelations when you sleep than when you watch. During the day before, the soul is usually absorbed and distracted by the multiplicity of care and business, by various thoughts, removed from itself, agitated by tumultuous movements that prevent it from seeing and discerning what is good and right. When one sleeps, on the contrary, one is free from all worry and trouble, one is present and attentive to oneself, and everything that offers to the inner faculties, one perceives it without difficulty, one judges it soundly.

"In addition, in the day before, we do not fail to reason and discuss everything that comes to mind or imagination, and, if something seems to disagree with reason, to reject it. In sleep, one is rather passive than active, more prompt and more able to receive divine operations: instead of discussing the reasons one has to believe, one simply believes.

"This must be accompanied by the silence of the night, the rest of the external senses and the quiet cessation of all external things that can entertain and release attention, so that the objects that then appear make deeper and lasting impressions in the mind. And because the images sent from God always have the virtue to mean something, man, during the drowsiness of his external senses and in the absence of any extrinsic obstacle, is more effectively instructed of the meaning of these images, although, thus asleep, he is not in a position to discern how he could see these things and hear them."

Alvarez de Paz!, to whom the considerations we have just quoted have been borrowed almost textually, adds others, among which the following one, which does not seem to disdain, namely: that this supernatural communication brings forth the power of God, who can speak to man and intimate his wills at a time when, immersed in sleep, forgetful of all things and of himself, his faculties seem bound and unable to understand anything.

For this reason, which is true in its substance, to have all the scope it seems to be given, it would be necessary for God alone to have the power to speak to man while he is asleep, which is not: for we will see, and the author whom we quote expressly teaches him, that the devil can accomplish this kind of wonders.

It is permissible to look at dreams as supernatural and divine visions, when they present nothing but suitable and make on the mind a profound and lasting impression that brings good; but this kind of supernatural is difficult to establish legally. The insistence of the same vision, on several occasions, can still serve as a sign for miraculous intervention.

But dreams must be held to be supernatural when they announce events to come above any human previsian, and these events are realized as foretold. Thus, when Jacob's children found their brother Joseph the master of Egypt, and paid tribute to him, it became clear to them that the dreams which he had told them in his childhood, and which were foretelling his future greatness, came from God.

It is the same when many people, without a prior concert, without knowing each other, have an identical vision that interests the glory of God, as happened to Pope Libere and to the two godly husbands who founded in Rome the church of Sainte-Marie-des-Neiges, later called the Basilica of Sainte-Marie-Majeure. The Mother of God appeared to them all the same night, and warned them that at the place of Mount Esquilin, where the snow had just fallen, they had to raise a church in his honor! IV. — The imaginary vision that occurs during the day before can occur with or without ecstasy.

On the first point, unanimity is complete. From the admission of all, the time most favorable to these visions whose images of the mind make all the fresh, is that where the exercise of external senses is suspended, or by physiological and natural sleep, or by the supernatural sleep of ecstasy.

But can vision through mental images be accomplished outside of ecstasy, or does it inevitably lead to the alienation of senses?

Here the deal is no longer the same.

Saint Augustine seems to make the suspension of external senses a condition of the spiritual vision realized in the imagination!. Toutefois, 1l joint à sa pensée quelques correctifs. The essential thing, according to him, is that we distinguish the imaginary appearance from the real perception of existing bodies, and that we recognize the supernatural character of this spiritual vision, no matter what it occurs during sleep, during the day before or in ecstasy?

Perhaps the Angelic Doctor is more precise: "When prophetic revelation, he says, takes place according to imaginary forms, it is necessary that there be abstraction of the senses, so that this fantastic appearance is not brought back to what feels outside. But the abstraction of the senses, he adds, is sometimes perfect, and then the hornme no longer perceives anything through them; and sometimes imperfect, the senses still exerting on the external objects, not however in such a way as to fully discern what one perceives from outside with what is imaginaryly seen."

Bona, who enjoys such a high reputation for wisdom among mystics, states clearly in one place ‘that there is alienation of meanings in imaginary visions; but elsewhere?, he assumes that these kinds of visions can be performed when man is in full possession of himself and in the use of his senses.

The authors of two books recently published in Belgium make fewer reservations, and keep in mind that the imaginary vision never goes without ignoring the meanings.

"The imaginary vision," said Fr. Seraphim *, always asks the alienation of the external senses, so that the person does not confuse what strikes his senses with what he sees in his imaginative power." — "Imaginary visions," said Fr. Verhaege {, always suppose the alienation of the senses in the person who receives them; otherwise she would easily confuse what she sees from the eyes of the body with what she contemplates from those of the soul.»

The alleged reason does not seem decisive. For body vision can be seen, as we have said, by the control of other senses, by the multitude of those who see, or by external effects that imagination cannot achieve. Similarly, the imaginary appearance will be recognized as such, if it remains so lively, even after it has closed its eyes, or if there is no trace of the external effects it seemed to produce {. Most often, it is true, these precautions are unrealizable; but what follows-11l? One thing, admitted from all mystics, is that it is not always easy to decide whether the vision was real or only imaginary. *

Moreover, the assertion itself that there is no imaginary vision without abstraction of meanings is expressly contradicted by the most serious and competent authorities.

"This vision," says Alvarez de Paz, "comes to man in sleep and sleep; and, in the state of watch, both when he is master of himself and when he is out of his senses, as in ecstasy or delight." And further *: "Man can therefore receive the imaginary vision in four different ways: first, awake and without abstraction of the senses; second, raised to

When a vision or apparition, whether in waking or in sleep, occurs internally, without any object presenting itself externally to the external senses, or even if it seems to occur externally to an external sense, yet the whole thing is illusory in the external sense, it is to be judged imaginary.

2 Joan. À Jesu Maria, De Orat. contempl. Hence it happens that, when the abstraction or withdrawal from the senses is imperfect, it cannot easily be discerned what one merely imagines from what is seen externally. Which spiritual masters and doctors ought to note, so that they may judge prudently concerning these matters.

Now this imaginary vision happens to a man while awake and in sleep; and while awake, either when he is in possession of himself, or when in ecstasy or rapture he is torn away from the use of the external senses. It also happens while awake, when the soul, devoutly intent on God, is raised up to behold that which God has disposed to reveal to it, whether existing in itself or withdrawn from the external senses.

4 Ibid., p. 596. In four ways, therefore, a man can have an imaginary apparition. First, while awake and without abstraction from the senses... Secondly, placed in ecstasy; and thirdly, situated in rapture, which is more violent... At so quarto modo apparitio imaginaria fiat, nimirum in somnis, é. l ́extase; thirdly, carried away by delight; fourthly, in sleep."

Benedict XIV ! reports and approves this remark of Cardinal Laurea, that visions are not always united with ecstasy.

Philip of the Most Holy Trinity #, speaking of the imaginary apparitions of the Saviour, observes that they almost always determine ecstasy in the soul that contemplates them; but he adds * that these kinds of visions are not all as sublime, and that there are less perfect ones than those where the humanity of Jesus Christ is revealed.

The affirmations of this Carmelian religious are based on the account that his mother seraphic, Saint Teresis, makes of his own experiences. It assures, in fact, that when Our Lord grants to a soul the inner vision of his holy and resplendent humanity, "it falls almost every time into ecstasy, its lowness being unable to sustain a view that inspires so much dread." 4.

If the most dazzling appearances, provided they are of short duration, may not delight the use of the external senses, especially those which do not have such brilliance and make on the mind a less vivid impression.

That visions are not always joined with ecstasy was well noted by Cardinal de Laurea in his often-cited opusculum On Prayer, ch. 8.

3 Sum. Theol. myst. P. 2, Tr. 3, D. 4,a.92,t. 2, p. 404. Whence almost always in this sublime communication, the soul is rapt into ecstasy.

It is certain that the imaginary vision is not always equally perfect, nor as vivid, as the one described above; for the one described above was granted to the most pure holy Mother Teresa as a pledge of Christ's special love for her, and as a reward for her labors. But to many souls not so pure, nor so well-deserving, imaginary visions of less worth and less sublime are granted; nor are they always of Christ's humanity, but sometimes of angels, or of some saint, by which they are gradually disposed toward greater ones, and afterward, being so disposed, are raised up to those.

4 Chdt. intér., 6° Dem., ch. 9 : Casi todas las veces que Dios hace esta merced à el alma, se queda en arobamiento, que no pueda su PAIE All these testimonies allow to conclude that the exercise of the senses combines with imaginary visions and allow to explain without difficulty how these apparitions sometimes seem to be located outside, among the objects that one continues to perceive from the eyes of the body.

V. — The imaginary vision is simply representative or symbolic.

It is representative, when it offers a faithful or at least sufficiently similar image of the object that it recalls. It is symbolic or enigmatic, when it does not have with the reality that it expresses that a positive relationship, whose meaning, when it is known, is indicated by human or sacred traditions, or by a special revelation.

The appearance of Saint Bruno to the count of Sicily, Roger, while that prince was sleeping, to warn of the danger that his days were running, was representative. " The one where Patriarch Joseph saw in a dream the sun, the moon and the stars coming in turn to worship, was only symbolic.

The symbolic visions are numerous in our holy books. The dream in which Jacob * saw a ladder that went from earth to heaven, and angels that went down and ascended; the dreams {which presage his future greatness to Joseph; those of the two servants of Pharaoh ÿ, Pharaoh himself $, Nebuchadnezzar *; many prophetic visions of Jeremiah, D. Ezekiel, Daniel, d. Hosea, and other prophets, especially those of St. John in Revelation, were but mysterious emblems by which God revealed his wills, promises, or threats.

This form of divine communication is never interrupted in the Church, and the history of holy souls presents countless features of it. Who knows the dream of Saint Perpetue on the eve of his martyrdom? The visions of Saint Gérardesque, of the third order of the Camaldules, are so high, so full of images and mysteries, that his historian * compares them to the scenes of the Apocalypse.

The most frequent symbolic revelations concern the joys of heaven, the fights and privileges of virtue, the divine industries of the love of Jesus Christ for men. The stay of the blessed is shown in a thousand different forms, which make it heard the splendor, abundance, happiness, security. The light, the song, the greenery, the flowers and the perfumes, the most beautiful things of the earth, become so many images of the sky. Saint Norbert * appeared, immediately after his death, to one of his religious, first in his human form, but soon transformed into a beautiful lily of admirable whiteness, which the angels collected from their hands and carried to the heavenly abode.

Saint Elizabeth of Sconauge * saw a ladder whose foot rested on a wheel always in motion, and whose top reached to heaven, very beautiful, but slipping on its base and arduous to climb, which meant to it the purpose, the work and the perils of Christian life.

One day delighted in ecstasy, and contemplating the divine Virgin holding her inanimate Son between her arms, Saint Madeleine de Pazzi saw the wounds of the Saviour as many burning furnaces where men were classified, according to the diversity of their virtues. The wound of the feet was a first

1 Act. martyr. — ® BB. 29 maïi, t. 20, p. 163 et seqq.

8 NicepnOR. BB., Vita S. ANprEÆ SALI. Coroll. ad 28 maïi, vol. 19, p. 18", a. 16 Jun. , vol. 21, p. 844, n. 16. The furnace where iron was thrown to amollir, i.e. sinners whose hardened heart would wait by the tears of sincere contrition, and become flexible and docile under the hand of God. The wound of the left hand was the furnace where the stones, under the action of fire, become lime; it is that of the converted sinners who build up the Church of God, such as Saint Paul and Saint Madedeleine, whose conversion contributed so greatly to the building up of the first faithful. In the third, placed in the right hand, formed the glass, symbol of the virgins, which make the ornament and beauty of the mystical body of Jesus Christ. The plague on the sacred side is the furnace which receives, burns and liquefies gold, image of perfect charity, and which designates holy souls united with the Word by faith and love,

Blessed Baptistine Varani!, of the order of St.Claire, read her name written in the heart of Jesus in great and beautiful capitals of gold.

God reveals himself, sometimes outside of old age and majesty, sometimes under the image of strong and beautiful youth, sometimes by the brightness of light or the infiniteness of immensity? Jesus Christ loves to appear under the gentle emblem of the Lamb. * The saints show themselves in sheaves of flames and bright globes, to express the light that surrounds them and the love that consumes them.

Temperance and chastity appear in St Gregory of Nazianze, in his teens, under the figure of two virgins of incomparable modesty and of an all heavenly beauty 4. The alms, in the form of a virgin crowned with olive branches, rejoice and caress the most famous of his favourites, Saint John the Chaplain!. Saint Laurent Justinien, just nineteen years old, sees in a vision Wisdom offering to become his wife and guide?.

Here is how God revealed to Saint Hildegarde the glory and pains of the Church. "In the year of the Lord 4170," she wrote to the abbot of Kircheim, "I saw an image of a beautiful beauty. (was a woman figure, so beautiful that the spirit of man cannot conceive a similar ideal. As his feet touched the earth, his head was lost in the light of heaven. The youth swelled on his face, and his sparkling eye looked up. His garment was a white silk robe, which was made up of precious stones, and where the emerald, the sapphire, and the onyx married pleasantly. But a cloud of dust came to disturb the purity of his features; an enemy hand came to tear his robe; his coat lost its radiance; his feet lost in the fogs. Her voice mingled with the storm; she said, "Wait, darken yourselves, for the purity of my features and the beauty of my face have been defiled. Cry, O earth, the garment of my glory is laced. Abîmes, tremble; my steps have been lost in the fogs. While the foxes have their dens, while the birds of the sky have their nests, I have no one who comforts me, no one who supports me; the stick on which I could have pressed my staggering steps is broken in my hand 4."

We wouldn't end if we wanted to enumerate the emblematic forms by which the supernatural world

1 LÉONCE, BB. 93 jan., t. 3, p. 114, n. 11.

3 S. LAURENT. Jusrin. Fasciculus amoris, ©. 16, fol. cLxxxIv.

I saw, awake in body and soul, a most beautiful image, having a womanly form, which, most exquisite in sweetness and most precious in delights, was of such beauty that the mind could by no means comprehend it, and whose stature reached from earth to heaven, etc.

4 Trad. de M. Ricmaun, Saint Hildegarde, his life and his works; 1st 1876, reveals himself to man. By attaching ourselves to this historical point of view, we would come out of our subject; and, after having told, if possible, everything that has been done, we would be unable to say what will be done, since everything is positive in these emblems, and that they can multiply to infinity. Let us continue our task, seeking with the help of what elements are realized in the mind the imaginary representations.

VI. — Saint Augustine! teaches that imaginary visions are carried out in a spiritual light of their own, and attributes its execution to the heavenly spirits. Mais comment procèdent-ils? The holy doctor declares that this is a difficult thing to conceive and even more difficult to express. Do they communicate their own thoughts to us, or do they bring forth the vision in our own mind?

All the authors admit, together with St Augustine, the divine enlightenment, within which the apparition is realized?. The difficulty is to assign the elements that contribute to its formation. To elucidate and resolve it, one must distinguish the three conditions in which inaginal vision can occur.

The supernaturally manifested object appears in the imagination under already known outsides, or in features that correspond to the usual images of the mind, or in a new form that has nothing from previous perceptions! Souls of purgatory often present themselves to their friends with the sad figure of the body that they animated. Our Lord sometimes shows himself as one imagines himself, according to evangelical descriptions or the paintings that represent him. Other times, according to most contemplatives, its forms and beauty go beyond what we can conceive.

The first case is a simple fact of memory; the second, a phenomenon of imagination. The supernatural of one and the other consists in the instantaneity of the evocation outside of any human cause capable of producing it, and in the heavenly clarity that accompanies it. God, by extranatural action, arouses and coordinates in the mind ideas that respond to the objects he wants to manifest.

As for the visions that have nothing in common with the acquired notions, it is obviously necessary, assuming such notions, to admit the supernatural appearance of new ideas in relation to these sublime novelties. On how these superhuman ideas are given to man, different interpretations according to the diversity of theories concerning the nature and origin of our knowledge.

The supporters of Aristotelian doctrines see in these notions that the intellect could extract impressions coming from outside, new species created for the occasion and supernaturally injected into the mind by the ministry of angels!.

Those who profess, following Plato and Saint Augustine?, that our ideas are not mental forms, but that they have an objective reality, that our mind contemplates them, that it does not do them, these must resort to a completely different interpretation more in relation to their theory. Harmonious mixture of sensitivity and intelligence, the imagination, according to them, is the faculty that under a sensitive but purely inner impression, analogous to that which material things determine in the organs, perceives and combines the eternal ideas of the bodies, with their infinitely multiple forms; ideas awakened in us, or rather, — for they are not part of ourselves,

A simple imaginary vision can come about in two ways: first, images or species drawn through the external senses, God so disposing and ordering them that they convey what He himself intends; second, new species, formed by God, by which he illumines the intellect to know and penetrate what they represent. And because God commonly does this through Angels, Angels are said to illumine men insofar as, although they do not by themselves imprint phantasms, they only move the humors and vital spirits, by whose movement the imagination is stirred to act, and through it the intellect is moved in an orderly and fitting way toward distinct knowledge. [Augustine,] De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus, q. 46: Plato is reported to have been the first to call [them] Ideas; yet it is not the case that, before he instituted this name, they did not exist — rather, either the things themselves that he called Ideas did not exist, or they had been understood by no one... For it is not likely that there were either no wise men before Plato, or that they failed to understand these things — whatever they may be — which Plato, as has been said, calls Ideas, since indeed so great a power is placed in them that without understanding them no one can be wise. For Ideas are certain principal forms, or stable and unchangeable patterns of things, which are not themselves formed, and are therefore eternal and always maintaining themselves in the same way, and which are contained in the divine intelligence. And although they themselves neither arise nor perish, yet everything that can arise and perish, and everything that does arise and perish, is said to be formed according to them. But it is denied that the soul can behold them, except the rational soul, by that part of itself in which it excels — that is, by the mind and reason itself, as by a kind of interior and intelligible face or eye of its own. — expressed in the light of the spirit, in the encounter with the external realities which reach our senses. But, beyond the multitude of images that appear in the full day of our consciousness under the exciting sensation, God conceives countless of them, of which he can at his own discretion and without the sensitive tremor that regularly precedes the play of imagination, bringing into the human visual ray at least part, but not all; for this totality, confounding itself with the very fruitfulness of God, as he conceives and can realize the bodies, exceeds all finite capacity. The field is wide enough to provide all imaginable representations, and must be sufficient for man, since it is sufficient for God.

Perhaps the experimental notions that man acquires of matter feed the most supernatural sensitive manifestations; for at last we know what makes the essential bodies and the various ways in which they affect our senses. By wonderful combinations that disconcert our conceptions, these elements are likely to take all forms, and can, under the brightness of divine light, cast a shine of which nothing CHAPTER IV

INTELLECTUAL VISION Its concept. — How it differs from natural conceptions of understanding, — and from visions either bodily or imaginary. — Elle

occurs in states of ecstasy, sleep and sleep. — Ses deux

elements: the first is the object manifested: intellectual knowledge

of the object supposes that it is present in mind. — Does this meeting take place?

using mental images, or immediate perception? Ce que l'on

sees is often inexpressible. — The second element: supernatural light. — Ses trois degrés. — Sa pleine certitude, et son origine exclusivement divine. — Sa nature.

I. — Intellectual vision is a supernatural knowledge that occurs through a simple view of intelgence, without impression or sensitive image!

This vision therefore takes place in this part of the mind where the things that do not have body or corpo shape appear.1 ALVARE DE Paz, De grad. contemplaire., c. 12, t. 6, p. 598. Est aulem visio intellectualis manifestissima quædam rerum divinarum aut cœlestium ostensio, quæ soli intellectui inspicienda objiciuntur.

Josepn Lopez EzQuERRA, Luc. myst. A certain most sublime knowledge given passively to the intellect, either through acquired species, or newly produced by God; but applied to the intellect by God alone immediately, without the medium of the senses and imagination. Thus the mystics commonly teach.

Intellectual vision is therefore the clearest manifestation of divine things, which is accomplished in the intellect alone, without figures and images. — Item. ScHRAM, Theol. myst., $ 505, t. 2, p. 220.

ScARAMELLI, Dirett. Mist. Tr. 4, C. 8, n. 1403, p. 286 : Questa visione dunque consists in una notizia dell-intelletto, certa e chiara di qualche oggetto, senza alcuna forma, e figura o immaginazione che lo rappresenti, senza alcuna attuale dipendenza dalla fantasia. The supersensitive objects of their nature, such as God, the angel and the soul, and those also who are extended and strike our senses, when one considers in them the truth, the mind contemplates them independently of any sensitive representation, either external or internal; and this operation is said intellectual, because it is due entirely to the ability to apprehend the beings by their purely intelligible side. Whether simple or compound, infinite or bounded, substances or modes: as perceptible by the spirit, they present themselves in a common aspect, that of being and truth. And this is why these kinds of visions are excellently spiritual!; for in this respect man does not distinguish himself from the pure spirit, since he no longer sees through images that are addressed, as a body, to the sensibility, but by a mere glance of the intelligence.

So God and the creature, spirits and bodies, substances, facts and truths, in a word, anything that exists and can affirm, can be the object of the intellectual vision?.

IT. — If the vision we are talking about here had no character other than that of understanding the pure truth, it would not differ from the natural and rational knowledge: the supernatural which distinguishes it bursts out in plasieurs manners.

1 Paupp. À SS. Train. Theol. myst. The third kind of vision of heavenly things is intellectual, because it occurs in the intellect, which is the supreme cognitive power of the soul, purely spiritual. Unde visio intellectualis est pure spiritualis. It is first of all by its object, which is usually above the scope of our understanding, although it can absolutely be found within its radius; and in the latter case, the splendors which surround it bring it out of the conditions of natural vision. This light, which never fails, is overabundant and surpasses the most obvious claritys of reason; it is sudden, immediate, and has nothing to do with the work and the slowness of reasoning.

Duration is also a distinctive sign. While the natural conceptions, for deep though they may be, soon fade away, the mystical intellectual visions persevere for a long time, whole days, even weeks, months, and up to years*; this must be understood above all by the profound impression that these kinds of manifestations leave in memory, and by the frequency with which God renews them, as soon as the soul to whom he grants these insignia returns in itself. The venerable Mary of Agréda speaks, in her MYSTICAL CITY, of several mysteries which were revealed to her intellectually, and which remained "almost continuously present" to her mind. Saint Térèse, reporting an intellectual apparition of Our Lord, "I knew very clearly," she said, "that he was always on my right side, that he saw all that I was doing, and for as long as I was gathered or not extremely distracted, I could not ignore that he was near me"; and elsewhere, speaking also of the intellectual vision, she pointed out it as "very useful, because, although it passes in a moment, it remains deeply engraved in the spirit." The best rule is that which Our Lord himself gave to the saint?, after she had told her confessor that these visions passed quickly: "There is a difference between these visions (intellectual) and those that appear in the eyes of the soul under images; there can be no certain rule in these graces, because sometimes it is appropriate that it be in one way, and sometimes in another."

The effects of grace, which follow these visions, allow even more surely to recognize divine intervention. The light that fills the soul, the love that makes it tremble, the peace that it enjoys, its momentum towards eternal things, its disgust for all that is not God, are as many testimonies as it has made in it an illumination alien to nature*.

HT. — I) is not difficult to indicate theoretically the differences that distinguish intellectual knowledge from phenomena of imagination or body perception; but in practice it may be difficult to decide the character of the completed manifestations. According to Benedict XIV4, one can list among the visions of the intellectual order cases in which it is unquestionable that God appeared and spoke, but uncertain in what way; doubtless because man being, by his nature, more strongly grasped by the emotions of sensitivity than by the simple views of the mind, if consciousness deposits with certainty on the fact of knowledge and silences itself on the sensitive impression, it is to be presumed that this impression did not take place, and that knowledge was consumed entirely in the understanding.

Tostat, the illustrious Spanish commentator, makes another no less important remark regarding the interpretation of prophetic revelations. He poses! as a general rule that Scripture signals an intellectual appearance every time she uses this formula, so often repeated in the Prophets: "This is what the Lord says: Haec says Dominus."

In essence, the general rule that assigns the essential difference between visions takes on the nature and diversity of the faculties to which they are directed. The external organs and imagination can perceive nothing but in body form, were the pure spirits. On the contrary, in the eyes of understanding everything becomes spiritual, everything, even what is more bodily*.

One question concerns the scholastics: whether the intellectual vision can take place without the imagination entering into exercise. They claim that the sympathy between intelligence and imagination is so intimate, that one of these faculties cannot act without the other! Whatever the philosophical point of view, which is of little interest to Mystics, all theologians agree that, supernaturally, the mind can be elevated to the contemplation of pure intelligible without any cooperation of sensitivity?. Cette solution nous suffit.

IV. — The intellectual vision occurs in ecstasy or outside of ecstasy, but rarely in the time of sleep; in this state, it is rather in the form of bodily images that divine communications are made. However, as soon as the vision is performed without a sensitive representation, whether it is during the night before or during sleep, it can be taken for a pure vision of understanding. Perhaps this was the vision where Solomon received the gift of wisdom for the government of his people, and the mysterious sleep of the first man in the earthly paradise. It must be admitted that the soul of Jesus Christ Our Lord never lost sight of the Divinity, even while his body was asleep; and it is fitting to think that the same was true of his holy Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary #.

It must be said, first, that it cannot naturally come about that a man in this life be rapt to the true contemplation of God through the intellect, with nothing whatsoever cooperating through sense, neither external nor internal. — Ita D. Thomas, 2. 2., q. 174, a. 2, ad 4; et ibi Cajet., estque communis sententia.

Nevertheless all theologians confess that it does not imply a contradiction for the mind of man to be elevated in this life to this kind of contemplation, in which the intelligible is contemplated without the cooperation of that sense. The a priori reason is that this necessity of the cooperation of the phantasy, while our intellect operates, is not so essential or intrinsic that it is repugnant to its being impeded by divine power, and to the intellect of man being strengthened to operate without the cooperation of any sense, internal or external.

3 Cornec. À Lapin. Comm. in. 1. II Reg. mr, 5.

The clearest example of this matter is the soul of Christ the Lord operating through infused knowledge, and its singular and excellent participation was in the Most Blessed Virgin, as we piously believe.… Finally, St. [Thomas] adds Thomas, q. 13, De Veritate, art. 2, ad 9, that such was the contemplation of Adam in the sleep sent upon him by God, when He willed to form Eve from his rib — which sleep was accompanied by perfect knowledge and under[standing]... — Whether it occurs during sleep or sleep, under the pleasure of ecstasy or in the full possession of the senses, the intellectual vision includes a twofold element: the manifested object and the light that illuminates it.

As we have already said, anything that can fall under the eye of the mind can also become a matter of intellectual vision. But, among these objects, some are in the sphere of reason, others are above. According to the scholastics, the vision of the former takes place with the help of the acquired species, and all the miracle then consists in the extranatural application that is made of these pre-existing ideas, and even better still in divine enlightenment that floods the soul. For the suprarational vision, they require a miraculous immission in the spirit of new species, in relation to the mysteries to be revealed, except perhaps for a certain vision of God, which would be direct and without any intermediary. As for the object itself represented by these ideas or species, they ensure that it is sometimes present, sometimes absent.

These interpretations, logically in harmony with Aristotelian doctrine concerning our knowledge, are not necessary.

Un point qui paraït tout d’abord incontestable, est que ligentia mysteriorum Dei in 3 part. q. 1, a. 3,in Comment. latius dixi cum D. Thoma , ibi ad 5, et 2: 2., q. 2, a. 7, et Hicron. ad Ephes. 5; August. 9. Genes. ad litt. c. 19; Tertull. lib. de Anima, c. 4, et aliis quos ibi retuli. Imo sentit D. Thomas, in the passage from De Veritate, together with Augustine, book 12, De Genesi ad litteram, [say] that this mode of purely intellectual contemplation is sometimes communicated to other saints with perfect understanding and judgment concerning the things that are revealed.

1 Pricpp. À SS. Tin. This intellectual vision occurs by a different medium, as has been said above. In its lowest degree, it occurs through acquired species pre-existing in the intellect, yet applied by divine power, sometimes with real presence of the thing seen. In a higher degree, it occurs through new species divinely infused, sometimes with the same real presence. In the highest degree compatible with faith, it seems to take place in God himself, yet not seen clearly, as many teach... [text breaks off, illegible] M. N. doctrina the intellectual vision takes away the real manifestation of the object that it reveals. When this object is a fact, it is a fact that one sees; when it is a truth, it is a truth; when it is a body, it is a body; when it is an angel, it is an angel; when it is God, it is God. The truth shows itself here in its simple nudity; and it is precisely in this, according to Saint Thomas, that intellectual vision takes precedence over imaginary and bodily visions. "The immutable Truth," said St Augustine?, "spokes by itself, in an ineffable way, to the most intimate of the reasonable creature; or it speaks by the mutable creature: to our mind, by the spiritual images; to the ear of the body, by the sensitive voices."The three orders of supernatural manifestations are there, and in the first, which formulates the intellectual vision,—there is no need here to distinguish between vision and words,—the truth reveals itself and speaks for itself, as Saint Augustine expresses itself: PER SE IPSAM.

Cardinal Bona' sums up the distinctive features of the intellectual vision as follows: "It is accomplished in the upper part of the mind, that is, in the understanding, not as it reasons, but as it sees and as it sees.

It is evident, however, that the manifestation of divine truth which comes about through the bare contemplation of truth itself is more excellent than that which comes about under the likeness of corporeal things; for it approaches more closely to the vision of the homeland, according to which truth is beheld in the essence of God. And hence it is that prophecy, by which some supernatural truth is beheld according to intellectual vision, is more worthy than that in which supernatural truth is manifested through the likeness of corporeal things, according to imaginative vision.

2 De civit. Dei, 1. 16, c. 6, p. 296. For either unchangeable truth speaks ineffably of itself to the minds of the rational creature, or it speaks through a mutable creature — whether by spiritual images to our spirit, or by corporeal voices to the sense of the body.

Nor should it trouble us that Augustine is speaking of locution, not of vision: for the same reasoning applies to both — that is, to intellectual vision and to intellectual locution alike.

De discr. spirit. c. 18, n. 1: This vision is said to take place at the summit of the mind, that is, in the intellect — not insofar as it reasons discursively, but as by a simple intuition it sees and contemplates the objects set before it. [French, truncated:] '...contemplates with a simple gaze the things that are presented to it.'

Ï is therefore a true encounter between the manifest reality and the spirit that contemplates it. Does this encounter involve direct intuition, or does it involve intermediate representations? The question is freely debated between philosophers, theologians and mystics themselves, and we do not have to decide in this way.

‘1 The Jesuit scholar Balthazar Corder or Corderius, in his annotations on St. Denis, poses himself at the place of MYSTICAL SMOKE (c. V), where the Areopagit deals with the connaïsance of God, the question below, and indicates the contradictory solutions that it has received.

QUÆSTIO MYSTICA. Does the human mind, in the vision and contemplation of mystical theology, see or understand God himself truly and objectively? And if so, does it see him intuitively or abstractively? And further, does it have of God a distinct and proper, or quidditative, concept, or only a confused and general one?

That in the contemplation both of affirmative or properly so-called theology (which Saint Dionysius treats in the book ON THE DIVINE NAMES) and of negative or mystical theology (already treated in this book ON MYSTICAL THEOLOGY), God is truly and objectively understood, seems able to be proved in this way.

First, because in every actual, real, and true act of understanding there is some true and real object; but each of these two kinds of knowledge of God is a true, real, and actual understanding of God; therefore it has a true and real object with which it is concerned, and to which it is fixed and directed; otherwise it would be a vain, fantastic, and frivolous apprehension. This real object, therefore, is either a created being, or an uncreated one. If it is uncreated, the point stands; but if created, all those cognitions or contemplations are false, since no created being can properly be said, predicated, or verified of the most blessed God of infinite excellence.

Moreover, when, for example, I say, God is a being perfect in every way, or infinite in perfection, God is pure act, God is the creator of all things; these and similar propositions are true and catholic, and properly said, not metaphorical, or symbolic or figurative. But in all these I apprehend the eternal and uncreated object of which alone they are verified, and I understand and acknowledge it in some way; therefore I also behold it, since this understanding is a mental beholding. Whence I also apprehend, form, and hold a distinct and proper concept of this object, which is verified of no other, and which pertains to the essential attributes of God, in whom there is no accident.

Likewise in the propositions of mystical theology, etc. . . .

Against this, however, it is argued as follows. First, if in the aforesaid cognitions God is the immediate and proximate object, we shall immediately behold and know him quidditatively, and shall intuit his essence as it is in itself... But it is necessary, in our view, to admit that the term of intellectual vision is truly present, or that knowledge is more than a fantasy where certainty seeks in vain a basis.

That is why the mystics, following St Augustine, hold these kinds of visions essentially true; for what is seen and heard here is the very reality, and it is impossible to see and hear what is, quod proudi non possesse express docet sanctus Dyonisius in EPISToLA Ab Carcx, etc.

But against these there again seem to be [some] words of other Fathers, such as St. Gregory, who in the book [Dialogues(?)] says: "To the soul that beholds the Creator, all creation is narrow." For however little he shall have gazed upon the light of the Creator, all that is created becomes brief/small to him; because by the light itself of the mind's inward vision the bosom is enlarged, and is so expanded in God that it exists above the world." St. Jerome likewise, in his RULE, confesses that he was often rapt for weeks at a time, and beheld the uncreated light, that is, the most blessed Trinity itself. And many of the saints were many times in this life caught up into the riches of the glory of God, and absorbed into the abyss of immense light. Whence also the glorious Father Bernard, in his LETTER TO THE BRETHREN OF MONT-DIEU, wrote according to his own sublime experience: "Whatever..." [text breaks off]

Moreover, John Gerson touches on this difficulty in his treatise ON MYSTICAL THEOLOGY: [illegible]

But whether that knowledge is merely experiential, in the affection supremely united to the deity through love, or whether it can also be called intellectual — not indeed intuitive, but abstractive, and not only connotative but absolute — is most worthy of consideration and inquiry.

Each side has its own most eminent defenders. For there are those who, expounding St. Dionysius, hold the first view; and there are likewise others who say that, beyond the aforesaid experiential or experimental knowledge of God, an intellective knowledge can also be had, through a proper absolute concept of the divine being — though not an intuitive one — provided that imperfection is removed and abstracted from it. They say the same concerning life, goodness, wisdom, power, and similar perfectional predicates.

To this second view St. Augustine seems to incline in several places, especially in the book ON THE TRINITY, teaching that in this way we are borne toward the absolute good. Saint Bonaventure also hints at the same thing in his ITINERARY, chapter six. Whence it appears that, once all potentiality, dependency, privation, and every other imperfection and finitude have been abstracted from it, there results the absolute and proper concept of God, etc. (Migne, Patr. gr., t. 3, col. 4049-1054.)

In those intellectual visions the soul is not deceived: for either it understands, and it is true; or if it is not true, it does not understand. In other visions, only one thing is certain, namely: that one sees such sensitive form, external or imaginary; but these representations can be games of the imagination and deceit of the demon, or symbols whose meaning must be sought. In the intellectual order, these contempts are not possible. Here, as Saint Bonaventure observes, speaking on the subject that concerns us, it is the truth that one meets and possesses, or rather one grasps the truth in the very things that one sees, one enters into the truth, as Saint Aelred expresses himself, Abbé of Rieval, pointed out by Bona* as a faithful disciple of St Augustine.

Those who admit that our present knowledge, even intellectual, is not accomplished without the help of mental species, explain the appearances that exceed the natural reach of the mind by a divine infusion of new and superior species. Their contradictors believe in solving the problem, saying that if the revealed object exceeds the ability of the seeing subject, God must first extend this capacity; that it enhances it by the grace of faith, which is regularly obscured and veiled in this life, and which becomes in heaven the light of glory; that between the darknesss of faith and the full day of glory, place the mystical illuminations which it concerns, which, without coming out of shadow or trial, make a beginning of blissful clarity and enjoyment!

VI. — When the object of intellectual vision is not equivalent or comparable in the natural world, this vision becomes inexpressible in human language.

This was the vision that raised St Paul up in the third heaven, and which he himself said was not in the power of man to speak of it.

Saint Angèle de Foligno made the same declaration. "One day I was in prayer," she said, "I saw God speaking to me. But if you ask me what I live, I answer that I live in God, and I can't say anything else, except that I live fullness and clarity, from which I felt such a vivid outpouring in me, that I couldn't explain it. It was in vain that I would look for a comparison to represent her."And further on:"I saw a stable and permanent thing that is so inexplicable to me, that I could not say anything about it, except that it was all good, and that my soul was in an inexhaustible joy, without me knowing whether it was in the body or out of the body."

Saint Térèse felt the same impotence, as she recounts in her Life, about the first intellectual vision she was favored for. In vain, she, who spoke so easily of the things of God, tried to translate to her confessor what she had seen. "I used various comparisons," she said, "to try to make me hear: but it seems that there are few who have something to do with this kind of vision."

Thus, the impotence to translate divine communications, far from infirmating their existence, testifies to their sublimitity.

VII. — On the way the object presents itself in mind, mystics distinguish the indistinct vision and the distinct vision! The first attests that the presence of the object, leaving it out of all detail. This seems to have been the vision spoken of by Saint Teresa in chapter xxvii of his Life: "On the day of the feast of the glorious Saint Peter, written, being in prayer, I live, or to say better (for I saw nothing, neither the eyes of the body nor those of the soul) I felt my Saviour near me, and I saw that it was He who spoke to me. As I was completely unaware that there might be such visions, I conceived a great fear in the beginning, and I was only crying. To the truth, as soon as his goodness told me one word to reassure me, I remained, as usual, calm, happy and without any fear. Jesus Christ seemed to me to walk always beside me; and since it was not an imaginary vision, I did not see in what form; but I knew very clearly that he was always on my right side, that he saw all that I did; and as long as I gathered myself, or was not extremely distracted, I could not ignore that he was near me."

The distinct, more perfect visions reveal particular aspects, as it pleases God to show them.

VIIL. — The second element that characterizes intellectual vision is the splendor that surrounds the object manifested and makes it appear in the eyes of the soul. All mystical authors claim that this view of understanding occurs and is consumed in the light of an incomparable light, which has the main character of showing everything in a divine way, and, as St. Teresis says, "to make known how all things are seen in God, and how they are in him."

"We call intellectual vision," said Saint Aelred?, "of which we have already invoked the testimony, the one where the soul, rising above all that is body, above all images and bodily similarities, rests in the very light of truth, in which are true and truly remain all past, present and future things."

And soon after, the same author, reporting the intellectual vision of a saintly nun whom he seems to have known, points to the characters of the light he has just spoken of. [It happened to her one day, he said, as she was going to the oration with her accustomed love, to feel penetrated by a wonderful sweetness where all the movements of her mind, all the fluctuations of her thought, all the spiritual affections that she felt for her friends were extinguished; and her soul immediately, as saying goodbye to all that weighed upon her in this world, was delighted over herself, and plunged into an ineffable and incomprehensible light; she saw nothing else, except that she is, and that she is the being of all things. This light was not bodily or the image of a body; it did not stretch out or spread out, so that it would appear everywhere; it was not contained in any kind, and it contained all things; and it was a wonderful and ineffable way, so that the being contained all that is, and the truth all that is true. Within this light, the pious virgin began to know no more according to the flesh Jesus Christ himself, whom she had previously known only according to the flesh, because the Saviour Jesus being more than a spirit before his eyes, had brought into the truth itself."

IX. — However, this illumination is not always accomplished to the same extent, and although this gradation was born of its perfect application only in relation to the knowledge of God, it is possible to admit, for intellectual visions in general, three increasing degrees of evidence.

In the first, the light reveals only the truth and the presence of the things manifested; in the second, the light casts upon them its rays with a vivacity and a radiance that allow the soul to penetrate into their depths; in the third, it is the very splendour of the sky. The first degree is compared to the dubious lights of dusk, and the resulting knowledge is called the dark vision; the second is compared to the light of dawn, and produces the light vision; the third is compared to the fullness of the midday, and responds to the glorious vision!.

These three degrees themselves have nothing constant and uniform: in each, light can diversify to the infinite, expand and restrict itself, put on the most varied shades.

By drawing closer to all this what we have said about the. more or less clarity in the manifestation of the object, it is easy to recognize that the indistinct vision responds to the dark vision, and the distinct vision, to the one we have just called luminous*? and glorious.

X. — To some extent it radiates, the proper light is to bring with it certainty. This is at least what Saint Teresus attests: "This vision, said *, prints such a clear knowledge that it seems to exclude the possibility of doubt. The Lord wants it to be so serious in the understanding, that one can no more doubt than what one sees, and even less; for for for what strikes our eyes, sometimes we doubt whether this is not an illusion. Here, doubt may well arise at the first moment; but there is also a firm certainty that this doubt has no basis."

To the inseparable certainty of this light is still attached the feeling of its origin and identity; from where it follows that God alone is its principle, and, therefore, that the intellectual vision is exclusively its work. This is also evident from the very nature of this operation, for God alone can reach those depths where the gaze of the mind opens.

"In my opinion," said Saint Térèse! "that is where the demon finds the least disaccess, for the reasons that this is: if they are not good, it is I who must deceive me. This vision and language are something so spiritual, that there is, neither in the powers of soul® nor in the senses, no movement where the demon can find himself taken..."

The mystics, in fact, generally agree that the intellectual vision, assuming it as such, surpasses any power other than that of God, and that it is immune to any evil illusion?, by the reason that the demon can only act on man through the senses, and that the very nature of this vision is to have nothing sensitive #.

However, Saint Liguori * dares to ensure that she is free, not more than the other kinds of visions, from all evil intervention and deception; but it is wrong that he invokes on this subject the testimony of Saint John of the Cross. The latter teaches!, to the truth, that the demon can mingle with intellectual visions and "fake them, using the imagination, in which he represents objects present or absent in a spiritual light"; but he does not say in any way that his action never reaches intellect in the operation which is his own. All that Satan is able to do by his natural virtue is, by overexciting the organism, and especially the brain, to determine an extraordinary state of lucidity, which man will take for a divine manifestation. We will return to this subject when we discuss the evil influences on matter and on man.

It is no less important, since the spirit of lies simulates intellectual visions by the finesse of its prestige, to be careful against illusions, and to resort rather to effects than intrinsic notes, in order to recognize more surely their true character and permanence. * Indeed, Saint John of the Cross says, there is a great difference between the visions that the evil spirit produces and those of which God is the author, and between the effects of each other. The visions of the demon throw the soul into the aridity and dryness during prayer. They lead her to estimate herself, to receive these visions willingly, to make a lot of cases of them. They leave him no desire for Christian humility or any tenderness of divine love. Moreover, they do not impriminate in the soul with mildness and consolation, like the visions of God; they do not remain there for long, and even they do away promptly, is not that the esteem that the soul actually excites to remember and preserve them; but then it does not feel the good effects that the divine visions have accustomed to produce."

Finally, regardless of the effects, or rather, when to the goodness of the effects is joined an invincible persuasion that it is God who appears and speaks, as it happened to Saint Teresus!, we must no longer doubt that the inner illumination is due to the presence and radiation of the divine light.

XI. — But this divine light that enlightens every intellectual vision, what is its nature, and is it essentially identical in the various degrees that we have reported?

Alvarez de Paz? states first of all that neither the natural light of reason nor that of faith can suffice for this supernatural illumination, to any degree that it is

1 Chdt. int., 6° Dem., c. 8: Although he was wanted to be inspired by great fears, it was often impossible for this person to doubt the presence of Our Lord, especially when he said to him, "Don't be afraid, it's me." These words had such strength, that she could not then conceive any doubt.

As for the light, it is certain that neither the natural light nor the light of faith is sufficient. Not the former, because it does not at all transcend natural things; but here something supernatural and divine is understood, either as to substance or as to mode. Nor the latter either, since it is given only for the ordinary and obscure notion of supernatural things, and on the authority of the one speaking. Indeed, not even the gift of wisdom will at times be sufficient, which, although together with the other gifts it greatly perfects faith, nevertheless does not extend to knowing such sublime things with such clarity and in so unaccustomed a manner. There is given for this a certain light, which either is, or is reduced to, prophetic light; by which the mind, elevated, [...] so perfectly supposes the thing, and that there is evidently here a miraculous intervention which surpasses the forces of nature and the common order of grace. The gift of wisdom, to which many relate these visions, does not seem to him to be at the height of the most sublime; these at least would be due, according to the same author, to a prophetic light which introduces the soul into the abim secrets of divine things.

From the confession of all, gifts of wisdom and intelligence are sufficient for ordinary visions. Many even believe that they can explain everything by an extraordinary infusion of these two gifts of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps the highest of these visions are by means of free graces, mainly through wisdom and prophecy 3. Finally the glorious vision, if it meets here below, — and we have said elsewhere * that it is sometimes granted in a transitional way to the travelling man, — would be due to an early and partial irradiation of the light of glory #.

We will reconcile these assertions, various in appa1 Scaramelli, Dirett. Mist. Tr. 4, c. 8, n. 106, p. 288: Sebbene non mancano altri Autori che vogliano non richiederssi alla formazione di debt visioni luce maggiore di quella che puû recare alle nostre lie il dono della sapienza e dell intelletto.

2 Pair. À SS. Trix. For the gifts of the Holy Spirit, although supernatural, are nevertheless ordinary among the just, and their irradiation in the perfect just is not rare; whence it was necessary that the Lord should sometimes communicate to certain singular friends some higher and extraordinary light, by which they might more perfectly penetrate the revealed truths of God; which light is called higher, because it is clearer in manifesting and more efficacious in penetrating.

3 Première partie, ch. 22, p. 353.

4 Priurpp. À SS. Trin. It has been said that supernatural contemplation, sometimes even in this life, attains to the clear and quidditative vision of God, though quickly passing, as we have granted to the Blessed Virgin Mary ever-Virgin, to Moses the prophet, to the apostle Paul, and to a few others. This clear and quidditative vision of God—whether swiftly passing, or ever abiding for eternity—cannot exist without the light of glory, participated here below after the manner of a transient power, but there [in heaven] after the manner of a lasting habit... [text damaged] ...as we shall discuss when treating the causes of mystical phenomena and the manner in which God produces them. All these aspects of supernatural life are multiple and ascending manifestations of divine grace, from the holy but unconscious energies of faith and charity, to the full development of the beatific vision. CHAPITRE V

THE OBJECTS OF THE SURNATURE VISION

GOD Enumeration of objects of supernatural vision. — Body Appearances of God in the Unity of His Nature; Their Various Forms.— Sensitive Manifestations of the Trinity and of each of the Three Persons. — Does God intervene personally or only through the ministry of angels? — Imaginary visions of God One and Trinity. — Are they personal or impersonal? — The intellectual revelation of God, in the unity of his nature and the variety of his attributes, — and the very mystery of the Trinity. — The three dark, luminous and glorious visions of God.

[. — The objects we know necessarily come back to these two: God and the creatures. In the first place among the creatures, or rather between God and the creature, as holding one and the other, is the Savior Jesus. Immediately thereafter, at the top of the created beings, radiates the blessed figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary; then come the angels and saints of heaven, the souls of purgatory, demons and damned, living men, unreasonable or inanimate creatures. - Let us consider whether these different objects can appear in vision, in body vision, imaginary, intellectual. Dieu d’abord. IT. — God is one by nature and triple in people. _ Can he reveal himself by this double aspect and in the three external, representative and intellectual forms? We answer each of these questions in the affirmative.

First, God can manifest himself and has often manifested himself in bodily vision as One and as Trinity. Not without doubt that God has nothing material in himself, but he can, through special action on matter and on the senses, present to man sensitive forms to show him his wills and purposes. Among Catholics, as Suarez says, "this point is beyond controversy.

The Old Testament contains a large number of external and sensitive manifestations where God appears in the unity of his nature. He reveals himself in this way to Adam and Eve?, Cain 5, Noah, Abraham, Hagar 5, Lot?, Isaac, Jacob, *, Moses, Joshua, *, Gideon, *: and also to Samson's parents, since after the disappearance of the angel who spoke to them in the name of God, Manué and his wife exclaimed: "We shall die, for we have seen God."

These theophanies are carried out in various forms. In the earthly paradise, God warned Adam and Eve of his presence by a light and refreshing breath, according to the interpretation many give to these words of Genesis #: "By hearing the voice of the Lord their God, walking in Eden at the evening breeze, Adam and his companion hid themselves;" according to others, among whom St Augustine!, it was in the human form that God spoke to the first man. There is no doubt that he has not shown himself in this form to Abraham, and it is generally the one he wears in his sensitive manifestations? He reveals himself to Moses by the flame of the bush that burns without burning himself; to the Hebrews in the wilderness by the cloud # turn dark and luminous; and, at the top of Sinai, by the smoke, the sound of the trumpets, and the shrapnel of thunder.

Tyrey notes that God never showed himself under the appearances of the woman, although he absolutely can 6, nor under the traits of the child.

IIT. — Nor is there any doubt that God cannot be shown by the appearance of the trinity of His Persons. The collective manifestation of the three divine Persons takes place at the baptism of Jesus Christ: while the Incarnate Word is in the waters of the Jordan, the Holy Spirit rests on his head in the shape of a dove, and the Father, from heaven, makes these words heard: "You are my beloved Son, in whom I have put my complacencies." A similar demonstration sighs on the Tabor, at the transfiguration of the Saviour *: the Father makes his voice sound again to proclaim the divinity of his Son, and, according to the interpretation of St Augustine, St Thomas, Suarez, and the Church herself in the office that celebrates this mystery #, the Holy Spirit is represented there by the luminous cloud that surrounds Man-God and his disciples.

Augustine sees a sensitive revelation of the Trinity in the three angels who appear to Abraham at the door of Mambre 6, and the Church promotes this interpretation in her liturgy, when she thus comments on the vision of the father of the believers: "He saw Three, and worshiped One."

Apart from the manifestations that we have just indicated, we do not know any other ones, either in Scripture or in history, where the three divine Persons appear simultaneously in a bodily form.

If one considers these adorable Persons separately, each one's share is not equal. The Scripture provides us with only one manifestation of the Father to be added to the three which we have reported: it is narrated by St John, in the place of his Gospel # where he reports that at this prayer of Our Lord: "My Father, glorify your name,"

1 Ad Evodium. For the dove itself too, like that luminous cloud which covered the Savior on the mountain together with the three disciples, or rather like that fire which showed forth the same Holy Spirit, etc.

And therefore a visible mission of the Holy Spirit to Christ had especially to take place... In the transfiguration indeed, under the appearance of a bright cloud to show forth the abundance of doctrine.

The second sign under which the Spirit is read to have appeared was a bright cloud on the day of the transfiguration.

4 Brev. Row. 6 Aug. Resp. 2 : In splendenti nube, Spiritus sanctus visus est.

But under the oak of Mambre he saw three men, whom, having invited and received in hospitality, he also served as they feasted. Yet Scripture began to narrate that event in such a way that it does not say: "Three men appeared to him," but "The Lord appeared to him"... But when three men were seen, and none of them was said to be greater than the others in form, age, or power, why should we not here understand visibly intimated, through a visible creature, the equality of the Trinity, and in three persons one and the same substance?

6 Gen. xvI.

7 BREv. Rom. Dom. Quinquag. Resp. 2: Tres vidit, and unum adoravit. a voice answered from heaven, "I have glorified him, and will glorify him again!"

So God the Father rarely shows himself, and among the apparitions gathered in the Holy Books, only one, the least authentic from the point of view of interpretation, that of the angels who visit Abraham, is addressed to the eyes; the other three are only atrial. This rarity of the facts is consistent with the teaching of doctors, mainly of the oldest, about the Father, to whom they attribute invisibility? This doctrine, however, was not absolute 5, and Suarez * abstinent as a fool to deny that it is possible or suitable for the Father to appear visibly.

The Word appeared in the flesh, and forms, as clothed with our humanity, the theandric individuality of Christ. We will study apart from the supernatural apparitions of the Man-God; we currently consider only the second Person of the Augustus Trinity.

This divine Person has often been manifested and in multiple forms. It was, in the early Christian centuries, a common teaching that the Son of God had been the true author of the theophany of the Old Testament, sifting and learning, according to the original thought of

1 S. And where it sounded: "And I have glorified, and again I will glorify," we confess this to be the person of the Father alone.

3 Kiea, Manual of the Dogma History chrét. 2 p., c. 2,t. 1, p. 254.

3 GinouLuiacc, Hist. du Dogme cat. 1. 8, c. 40, 11, 42, t. 2.

Concerning the apparitions of the Father, nothing remains to be said, because in the New Testament we do not find a particular vision, by ocular vision of the first person, but only those two auricular ones which we have related, and a third which John relates, ch. 12, as Augustine holds (bk. 2, Against Maximinus, last chapter). That in particular revelations the Father sometimes appeared visibly together with the incarnate Son to holy men — just as we cannot affirm this from certain histories, so neither do we dare rashly deny it, because the thing is not only possible but even easy, and the gifts of divine grace are innumerable, and the reasons of divine providence in distributing them are not comprehensible.

ch = Tertullian ‘, to be conversed with men. Later, while abandoning the old opinion in what it had exclusive to the other persons of the Trinity, the Fathers and theologians constantly applied themselves to bring to light the primordial and distinctive ability of the Word, a substantial image of the divine essence and eternal archetype of things, to the external manifestations of the divinity? and, as Suarez observes, * the apparitions in a personal human form seem to come to him by right, because of his future hypostatic union with the flesh: merciful trials which prepared men for the mystery of the Incarnation.

Of these early manifestations in the flesh, two are mainly attributed to him by Christian exegesis. One is that of the man who fights until the dawn of the day against the patriarch Jacob, image and personification of the

And so he himself, together with the Angels, then appeared to Abraham indeed in the truth of flesh, but not yet born, because not yet to die; but already accustomed to converse among men.

2 S. Tao. 3 P. q. 3, a. 8. It was most fitting that the person of the Son should become incarnate. First indeed on the part of union; for things that are alike are fittingly united. But as regards the person of the Son himself, who is the Word of God, a common fitness to the whole creature is observed in one way; because the word of the craftsman, that is, his concept, is the exemplar likeness of the things that are made by the craftsman. Whence the Word of God, which is his eternal concept, is the exemplar likeness of the whole creature.

On the Angels, bk. 6, ch. 20, n. 18, p. 772: This special representation in the person of the Word is easiest, when not only the bare person of the Son as divine, but as human and incarnate, or to be incarnated, was represented. Because then it is easily understood that the person of the Son could be represented according to something proper to himself.

4 S. Leox. For the omnipotence of the Son of God could indeed appear, for the teaching and justifying of men, in the same manner as it appeared to the Patriarchs and Prophets in the likeness of flesh, whether entering into a wrestling-match, or engaging in speech, or not refusing the offices of hospitality, or even taking the food set before it. But those images announced this man as signs, whose truth, to be taken from the stock of the preceding Fathers, the mystical significations proclaimed.

5 Gen. xxxu, 24, 30. Jewish people ‘; the other one is that of this young man who protects Daniel's companions in the furnace, and who appears to King Nebuchadnezzar like the Son of God.

In the Old Testament, at least with certainty, there is no separate appearance of the Holy Spirit; it is with great reinforcement of interpretations that one manages to point out some as being able to relate to the third person of the Trinity:.

The New Testament, in addition to the two that we have related in speaking of simultaneous manifestations, contains another one, famous among all, that of Pentecost, where the Holy Spirit revealed his presence in the double form of a violent wind that shaken the house of the cenacle, and of tongues of fire that divided upon the apostles."

These wonders have been renewed more than once.

Saint John Chrysostom 5 seems to imply that since the baptism of Our Lord, the Holy Spirit has no longer manifested himself under the symbol of the dove. Strange thing, a pious tradition collected and transmitted by ancient authors, and which the Bollandists dare not reject, tells that a white dove, representing the Holy Spirit and the effaces of his grace, descended on Saint John Chrysostom himself, while he received the ordination of the priesthood from the hands of Saint Flavian of Antioch.

The same fact is reported by his friend, Basil the Great, by that saint's own brother, Gregory of Nyssa. ‘ The deacon of Eden, Ephrem, who came to Cappadocia to see and hear the illustrious bishop of Caesarea, saw, when entering the congregation of the faithful where he spoke, a dazzling dove, resting on his right shoulder, which seemed to suggest to his ear all that he preached to the people.

This apparition is frequently repeated in the history of the saints. It is mentioned in the acts of Saint Ananie and his companions martyred under Diocletian?, in the lives of Saint Gregory the Great*, of Saint Samson, Bishop of Dol in Brittany, Saint Mildride *, Abbess of England, Saint Gregory VII, Saint Hugues of Cluny ?, sixth abbot of this monastery, Saint Raynier of Pisa #, solitary in great honor in Tuscany, Saint John of Matha *, founder of the Order of Merci, Blessed Humiliane Cerchi *, widow, of the Third Order of Saint Francis, Saint Placid ‘, Cistercian religious,

1 De Vita S. Patris Ephræm Syri. He beheld a shining dove resting upon his right shoulder and supplying words of wisdom, and himself bringing them forth to the people. Instructed indeed by that lofty and venerable dove, he had recognized the pilgrimage of this holy Father, and that he was that Ephrem the Syrian.

2 BB. 25 febr., t. 6, p. 499, n. 16. For the Holy Spirit had descended in the form of a dove in the midst of the fire, the people themselves seeing it, and he was with the saints. [footnote: Vita S. Gregor...] M. auctore PauLo Dracono, n. 28. Patrol. lat.,t.76,c.57.

4 BB. 5 aug., t. 33, p. 583, n. 44.

5 CapGRAV. BB. 13 jul., t. 30, p. 492, n. 7.

6 Paul Berri. BB. 25 maii, t. 19, p. 116, n. 24.

7 BB. 6 jun.,t. 21, p. 684, n. 153.

8 BENINCASA. BB. 17 Jun., vol. 24, p. 354, n. 37. 9 RIBADENEIRA, Life of the Saints, 17 Dec., vol. 12, p. 239.

10 Vrr. Corton. BB. 149 maii, t. 17, D. 389, n. 44.

11 P. CELANo. BB, 12 Jun., vol. 23, p. 407, n. 9. Blessed Helen!, of the third order of the Hermits of Saint Augustine, and of several other servants and servants of God. We cannot reproduce all the details of these interesting stories. Voici seulement quelques traits.

Surius and the cardinal of Aily report, in the life of Saint Peter Celestine, that after five years on the Mount Morron, seeing that the woods surrounding his home were being cut down, the Blessed took refuge in the Magella mountain, in a deep cave, badly defended against the insults of the air. His two companions, afraid of the appearance and inconveniences of the place, withdrew first, but soon returned, unable to live far from their model and their master. God blesses this new stay. For among other wonders, a mysterious dove appeared and remained for three years in the midst of the solitary, always taking its food at the place where it later raised an altar in honor of the Holy Spirit. The many graces which the divine Paraclete gave in the sequel to those who came to call upon him in this place were a testimony of the wonder of which he consecrated the memory.

Saint Térèse * tells of herself that, on the eve of Pentecost, while she was meditating on the presence of the Holy Spirit in her soul, she saw a dove flying over her head: "She was much different from those of these, for, instead of feathers, her wings seemed to be made up of mother-of-pearl scales that cast a bright splendor; she was also greater than an ordinary dove. It seems to me, she adds, that I heard the noise she made with her

1 Simon. BB. 23 apr., t. 12, p. 255, n. 6.

By many and marvelous signs the Holy Spirit wished to declare that he had chosen that place as a special dwelling-place for himself. Primum siquidem, cum Fratres ibi habitare coeperunt, quaedam columba appeared queæ semper cibum capere viebatur i in eo loco in quo posta altere oratorii situatum est. wings; she agitated them about the space of a Ave Maria."And then entering into a delight, she stopped seeing this divine dove. "She saw her again on the head of a religious in Santo Domingo, with even brighter wings, and it was said that this Father should attract many souls to God.

The Holy Spirit also manifests itself, as at Pentecost, in the form of fire and light; and one can see as many apparitions of this divine Spirit in the luminous globes that descend on the Saints, in the flames that surround them at the hour of prayer, in the phenomena of the same nature as we will tell about the supernatural radiation.

It is also easy to find there the cloud that covered the Saviour and the three apostles on the Tabor.

One reads a precise fact of this kind in the life of Saint Donstain, Archbishop of Canterbury?. As he distributed the bread of life to his people, a cloud suddenly wrapped up the place where the august mysteries were being fulfilled; and a dove came to rest on the holy bishop until the end of the sacrifice: a clear testimony that the Holy Spirit gave the pontiff of his predilection and assistance.

IV.—It is a difficult question to resolve if, apart from the Incarnation, these sensitive apparitions of God and the people of the adorable Trinity are personal, or if they are operated by the ministry of angels.

For the apparitions made under the old law, the most common feeling, or rather the common feeling of the scholastics, is that they were impersonal, and due entirely to the intervention of the angels, who presented themselves, spoke and acted in the name of God.

The Fathers are much less explicit. Saint Augustine, who is used to invoking in this matter, is very undecided, as can be seen by reading his books on the Trinity. Most simply take the statements of Scripture and hear them, in addition to one place, true theophaniest. The oldest, among them Saint Justin, Saint Îrenée, Tertullian, Saint Hilaire?, attribute all the apparitions of the Old Testament to the one person of the Son. The general assertion of theologians therefore does not impose itself absolutely, and, even from the most determined admission, it encounters contradictors?.

Suarez did not dislike these differences; he saw two opinions: one, which admitted that these visions were produced immediately by God; the other, which attributed them to the heavenly spirits; and, although he declared the latter common among the scholastics and, further on, which he described as very true, the illustrious theologian distinguished cepenmanifestations live Theophaniæ, per Angelos factæ sunt, eorumque miniSterio ad Patres nostros dimanarunt. There is complete agreement of the ancient Fathers on this point, nor do the chief Scholastics differ from their opinion.

1 Cf. Puic. VANDENBROEK, doct. lov. Dissert. theol. de Theophaniis sub vetere Testamento. |

2 Cf. GnouzuiAc, Hist. du dogme chrét., 4th p., 1. 8, c. 10 et seq., t. 9, p. 292.

3 ScHRAM, $ 496, sch. 1,t. 2, p. 202.

On this point, therefore, the former opinion holds that apparitions of this divine kind were made by God alone, without the intervention of Angels. This opinion is usually attributed to those ancient Fathers, etc.

The second opinion is that God never appeared before the incarnation in a body assumed immediately and by himself, by God himself or by some divine person, but through the mediation of some angel. Hæc est communis sententia scholasticorum.

And although this opinion, which we have already set forth, and have confirmed by the authority of many learned and eminent men, is most true, it nevertheless includes two parts that are not a little difficult, nor so evidently certain that they do not raise some scruples. Quarum una is two parts in this assertion: the first, indefinite, namely, that the apparitions of God which the Old Testament speaks of were not made "all" immediately by God; the second, universal and exclusive, that under the old law "none" of these manifestations was the direct work of God, but that they are due to the intervention of angels: the first part seems to him more well founded and more certain than the second.

The last point of view, with all the exclusion it entails, is in fact highly questionable. When angels are expressly designated by the sacred author, as fulfilling a role in the name of God, it is obviously these heavenly messengers that appear, not even God. In cases where it is doubtful whether it is about God or an angel, whether it is inclined to swaddle, it is still conceived, by virtue of this principle that in fact supernatural one has to be content to assert what is sufficient. But when Scripture declares that God appeared, without mentioning any angelic intervention, why then would it not be asserted a manifestation actually and immediately accomplished by God, unless these kinds of condescending are demonstrated contrary to reason or faith; demonstration which, in our opinion, was not made?

The common opinion on the impersonal nature of the theophanias extends, with some reservations, to that of the New Testament!'. All of them put the appearance of the Word in the flesh out of question, and hold it to be absolutely immediate and personal. Some see as a privilege of the law of grace that God appears by himself to men." Others?, even among those who admit a general law of providence according to which angels would be charged with these divine manifestations, except some, mainly those of the Father and the Holy Spirit on the person of the Incarnate Word.

In fact, it is difficult to see what these distinctions between ancient theophanyes and the news are based on; and among them, some are so expressly affirmed by such or such divine person that, without violence to the sacred text, they cannot be counted as inferior and intermediate beings. Thus, when this voice resounds at the baptism of Our Lord: "This is my Son, in whom I have put my complacencies," whether it is the angels who have stirred up the air, or whether the sounds have been the effect of a direct action of God, it is always the Father who has spoken. Similarly, when the evangelists say that the Holy Spirit descended on Christ, in the Jordan, in the form of a dove, whether this dove was real and alive, as St Thomas wishes?, or, as others claim, purely fantastic; whether it was formed immediately by God or by his angels, ...it must be maintained that it is the Holy Spirit in person who is revealed under these sensitive appearances. It doesn't change the personality that wears it. The Holy Humanity of Our Lord is the common work of the Trinity, and nevertheless it is the person of the Word who owns it and makes it his own by the hypostatic bond. Without going as far as the intimacy of this union which, in fact, is only suitable for the Son, why could God and the people of the Augustine Trinity not put on in a special way external forms and symbols that would manifest their presence?

But this presence, in what way would it be when God is everywhere and the three Persons are inseparable from the divine essence?

The Angelic Doctor!, dealing with divine missions, answers that there are two ways of being present: to come to a place where one was not yet, that is the first; to appear, but in a new fashion, at a point where one was already, that is the second. The divine substance and its three adorable Persons are necessarily everywhere he meets a being; but where they are by essence, they can take on an aspect that they did not have. This new aspect explains all of God's appearances in the world. It constitutes the divine mission for the two persons who proceed, i.e. for the Son and the Holy Spirit: invisible mission, if it is grace; visible mission when the intervention is performed under a bodily appearance. The person of the Father, reporting only from himself, and consequently not likely to be sent, may appear, but from his own movement and not in virtue.In summary, the apparitions of God, in the unity of his nature or as Trinity, are reduced to giving man, by a sensitive sign, a positive and special witness of his presence and his wills.

As for the material execution of this revealing sign, we can admit, if we wish, with the School, that the angels will help to produce it, although this may be complicating the mechanism of creation and providence. Would it not be simpler to say, with St Augustine!, that every creature being the common work of the Trinity: and the voice of the Father in Tabor, and the flesh of the Son in the Incarnation, and the dove of the Holy Spirit in the Jordan, and so of all the other theophanias, were realized by the simultaneous and indivisible cooperation of the three divine Persons.

V. "We said that God could also appear, and as One, and as Trinity, in imaginary visions."

When it reveals itself during sleep, these manifestations can generally be regarded as purely representative. Similarly, when it is said that God has shown himself in vision?, or even in the time of night, it is almost always imaginary visions, unless, however, the account gives us to hear something else, such as, for example, when the voice of the Lord awakens the young Samuel three times, to entrust him with his purposes of righteousness over the high priest Heli and his children f.

The imaginary revelations where God appears with the character of his unity are in great number in Scripture

1 Epist. 169. Thus there is no creature by which either the Father alone, or the Son alone, or the Holy Spirit alone is shown, that the Trinity — which works inseparably — does not work together; and for this reason neither the voice of the Father, nor the soul and flesh of the Son, nor the dove of the Holy Spirit... and in the lives of the Saints. They meet several times in the history of Abraham!, Isaac? and Jacob*; and more often in the prophets, to whom God made his greatness, his mercies and his righteousness heard by mental representations: Isaiah* sees him in his temple and on his throne, surrounded by seraphim who worship his majesty and sing his glory; Jeremiah feels his hand touching his lips to confer upon him the grace and the prophetic mission; Ezekiel © L'aperçoit sur son char méthique, image of the Church.

These symbolic manifestations are carried out in the most varied forms. God discovers himself to the blessed Osanne of Mantua, sometimes under the majestic features of an old man, sometimes like a young man in the brilliance of strength and beauty, sometimes by a kind of luminous immensity where the mind does not grasp a limit and cannot decide whether it is in the presence of one or more, that is, whether it is the divine unity that reveals itself or the Trinity.

The Trinity, in fact, also manifests itself in the symbols of imaginary vision, as the revelations of the Blessed Osanne herself and those of several other holy souls attest.

Blessed Marguerite-Marie Alacoque is a remarkable example of this. "Our Lord," she says, "continuing to me his graces, I received this incomparable which, during a failure that had taken me, seemed to me that the three People of the adorable Trinity came to me and made me feel great consolations. But I could not explain to me what happened then [I will not say anything], except that it seemed to me that the eternal Father, presenting me with a large cross, all inherited from thorns, accompanied by all the other instruments of the Passion, said to me: "Behold, my daughter, I make you the same present as to my beloved Son.""And I," said my Lord Jesus Christ, "I will bind you to it as I was attached to it, and I will keep you faithful company there."The third of these adorable Persons said to me, "That He, who was only love, would consume me there by purifying me." My soul remained in unconceivable peace and joy, for the impression that these divine People made there has never been erased. They were represented to me in the form of three young men dressed in white, all shining with light, of the same age, greatness and beauty."

We do not know in Scripture such a collective representation of the three divine Persons; but, in Daniel's famous vision, on the four great empires to which the Church of Jesus Christ succeeds, the Father appears, whom the prophet calls the Old of Days, and the Incarnate Word, which he expressly calls the Son of Man. He said, "As I looked, thrones were set up, and the Old One sat down. His garment had the whiteness of the snow; his head's hair looked like the purest wool; his throne was kindled, and his wheels threw flames. A river of fire came out from before his face; it was served by a million ministers, and millions of others stood in his presence. Finally I saw, in this night vision, the

1 Daniel, vu, 9-14. Trad. de H. Laurens, More. selected from the Bible, p. 322. Son of man who came upon the clouds of heaven. He went up to the Ancient of the days and was presented to him; he received from him power, glory, and kingdom, to be served by all the peoples of every tribe, of every tongue, with power that must be eternal and indestructible, and an empire that must never fall."

Divine Wisdom, which is personified in the Word, appears under the lovely figure of a virgin to St. Laurent Justinian, still floating between the world and God, at the age when the impressions of the flesh have all their power. "O beloved young man," she said to him, looking at him with a face of beauty and goodness, "why spread your heart and seek peace in the multitude of things that pass by? And the young man asking him his name, his race, and his titles: "I am, she replied, the Wisdom of God, who, to repair humanity, clothed human nature.""I promised him my faith," continued Saint Laurent Justinian, "for it is by himself that we keep this account," and after giving me the kiss of peace, I saw it go away, radiating with joy."

Blessed Henri Suso, of the order of Santo Domingo, had been in love with a holy passion for Wisdom since his teens, and his heart was filled with admirable descriptions of it in the Sacred Books. By hearing these words: "The Wisdom is more beautiful than the sun, more beautiful than the sun.

I too was once like you, seeking peace in external things with an anxious and burning desire, and I did not find it. Tandem divina præventus gratia, dum sic laborarem, speciosissima quædam sole splendidior, balsamoque suavior mihi apparere dignata est, cujus nemen omnino ignorabam. Hæc namque propius accedens, venezto vultu placidoque fabatu inquire: O juvenis in me diligende, cur effundis cor tum, raised that the stars, and, if one compares it to the light, she will take it away....; I loved him and sought him from my youth; I asked to have him as wife, and I became the admirer of his beauty," he was resolved, as the Wise, to make him his wife, to dedicate himself to his service and to his love. But, this Wisdom which dispenses all the goods to those who love, is it God or a human being, a man or a woman, the symbol of science or that of trick; what is it at last? This problem stirred the spirit of this blessed lover: "Oh, he said to himself, if I could see her once and speak to her!"The Wisdom fulfilled her pious desires. She appeared to him, far above his head, supported by a pillar of cloud, sitting on an ivory throne, shining like the morning star, or rather like the sun in all its brightness. His crown was eternity; his garment, his bliss; his language, his sweetness; his kisses, the satiety of all good. It seemed at once close and distant, sublime and humble, obvious and hidden, simple, familiar and yet incomprehensible; higher than the heights of the heavens and deeper than the abyss, it reached from beginning to end with strength, and had all things with suavity. She was first a gracious girl, and soon her face became that of a very handsome young man; then she was a very skillful mistress in all kinds of art, kind to all. Finally, turning to her favourite, and smiling at her with as much grace as with majesty, she addressed these sweet words to her: "My son, give me your heart."And he, then, rushed to his feet to make him the most in love and the most humble thanksgiving actions!" The Holy Spirit also reveals himself in imaginary vision, usually under the symbols consecrated to him, fire and dove. These kinds of apparitions meet more than once in the life of Saint Elizabeth of Sconauge. We will only quote the following trait, which she tells us herself.

One day at Pentecost, before the celebration of the holy mysteries, she entered into ecstasy and saw, assembled in the Upper Room, the disciples and the Saviour's Mother: suddenly a flame descends from heaven with a rapid movement and rests on each one of them, and they immediately rise up and go out, joy on the face and confidence in the soul, to proclaim to the people the word of God. After this vision, she returns to herself and finds herself in these words of the office: "The Holy Spirit, coming out of the eternal throne, has invisiblely penetrated the hearts of the apostles."As soon as the Mass begins, she falls into ecstasy, and sees as a very bright ray of light that extends from the sky to the altar, and, in the middle, the beautiful dove that she used to see, carrying something red to her beak, like a flame of fire. The mysterious dove rests first, with its wings extended, on the head of the priest and drops on him like a drop of what she held in her mouth; it does likewise on each of the ministers, then she stops on the altar. "Then," continues the pious virgin, "I come back from my ecstasy, and I begged our mistress to recommend to the sisters a repetition of fervour, in the hope of what would happen. En effet, la messe finie, au aut quid tandem est? While he was burning with these desires... she presented herself to be seen by him in such a form, etc.

1 Ecsert. BB. 17 Jun., vol. 24, p. 514, n. 60: In die Pentecostas ante celemoment where we went to communion, I was taken over by ecstasy, and, while the sisters received the divine Eucharist, I saw the same dove flying over them, and distributing to each of them the mysterious flame."

In the testimony of Nicéphore, the monk John saw in a dream the Holy Spirit communicate his inspiration to Saint Simeon ‘the Younger, in the form of a honeycomb expressed on his head.

VI. — As with external apparitions, the most general feeling is that imaginary visions are due to the intervention of angels, and that, on the part of God, they are impersonal?

Here are the observations and reservations we have already made. Is there a peremptory reason or argument that forces us to admit that God does not really intervene in imaginary visions where he reveals himself, and that all these representations are therefore impersonal? The persuasion of most of the souls favored by these graces, as God is the true author, seems to have as much weight as the theories that contradict it. Whether angels can contribute to these effects, or even produce them, it would be wrong to contest it; and when this intervention is authentically attested, there would have been recklessness and inconvenience to oppose denials or even to raise doubts. But to establish in principle that these kinds of visions always operate through the ministry of blessed spirits, is that not to say too much? It is above all too much to assert, in our opinion,

1 BB. 24 maïi,t. 148, p. 322. And he related how that night, in a dream, a certain divine power had presented itself to him, which with its right hand poured out honey pressed from the comb, and instructed Simeon with manifold knowledge, etc.

+ Scaram, 8 503, sch. 1, t. 2, p. 218 : Quoties in S. Scriptura vel alibi dicitur Deus invisibilitate imaginarie appeared, intelligendum is special factum fledsse a Deo, ministry FABPAQEE ANDRE nomine Dei interque to deny to mental theophanyes any personal character, and any real presence from God or Divine Persons; for God and the People of the adorable Trinity can manifest themselves both by imaginary symbols and by external representations. And it does not matter, as we have already pointed out, that the material of the vision, if it can be expressed in this way, is the work of the Creator or his angels; this does not prevent God, one or trinity, from being present under those appearances which are carried out in his name.

VIT. — Sensitive visions are best suited to man's nature, but intellectual vision is more in harmony with God's nature; it is therefore understandable that for God, all being and spirit, the best way to reveal oneself is to address directly to intelligence without going through the senses.

Thus he communicated with Moses: "The Lord, says Scripture, spoke to Moses face to face, as a man has accustomed himself to speaking to his friend;" a language which should not be understood by external visions or by a maginary vision, which God himself seems to exclude from the privileged part of his servant. It is, at least, the common interpretation given to these words of the Names: * "If there is a prophet of the Lord among you, I will appear to him in vision or I will speak to him in a dream; but it is not so of Moses, my most faithful servant in all my house; for to him I speak mouth to mouth; and it is openly, and not by riddles and figures, that he sees the Lord."

The new law has often seen these divine communications happen again. Several authors believe that they were granted to Augustine and Monique, during this sublime interview told by the saint doctor in the book of his ConFESSIONS.

"The day was approaching," he said, "where my mother was going out of this life, and this day being known to you, Lord, "we were not aware of it.""I believe so, by the secret conduct of your wisdom, that we were alone, she and I, leaning on a window that led to the garden of the house where we were staying, in this city of Ostia, where, outside the tumult of the world, we were able, after the fatigues of a long journey, to take the sea. So being alone, we talked with ineffable sweetness, and forgetting the past to think only about the future, we wondered between ourselves, in the presence of the Truth which is you, what will be, in eternity, the life of the Saints, that life which no eye has seen, that no ear has heard, and that the heart of man has not felt. And we aspired from the lips of the soul to these sublime springs of your fountain, from the fountain of life that is in you, that, by being watered as much as we were able, we might, in a way, reach through our thoughts to such a great thing.

"Now, as we spoke thus and sighed towards this blessed life, we reached little, by a full leap of heart; but soon, moaning and always attached by remembrance to these firstfruits of the spirit, we had to return to the sound of our lips, to the word which has a beginning and an end."

This leap from the heart, this momentary suspension of the mind on the eternal and immutable truth, over the noise of creatures and images of the senses, seems to indicate a supernatural and purely intellectual interview between St.Madeleine de Pazzi again describe us a similar vision.

"Was it in my body or out of my body, I was ignorant," she said, "but I saw God, being to himself his glory, loving himself, knowing himself thoroughly, and understanding himself infinitely alone; loving his creatures with a very pure and boundless love, and, in the union of an indivisible Trinity, surviving one God, infinite in love, and a sovereign, incomprehensible and inscrutable goodness. Thus established in God, I no longer had any feeling of myself, and I saw myself only in God, not that my gaze was on myself, but on God alone, as much as this intuition is allowed to the creature prepared and inflamed by love, but still clothed with mortal flesh. I stayed almost an hour in this contemplation, as I was able to judge it by finding my senses."

In these admirable communications, God reveals sometimes one aspect of himself and sometimes another: the brightness of his light, his majesty and his suavity?, his infinity and his power *, his resplendent beauty ", his goodness, his source

1 V. Puccini. BB. 25 maïi, t. 19, p. 184, n. 22. I did not know, she said, whether I was alive or dead, outside the body or within it; but I saw only God, glorious in himself, loving himself, knowing himself intimately, and alone comprehending himself infinitely; yet loving creatures with a most pure and infinite love; and that within the union of one individual Trinity, one God subsists of infinite love, of supreme, incomprehensible, and inscrutable goodness.

2 La B. Osaxxe de Mantoue. BB. 18 jun., t. 24, p. 621, n. 99. And I enjoyed the eternal clarity, sweetness, and majesty more than ever before. But to describe further the quality and quantity of that unbounded light is altogether impossible.

3 La B. ANGÈLE DE Fozicxo. BB. 4 jan., t. 4, p. 495, n. 614. I will show you something of my power. And at once the eyes of my soul were opened, and I saw the fullness of God, in which I comprehended the whole world..., and I saw the power of God exceed all things and fill all things. And he said to me: I have shown you something of my power.

"I saw the highest beauty containing all good, and all the saints stood before that most beautiful majesty" — [source] of all good; his truth, the principle of all truth, and his perfect justice; his eternity, his immensity, his immutability: in a word, the various attributes that characterize his being and distinguish it from all that is created and finite.

VITE. — Not only does God manifest his attributes and the splendour of his being, he also reveals to some privileged souls the mystery of the trinity of his people. These communications are generally reserved for the most perfect and crown the divine favors in the mystical order, as we have said in speaking of spiritual marriage.

Saint Teresis*? tells of herself that, reciting one day the symbol of Saint Athanasius, where the dogma of the Trinity is so clearly stated, he was given to understand how one God remains in three people, so clearly that she remained both extremely surprised and consoled, and that it served him much to know God and his wonders.

Saint Julien of Mount Cornillon, to whom is due the institution of the solemn feast of the Blessed Sacrament, received the same knowledge of the Trinity, at the time when she recited the doxology of a hymn of the divine office, consecrated to the common invocation of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. She saw the Trinity in Unity, and the Unity in the Trinity; the Trinity in the Ownership of Persons, the Unity in the simplicity of substance, essence and nature; how the Divinity, multiple in its Persons, does not lose anything of the simplicity of its substance, its essence, its nature.

Each of the three divine Persons can manifest themselves separately. However, the appearance of the Father alone is very rare, if however she has ever met. The other two Persons reveal themselves more frequently in the eyes of the mind; but, as we have said in describing the ceremonial of mystical weddings, it is mainly the Word that appears in this way, in its capacity as husband of souls. Near to die, and about to gather to this heavenly Spouse, St.Angèle de Foligno! saw him in an early vision of glory, but so clearly, she said, that she understood what the eternal Word is, and all that this word, the Word, which has deigned to be a sign for us. And the Word, passing itself into her, giving her in all her being a delicious feeling of her presence by a divine touch and an ineffable embrace, said to her: "Come, my beloved, my loving wife, for all the Saints are waiting in joy. I will not entrust you to the angels or to the other blessed ones to bring you in; it is I, myself in person, who will come to gather you and raise up to me; for you have gained my heart and earned all my complacency."

IX.—These manifestations of God are more or less distinct, as we observed in speaking of the intellectual vision in general, and what we have

And then he showed me the Bridegroom himself, the eternal Word, so that now I understand what the Word is, and what it means to say 'the Word' — namely the Word who willed to become incarnate for me; and the Word himself passed through me, and touched the whole of me, and embraced me, and said to me: Come, my beloved, spouse loved with true love; come, for all the saints await you with joy. He also said to me: "I will not entrust you to Angels or to other saints to lead you, but I myself will come personally for you, and take you to myself; for you have become fitting for me" ... [gap] ...said of the three degrees found in this vision, is understood and applies fully only when it concerns God.

So we rise to this divine knowledge in three ways, or three gradual ascensions! The first, which the Mystics have called the dark or caliginous vision, consists of an overabundant clarity that invades the soul and seems to hide from it God, even by revealing it to him; and this, because it shows it, less in itself than by comparison with creatures, which, accumulated on one another with their multitude and perfection of nature and grace, do not approach the splendor of the infinite Being that floods all of its light, sustains and penetrates all of its virtue, without revealing itself, if not as incomprehensible and inscrutable greatness depth?

This is this negative notion of God, so exalted by St. Denis, and after him by all the Mystics, as the most direct way to raise up to God, way both full of shadow and light; whose light falls upon incomprehensible infinity and immeasurable perfection of the divine being revealed in the sight of the spirit with the brightness of the evidence; and the shadow, on those very depths where God hides his essence, and whose creation of intelligence cannot probe the abimes.

"Trinity that surpasses everything, exclaims the Areopagit in the invocation that opens its MYSTICAL THEOLOGY!, you who are the infinitely holy and sovereignly good inspirator of the divine Wisdom of Christians, lead us to this height, the most unknown, the brightest, the most sublime of mystical oracles, where the simple, absolute and immutable mysteries of theology are discovered in the darkness more than luminous of a silence that reveals all the secrets: darkness that makes shine, in the midst of dark thick, incomparable claritys, and, under shadows where one touches nothing, where one can see nothing, dazzle and fills the intelligences with beautiful splendors."

It should be noted that this negative knowledge of God is not the result of a successive work of elimination, but it consists of a unique and simple look, by which the mind plunges and gets lost in the infinite ocean of divine perfections; and this whole view relates to the infinite study, incomprehensibility and unfathomable depth of God. We seem to see in him that what he is not; and it is then that we have understood best what he is?.

"So the soul sees God in the darkness," said Bona, "when, rising above all creatures and all similarities, she carries herself in God himself, as unknown and unintelligible to every created look; and sees rather what it is not but what it is; discovering in these mysterious darkness an immense perfection that infinitely surpasses all wisdom, all power, all goodness, all beauty, and all that it can conceive. In this vision, to which she rises, not by her own virtue, but by a simple and unanticipated look which God gives to her of himself, the soul, ceasing to be to her through the momentum of admiration and love, is absorbed, as in a deep sea, in the immensity of this God whom she sees, seeing her impotence to see him."

The second way, for God, to manifest itself, is a kind of medium between darkness and full light!. God shows himself, not by veil of negation, but by a positive aspect of himself, revealing either all of his attributes or only a few in particular, or the very mystery of his essence, that is, the trinity of people in the unity of nature, but not yet with the fullness of glory. This second kind of vision, compared to the previous one, can be called clear and luminous.

But this one would only be darkness itself, close to the third, which discovers God in its essence and the divine claritys that the theologians have called the light of glory. It is the facial vision, final and beatific, which illuminates and delights the saints of heaven, where God is contemplated face to face, without veil, without reserve; while in the first one encounters him and asserts him more than one sees him, and in the second one feels him, tastes him and possesses him rather than sees him?. It is not doubtful, the facts we have reported prove it abundantly, that souls called to mystical life cannot receive and frequently received the supernatural manifestation of God through the first two ways, the dark vision and the luminous vision. Is it the same with the glorious vision? Has it been granted to any living man? and if it is ever given, is it as an exceptional and transient favor, or as a regular state of contemplation? Difficult questions, already discussed in the first part of this book. CHAPITRE VI

THE OBJECTS OF THE SURNATURE VISION

JESUS-CHRIST Apparitions of the Saviour before his ascension. — Body Appearances since he ascended to heaven in his state of glory, — as he was on earth, — child, — infirm, poor and pilgrim. — The Eucharist is the ordinary theatre of these manifestations. — Imaginary visions and the various forms in which the Saviour reveals himself. — Visions intellectuelles. — Jesus Christ appears personally in intellectual visions. — The various opinions on the personal nature of body appearances. — The reason for the excessive sentiment of the Scholastics on this point. — Imaginary visions themselves can be personal.

I. — The vision most often given to holy souls is that of the Saviour Jesus: to challenge him would betray a complete ignorance of the apostolic accounts and annals of the saints. To explain the various forms of this vision by examples drawn from historical sources, as we are going to do, is to show enough certainty. But here again, the personal or impersonal nature of these visions seems difficult: the solution may be less difficult after the facts have been explained. Commençons par les faits.

There is no need to seek in the life of the Saviour; except for what the Gospel tells of the exultation of John the Baptist still in the womb of his mother Elizabeth, and the prophetic exclamations of this holy woman in the sight of the Blessed Virgin Mary, there is no supernatural manifestation of Jesus Christ before her glorious life; and those we have just reported are less apparitions than intimate revelations!

After his resurrection, Our Lord appears to Mary Magdalene under the traits of the gardener?, to the disciples of Emmaus *, outside a traveler; to his apostles, as he had lived with them before his Passion; and without doubt in the brightness of his glory, to his holy Mother, to whom his first apparition # was rightfully restored.

Since his ascension, Jesus Christ has revealed himself and revealed himself in bodily, imaginary and intellectual visions; and, in each of these forms, in the most diverse aspects and states.

Let us first look at the variety of body appearances.

IL. "Our Lord has manifested himself more than once as he is in heaven, with his glorious flesh and all gleaming light.

Thus he had to appear to the Blessed Virgin, on the day of her assumption, by introducing him into her glory; for it is a pious feeling and often expressed by the Christian doctors who celebrated this mystery!, that the Incarnate Word came, with the angels and the saints, to meet her blessed Mother: "Trimp more pompous, says St.Peter Damien?, than that of the Redeemer, since He, rising up to heaven, had only the procession of the angels, while Mary had that of his Son and of the whole heavenly court."

This was also the vision of the first of the martyrs, St Stephen, when #, filled with the Holy Spirit and looking to heaven, he cried out: "I see the heavens open, and the Son of man at the right hand of God."If the Jews did not see this delightful spectacle, it is, said with a pleasant subtlety Saint Augustine #, that envy prevented them from seeing: Unvacubant, quia invidibant.

The interpretation that explains this account of ACTS of an external vision is not universally accepted, as we know. Several ° hear a mental vision, imaginary according to some, according to other intellectuals. Il

1 Suarez, De myst. Christ. And thus think the holy Fathers who speak of this mystery. For they say that Christ, surrounded by the heavenly court, descended to his mother.

2 S. PIERRE DA. Serm. 40 de Assumpt. p. 91. You will find the meeting of this procession worthier by no small degree. For only the Angels could go to meet the Redeemer. But as the Mother entered the halls of heaven, the Son himself, solemnly coming to meet her with the whole court of both Angels and the just, raised her up to the consistory of the blessed session.

3 Act. vu, 55.

4 Serm. 116, 3 in solemn. Steph. martyr., n. 2, p. 134.

5 Lori. /n Act. Apost. vu, 55, p. 339. Lyranus reports the opinion of some who say that Stephen, in a mental vision, saw also the Divinity itself, just as Paul did in his rapture into the third heaven. He refutes this, because when Paul saw this, he did not then have the use of his senses, unlike Stephen, who, while he was seeing, affirmed that he saw. He states the second opinion, that it was an imaginary vision, such that God formed in Stephen's imagination likenesses suited to represent God and the man Christ... Yet in the third place he prefers that it was only a bodily vision of Christ alone, since the text expresses that he fixed his eyes on heaven and saw, etc. Equidem, non dubito Stephanum mente non esfuisse alienatum, sed présentem percepisse intelligendo quae offerebantur : oblatea vero esse ipsis oculis corporis ejus vera, non ficta objecta, etc. : it is that neosent to decide what kind of vision is involved.

IT. — The Saviour still shows himself as he was on earth during his mortal life, clothed in his clothes, in the attitude of modesty, mildness, and goodness that charmed men. This is probably how he appeared to St Peter coming out of Rome to escape the fury of Nero. The prince of the apostles, who was in charge of the faithful, and after generous resistance, had finally resolved to flee the theatre of persecution. But he had barely crossed, in the first shadows of the night, one of the gates. of the city, which he saw Christ coming to meet him and heading towards the places from which he went away. He fell at his feet and said to him, "Where are you going, Lord?" And the Lord answered him, "I come to Rome to be there a second time crucified." Peter understood, and, immediately returning to his steps, he returned to the city, and he suffered, as a faithful and courageous disciple, the martyrdom of the cross?

The Christians of Rome raised in the continuation an oratory out of the Appian way, at the place where the apostle had met his Saviour, and called him Domine, quo vadis, i.e.: Lord, where are you going? to consecrate this pious tradition, of which the scholar Tillemont has demonstrated authenticity, and that Suarez * declares a fully established point of history.

Many saints, the venerable Mother Agnes in particular ÿ, have often had these visions. IV. — Jesus Christ loves to reveal himself as a child, to recall the mysteries of his childhood, and to invite the souls whom he visits to a holy familiarity.

A bourgeois who gave hospitality to Saint Anthony of Padua, having looked through the window of the room where the saint was contemplating, saw between his arms a child of admirable beauty and grace, whom the servant of God did not tire of contemplating, hugging and covering with kisses. St.Antoine, warned by the divine Child that his host saw him, called him after having given himself up to a long contemplation, and made him promise not to reveal anything in his lifetime that he had seen. From there came the practice of representing Saint Anthony of Padua holding the Child Jesus between his arms.

These charming apparitions of the Child Jesus are quite frequent in the history of the purest and most loving souls. The lives of Saint Catherine of Bologna?, Blessed Humilian Cerchi *, Blessed Julienne of Cateldo *, present delicious examples. But nothing equals what Blessed Osanne of Manioue tells of herself.

She was barely six years old when Jesus appeared to her, p. 124. Our Lord Jesus Christ appeared to him visibly, clothed in a long dress of color drawing on the purple: he had long hair and as red; this was also the color of his beard; the wounds of his feet and hands shone like the rays of the sun... She heard a voice in her heart that said to her, "It is your husband," and another, the voice of this beloved, who said to her, "Don't be afraid, I am your husband, and I am faithful to my wives. You see me in the form of a little child, brighter than the sun, exhaling all the perfumes, delighting in splendor, clear, kind, full of graces, whiter than snow. Her eyes had all the charms, and her lips were just smiling. His blond hair, drawing on the brilliant color of gold, was surmounted by a very sharp crown of thorns; he carried on his shoulder a large cross, larger than himself. The little virgin looked with admiration and with a look where her soul smitten this glowing face at the same time of a gentle modesty, of divine majesty, of incomparable beauty. And the Child Jesus, staring at her with tender eyes and drawing her soul to her by the radiance of her beauty, addressed these sweet words to her: "My daughter, with a beloved soul, I am the son of the Virgin Mary, and your Creator. I have always loved the little ones; I have them and will them with me, because they have no malice, and all in them is clean; that is why I am pleased to dwell with these little ones, pure and innocent, and I have made them my company. I take the virgins from their early childhood, and, wanting them to be my immaculate wives, I always keep them in holy purity. As soon as they cry out to me, O good Jesus, I immediately answer, and I am there to help them."These sweet words: O good Jesus, entered deeply into the heart of the little virgin; they returned to her constantly on her lips, and her ordinary exclamation was: O good Jesus!

More than once the divine Child will appear to this kind saint to make it an accomplished image of himself. When Our Lord comes to her in the form of an old man, it will be to predict to her that someone of his loved ones will come to an end and die. V. — Jesus loves poverty and pain too much to have not appeared in the form of the poor and the infirm.

Saint John of God meets one day in the square a half-dead man. He loaded him on his shoulders, carried him according to his custom to the hospital, stretched out on a bed, and then he began, as he did to all others, to wash his feet. But when he bows down to kiss them, he sees to him a luminous and resplendent wound that makes him recognize the crucified Redeemer; and, raising his eyes on his divine face, he hears these words coming out of his mouth: "John, it is to me that is done all the good that the poor receive in my name; it is I who extend my hand to the alms that they are given; I who am clothed in their clothes; I whom you wash your feet every time you give this service to a poor or sick person."He said and disappeared, leaving the soul of his servant in extreme admiration for such a favor, and filling the house with such great clarity, that the sick jump out of their Hit, shouting: Fire! to the fire! until the blessed come and calm them, and assure them that the fire is already extinguished!

Saint John Columbini?, who founded the order of the Jesuates in Italy, still being in the bond of marriage, encounters one day an infective and disgusting leper, takes him on his shoulders, bowing sometimes one of his hands, sometimes the other. Far from feeling any bad smell or repulsiveness, he experiences ineffable joy and love transports. Arriving in his house, 1l puts the poor leper in a bath, washes his ulcers, and drinks with delights of this disgusting water in appearance. Then he carried his treasure into his wife's bed; for he had long been used to lying on aisles. His wife, at first indignant and intractable, calls against these excesses of charity; but, at reflection, and under the action of an inner grace, returning to more human feelings, she enters, during the absence of her husband, into the room where the leper was resting, and behold, she aspires an exquisite smell, as she had never felt. She understands as soon as something supernatural and divine happens there, reproaches her hardness, melts in tears, and dares to advance to this mysterious sick person, she runs to warn her husband. When they returned, the divine leper had disappeared, leaving the places that he had just left embalmed with heavenly perfumes.

We pass in silence the many traits we have gathered in the history of the Saints: we must limit ourselves; but let us be allowed to report again a charming fact whose account we borrow from the Life of the Venerable Mother Agnes de Langeac, by M. de Lantages!.

"The Son of God himself, in his own person and in the form of a pilgrim, came to her, one day when she finished her prayer in the Church of Our Lady, in this chapel of the Holy Crucifix where God pleased to fill her with special consolations. As he asked the alms with great grace, "My friend," said Agnes, "I have nothing."To which this divine priest, whom she did not know under this figure, left him: "At least, if you cannot do bodily alms, do spiritual alms, and say aloud for me a Ave Maria."This way of speaking marked the authority of the One who was before her. Agnès immediately began, with a loud voice of devotion and charity all together, to say the Ave Maria, that the frenzy listened attentively to the sacred word of Jesus, and at the moment when she uttered it he fainted, or rather, said the author of the Admirable Life, simmered in the depths of her soul; for suddenly she felt a so violent fire of divine love lighted in her heart, that she thought of dying from it. She did not then seek to know from her angel what this pilgrim was, as she was not curious about the extraordinary and hidden things."This pilgrim, the author has already said, was the Son of God himself, the Savior Jesus.

VI. — The ordinary theatre of these manifestations is the adorable sacrament of the Eucharist, the host and the chalice, the altar and the tabernacle. The blood was seen escaping from the host as from the body of a victim; the Holy Victim herself was seen in the attitude of crucifixion and death; it was seen in all the brightness of beauty and glory, as a child, of a young man, of man as he appeared on the earth, passing from the altar or from the hands of the priest in souls, attesting his presence by a particular flavor which attaches itself to the host, and brings in the soul an incredible suavity!, or as a delicious flame burning the mouth and burning the heart?; and in other forms still.

We cannot discuss the details of these wonders. They abound in the lives of the saints, especially those of Saint Philip of Neri*, of St Pascal Baylon!, of the Blessed Angel of Foligno, of St Colette, of St Julienne of Mount Cornillon, of the Venerable Ida of Eouvain, of St Catherine of Siena, of St Térèse and of an infinity of others.

VII. — The Saviour thus manifests himself by outward and bodily apparitions; but 1l is even more often revealed in imaginary visions to souls raised to contemplation.

The story of Saint Paul, narrated in the book of ACTS, contains two visions of this nature. For the first time, Jesus Christ appears to this apostle in vision, and tells him to strengthen him against the obstinacy of the Jews of Corinth and in his resolution to preach the gospel to the Gentiles: "Do not fear, but speak and do not shut up, for I am with you." 5 Later, after the tribulations that are brought to him in Jerusalem, the Lord presents himself again to Paul at night, and addresses these words to him: "O O courage, for as you have borne witness in Jerusalem, you must also bear witness to me in Rome." It is no doubt that these apparitions made during the night, and in vision, according to the expression of the text, are not those that we have called imaginary.

These are also the scenes of the Revelation, where the Sauvour reveals itself to Saint John, especially in this first vision where, "in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, the sacred writer sees someone who looked like the Son of man, clothed in a long robe, and girded beneath the chest of a golden belt; the head and white hair as the whitest wool and as the snow; the bright eyes as a flame of fire, the feet like brass in the furnace, and his voice as the voice of the great waters; having seven stars on his right hand, and

1 BB. 13 april., t. 11.

2 RAYMOND DE CAPOUE, 30 april., t. 12.

3 Additions à sa Vie.

4 Cf. Gorres, Mystique, 1. 3, e. 11, t. To, p. 401, ed. in-12. in his mouth a sharp two-edged sword; the shining face as the sun in his strength, and seeing the evangelist prostrate before him in the fear of death, said to him, "Do not be afraid, I am the first and the last. I live and have been dead, and behold, I am alive in the centuries of the ages; and I have the keys of death and hell."Moreover, it is in the form of the Lamb that the Victim of Calvary appears to him, Lamb always in the attitude of immolation, to whom the worships and praises of heaven are addressed to go up from him to the Holy Trinity, and in whom begin and consume the joys and beatitudes of the eternal weddings?.

The forms of Our Lord, in these mental representations, are innumerable. All those we have indicated are there, and many more. He appears as a child to a large number of holy souls, especially to Marguerite Mary of the Blessed Sacrament ÿ, a Carmelite nun, who inaugurated the pious devotion to the holy childhood of the Saviour; outside the poor, to Saint Martin, in the presence of his angels, to whom he said, showing them half of the chlamyd given the day before by this future thaumaturge of Gauls to a poor beggar half naked: "It is Martin the catechumene who covered me with this garment";" as a sweet lamb to Saint John, we have just said; to Saint Elizabeth of Sconauge!; to Saint Lutgarde*, who receives him on his chest and can apply his mouth to his mouth; to Saint Francis of Assisi *, under the appearances of a crucified Seraph who gives him the sacred stigmatism.

It is mainly in these kinds of visions that he reveals himself partially, showing sometimes his hands and wounds, sometimes his adorable face, other times his open side and his inflamed heart. We have on these assertions the precious testimony of Saint Teresus, who devotes the xxvin and xxix chapters of her life to describing this kind of visions, of all those that she received, the most frequent.

"It was one day in prayer," she wrote*, "it pleased Our Lord to show me his divine hands; the beauty was so great, that I had no words to express it. I was seized with fear, as I am always when Our Lord begins to give me some supernatural grace. A few days later, I saw his divine figure, and I remained completely absorbed. I could not understand why this adorable Saviour, who later had to appear to me as a whole, was gradually showing up. Since then, I have understood that it was to conform to my natural weakness. May his goodness be blessed forever! So much glory gathered, such a vile and so despicable creature could not have sustained it; this compassionate Saviour knew it, and that's why he gradually had it... One day of Saint Paul, during the Mass, this very holy Humanity presented itself to me as a whole, as it is portrayed risen, with an inconceivable beauty and majesty.... Although this vision is sensitive, I did not see it, nor any other, from the eyes of the body, but only from the eyes of the soul."

"For two and a half years," continues Saint Terèse, "God has very often favored me with this vision; for more than three years it has been less ordinary... Our Lord almost always represented himself to me in the state of his resurrection, and likewise in the Holy Host. Sometimes, to comfort me, when I was in tribulation, he showed me his wounds: sometimes I appeared in the cross, in the garden, more rarely crowned with thorns; or carrying his cross; and I repeat, for the necessities of my soul or those of other persons; but, in any way that I appeared, his flesh was always glorified."

The most ordinary representation is that of the mysteries of the life and death of the Saviour. Saint Elizabeth of Sconauge ? contemplating in turn the scenes of the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Circumcision, the Epiphany, the Presentation to the Temple, and mainly those of the Passion. The same revelations reproduce more or less explicit and numerous in the Brigitte?, the Angèle de Foligno #, the Madeleine de Pazzi*, the Osanne de Mantuef, the Marie d'Oignies?, the Marguerite-Mane Alacoque*,

1 Sa Vie, ch. 29.

2 EoBerT, BB. 18 jun., t. 24, p. 511, 516.

3 Révélations.

4 ARNAUD, BB. 4 jan., t..1, p. 200-203.

$ V. Puccmnt, BB. 25 maïi, t. 49, p. 220 et seq.

6 H. My soul was in Jerusalem, and saw, step by step, all the mysteries of the Passion of Christ.

7 Jacques DE Virry, BB. 23 jun., t. 25, p. 567.

8 Life and works of B. M.-Marie Alacoque, t.1,p: 47, 63,88; t. 2, p. 349, 497. It is narrated from Saint Alban*, the first martyr of England, that being still pagan, he saw in his dream the scenes of the Passion of the Redeemer, of his Death, of his Resurrection, of his Ascension and of his triumph unfold before his eyes, and that soon after being instructed by an apostle of the Gospel, Saint Amphibals, he received baptism and gloriously confessed the name of Jesus Christ.

All these visions express the mercy of the Savior Jesus for men. But it is one of which Saint Denis has kept our memory, and which seems to us a nonparella proof of the compassionate and inexhaustible tenderness of Man-God towards sinners. The reader will be grateful to quote it here, as it was told by the Areopagit in his letter to Demophilus.

"One day," he wrote, "that I was in Crete, I received hospitality at Saint Carpus, a man more than not an eminently proper to divine contemplation, by the extreme clarity of his soul. He never approached the Augustan celebration of mysteries without before, in the pious prayers of his preparation, being manifested to him some sweet vision. But he told me that once he had conceived a great sadness of what an unfaithful had diverted from the Church to atheism a man who was still celebrating his hilaries, that is, the joyful days after baptism. He had to, inspired by goodness, pray for both; with the help of the Saviour God convert one, and overcome the other by goodness; do not cease, throughout life and every day, to call upon their reason to bring them to the divine light, to clarify all their doubts, and, by the force of truth, to force them out of their miseries. But, strange thing, hitherto unheard of in this man, violently seized with bitter indignation, he lies down and falls asleep under the blow of this emotion, for it was evening.

"About midnight, when he used to wake up to praise God, he rose up, having tasted only a light and often interrupted sleep, still in trouble. Nevertheless, entering into trade with God, he engages in unfaithful sorrow, he gets angry, he says that it is unfair to let ungodly men live through the ways of the Lord. And saying that, he exhorts God to end without mercy by a lightning strike on the days of these two men at once. At these words, he suddenly believes that he saw the house where he was first shaken, and then divided into two by the dot, then a sharp flame glittering at his will, which from the top of the sky, through the seemingly pierced to day, descended to him; finally, the sky entered open, and at the bottom of the firmament Jesus, in the midst of a multitude of angels, in human form.

"Carpus, rising his eyes, contemplates this spectacle, which strikes him astonishment. Then, as he kissed them, he saw the ground excavated into a vast and dark abhorrent, and those men whom he had cursed stood in front of him, at the mouth of the abyss, trembling, the unhappy, falling there at every moment; for their feet already slide. From the bosom of the abyss crawl serpents towards them, who cling to their uncertain feet, sometimes spraining them, Islands press and pull them; and sometimes, teeth or tail, tear or caress them, striving by all means to drag them into the precipice. And all around, men, in concert with the snakes, assail, shake, push these unfortunates, which appear on the point of kiln, half of the will, half of the strength, forced and at the same time seduced by evil. Carpus rejoices at what he sees at his feet, and forgets the spectacle that is above his head. He is impatient and angry that these two men are not already rushed; he himself works to their fall, and his powerless efforts add to his anger and imprecations.

"At last he lifts his eyes, and sees again in heaven what he had already discovered there; only Jesus, moved with compassion on what is happening at the edge of the labime, leaves his heavenly throne, descends to these men and gives them his hand with kindness, while the angels, also coming to their aid, support them, who on one side, who on another.

"And Jesus said to Carpus: "With your already raised hand no more strikes than me; I am ready to suffer again "for the salvation of men, and that would be dear to me, except "the crime of other men. Besides, see if you like "better to stay with the snakes in the abyss, that's what-- "to fuck with God and the angels so good and so friends of the "men."

"That's what I have described, with the persuasion that it is the truth," said the end of this account, Saint Denis the Areopagit.

VIIL. — Enfin, Notre-Seigneur se manifeste également en vision intellectuelle !.

It can be admitted, with St Augustine and many others', that it appeared in this way to St Paul, on the way to Damascus, and later also in the temple, when he renews to him the mission of carrying the Gospel to the Gentiles; and it is likely from one or the other vision that the Apostle speaks, when he tells the Corinthians that he was delighted to the third heaven?, what everyone hears from an intellectual vision.

In her many and admirable intellectual visions, the Blessed Angel of Foligno was contemplating, not only the attributes of the divine nature and the splendors of the Augustus Trinity, but also the God made man, who drew his soul with ineffable tenderness, until he sometimes said, "You are myself, and I am yourself."She saw her eyes and face so soft turned towards her soul, to attract and embrace her with immense love to.

Saint Térèse knew these visions of Our Lord through the simple glance of the spirit, and she described them to us with his ordinary lucidity, to chapter xxvii of his life and to the sixth dwelling of the INTERNAL CHATEAU. Here's how she expresses herself in this last place #:

"While we do not think of a special favor, even though it has never come in the thought of meriting it, it happens that we feel near ourselves Jesus Christ our Lord, although we see it neither from the eyes of the body nor from the eyes of the soul. This vision is called intellectual, I don't know.

Of this kind was the vision of Paul, by which, on the road to Damascus, he beheld Christ the Lord calling to him and rebuking him. — Cf. Lorin, in Act. 1x, 3, p. 399.

I know a man... caught up in this way even to the third heaven, etc.

But in separation from that good already mentioned, I see God as man, and he draws the soul with gentleness, so that at times it says: Thou art I, and I am thou. And I see those eyes and that placid face of thine, so that it may embrace and draw my soul with immense closeness.

4 Chdt. intér., 5e Dem., ch. 8.

ae pourquoi. I know a person to whom God made this grace, with others whom I will bring back in the future, and who in the beginnings was very distressed, because, seeing nothing, she could not understand what it was. However, she was so sure that it was Our Lord who showed himself so, that she could not doubt it. Then she understood clearly that it was Our Lord who often spoke to her in the way I said, while, before receiving this favor, although she heard the words, she did not know who was speaking to her."

This vision of Saint Teresus, because it is such that it is, is those we have called indistinct. The Saviour still manifests himself with a clarity that not only attests to his presence, but reveals some aspect of himself. ‘ These were the visions that we have mentioned of St Paul and Blessed Angelus of Foligno: we refrain from citing other examples, to repeat the question which comes again here of the personal or impersonal character of these visions.

IX. — In accordance with the solutions already given, the intellectual visions assuming the real manifestation of the object, this apparition is always personal; therefore, in these kinds of visions, Our Lord is truly and personally present to the soul that contemplates it. Moreover, these manifestations, we have just said, are indistinct or they are clear, depending on whether they only attest to the presence of the Saviour or that they show some aspect of his being to be uncovered. In the first case, unless the truth of the

Al vision, we must admit that Jesus Christ is indeed present. In the second case, it would be strange if the Saviour were less present, when clearly seen, than when one simply had the knowledge and the certainty of his presence, without distinguishing anything in him from distinct and precise. It would logically follow this distinction, that one never sees more than when one sees the least, and that Jesus Christ is closer to us when he gives us the certainty of his presence than when he reveals something distinctly to us from himself. One must have the mind obsessed with preconceived ideas, to come, without opening one's eyes, to such dissonant conclusions.

X. — As for imaginary and bodily visions, the difficulty is quite different.

In comparison to the last, Suarez brings all interpretations back to one of the next three. According to the first!, Jesus Christ, since his Ascension, never came down from heaven, if not to appear sacramentally under the Eucharistic species. In this opinion, Christ's apparitions, reported by the Scriptures and tradition, must be considered merely imaginary, or performed by extrinsic and impersonal representations. Suarez was able to discover no Catholic doctor who expressly supports this interpretation, and he believes it difficult to defend it in relation to the apparitions of the Saviour to St Paul on the way to Damascus,

In 3 P.,q. 48,a. 4. — D. 51, sect. &, n. 3,t. 49, p. 985. In this matter I find there can be three ways of speaking. The first is that, from the time Christ ascended to heaven, he has never left it, nor has he appeared on earth in his own visible form, but only sacramentally, under the species of bread and wine... Non invenio hunce dicendi modum expresse traditum ab aliquo doctore catholico, nec mihi videtur posse commode defendi, præsertim propter ea quæ saint Pierre aux portes de Rome, à la très sainte Vierge au jour de l’Assomption : apparitions qu’il tient pour certaines. Saint Térèse!, however, seems to be in favour of this first opinion; but it is based, less on the revelations it would have received, than on the conclusions it draws from it.

After the second *, which Suarez describes as probable, Our Lord would sometimes have come out of heaven to appear for a very short time on earth, and immediately go back to the sojourn of glory. Based on this principle that a body cannot be simultaneously in several places, it affirms that when Our Lord is on earth, he is not at the same time in heaven; and since the presence of Man-God is, after the sight of God, the best part of the stay of the blessed, it is understood that absence can only be of short duration. This sentiment is attributed to Saint Thomas and several other renowned theologians.

Note, however, that while the Angelic Doctor expressly teaches that glorious Jesus Christ has come down sometimes bodily into the world, he does not explain on the point raised by the scholastics, namely: if he is absent from heaven during this earthly apparition; this conclusion, it is true, is in conformity with the principles which he professes elsewhere!

The third interpretation ? admits that Our Lord, since his ascension, has appeared from time to time on earth, personally and bodyly, without for this reason stopping being with the blessed. Suarez holds it as probable, and says that it was followed by John Mair or Major, and adopted by the apologists who had to support the real presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist against the heretics of the 19th century.

After this presentation, Suarez considers simply and absolutely true the opinion that Our Lord has sometimes descended from heaven on earth; but he dares decide whether in these apparitions the Saviour comes out of heaven to go to earth, or whether he is present in both places at once.

It is well known that the scholastics are singularly repugnant to the prodigy of multilocation, and that, for this reason, they reject or restrict as few as possible the actual appearances of glorified Jesus Christ. Suarez points out as beyond dispute only the three visions ... [gap] ...being corporeally present there, but appearing in some manner; the contrary appears from this, that the Apostle himself says, in 1 Corinthians 15:8, to confirm the faith in the resurrection: "Last of all, as to one born out of due time, he was seen also by me." This vision indeed would not prove the truth of the resurrection, unless the true body of Christ itself had been seen by him.

13 P., q. 76, a. 8.

2 SUAREZ, În 3 P.,q. 48, a. 4. — D. 51, sect. 4, n. 5: Tertius modus dicendi, of which we have spoken. Cardinal Bona {except that the apparition made to St Paul, too expressly affirmed as personal by Scripture to allow it to be heard differently, and Scaramelli? goes so far as to say that the constant and uniform opinion of the holy Fathers is, that, with the exception of the case of St Paul, the Redeemer has never come down from heaven but to clothe the Eucharistic species.

As far as the Fathers are concerned, this assertion seems highly questionable. Most tell the facts referred to here in terms which, far from invalidating the real presence of Our Lord, seem to attest expressly. If we except Saint Gregory?, who seems favorable to the later sentiment generally adopted by theologians, we do not know in the patristic period any doctor who formally challenged the personal character of Christ's apparitions. We do not deny that there is one; but, we believe we know enough of the Fathers' writings to dare to affirm, the feeling that the Italian author imputes them is not common among them.

The scholastic theologians are even more severe when it comes to apparitions that are so frequently performed, as we have said, in the mystery of the Eucharist. Those who ignore any personal character to the sensitive visions of Jesus Christ, are consistent with themselves by refusing to admit it here. But the very ones who are less exclusive, dispute that the manifestations that are taking place around the Sacrament of the altar are real and personal.

Saint Thomas ‘ formally pronounces himself in favour of the negative. Distinguishing between the rapid and special appearances, and those seen by many for a considerable time, he explains the former by a miraculous impression on the eyes of the visionaries, and the others by an objective modification of the sacramental species. In the latter case, there are some who think, continues the Holy Doctor, that Jesus Christ becomes physically present; but he does not taste this conclusion. In his opinion, the whole miracle then consists in a change that reaches only accidents, which, instead of presenting bread and wine, offer the appearances of flesh, blood, and others that meet in these visions; e-mails These appearances are no more the true body of the Saviour than the ordinary accidents of bread and wine.

Suarez treats the issue in the same direction, and declares that this is the common opinion among theologians?. St Thomas adds further that if the body of Jesus Christ appeared miraculously in a form other than that of bread and wine, the priest who offers the divine sacrifice should not consume the holy species, unless they had returned to their first summer. Suarez? makes the same remark, and quotes Pascase's testimony on such a fact.

XI. — Let us simply say, what puts scholastic theologians to torture is to have to multiply the presence of the Saviour with his natural body, something incompatible with the Aristotelian notions on space and on bodies; or to bring him out of heaven, from the society of the blessed, in favor of a traveling soul here below, which seems exorbitant and unreasonable. All this discomfort is therefore caused by the concern to align the facts with preconceived systems. Is it not the opposite course of action that should be followed? The facts are what they are; it is to philosophy to conform to them and to interpret them without destroying them, and not to the facts to soften, to disappear even, to complacent. to a philosophy.

More accurate and brighter notions of the nature of the body and of the expanse make it easy to conclude that Jesus Christ can be physically present in several places at once. These notions, we could give them if this was the place; we confine ourselves, in a theological and peaceful work, to maintaining the facts and pointing out the false or problematic assertions that are put forward to alter or contradict them.

First, we assume that heaven is a precise, determined place: we answer that this is a questionable assertion; for we can admit that heaven is everywhere where a soul has the clear sight of God and the beatific love that results from it.

It is then constructed in principle that the same body cannot simultaneously occupy two points of distant space between them. We answer with Suarez' that the multilocation is possible; that it explains without effort the affirmations of Scripture concerning the apparitions of Jesus Christ, that it is a witness given to his majesty, to the sovereignty of his glory, to his goodness towards men; and, - even better than with Suarez, we respond by showing a secular, daily, a thousand and a thousand times repeated actuation of this prodigy: Our Lord present under the Eucharistic veils in as many points as there are consecrated hosties and that there are points in each host: one ceases to be Catholic when one rejects this act of multilocation. If Jesus Christ is condemned to come out of heaven to act of presence elsewhere, it will be necessary to say, or that the Eucharist is consumed and resides in heaven, or that the whole heaven is in the Eucharist, or that the Savior is no longer in heaven since he is in the Eucharist. We cut short these dissonant alternatives by admitting that he is both in heaven and in the Eucharist, in the thousand places where this divine Sacrament is located.

One thing surprises us all, is to see the reality of the Saviour's apparitions around the Eucharist, or rather in the Eucharist itself. Our Lord is present here under these appearances, — it is a dogma of our faith, — warning us of his presence by the surviving species of bread and wine; and it is there that it is defended, by Aristotle, to actually occur in a form different from that of bread and wine, even in the form of its own glorious body, or even less inconceivable than that of the Eucharistic species.

No doubt there must be a miracle here; for under the present conditions freely established by God and therefore to which he can derogate, the bodies do not simultaneously occupy several separate points from space; but when it comes to appearances, is it not already in the miracle? We recite and object that there is not only a miracle there, but a great and very great miracle, which must be used only at the last end. To this it is easy to answer, first, that whatever great miracle is, please the Saviour to accomplish in his purposes of mercy and love over souls, there is no point in protesting or contradicting, either by formal negations, or by interpretations that suppress the best part of the prodigy; secondly, that one exaggerate the prodigy itself, because of the incompatibility it presents with the notions of the School on bodies and on space; in essence, the contingent law of the uniting is of the same order as that of gravity and the other laws that govern the material world.

All of these considerations make us look contrary to the view of the scholastics. Unless there are serious indications that the scene is due to the intervention of angels, we are inclined to believe that the body appearances of the Saviour are truly and personally accomplished by the Saviour himself.

Is that to say that angels have no part in the material formation of the outward appearances of Jesus Christ? We do not claim it absolutely, although it seems simpler and more reasonable to admit, with Suarez!, that the true and personal appearances of Our Lord must be imputed to him as a whole.

XII. "And imaginary visions, what shall we say?"

In themselves, these visions of the Saviour are nothing personal, since they are consumed in the spirit; but we can ask ourselves by whom they are produced, by God, by Jesus Christ himself, or by the angels?

The last hypothesis is generally accepted*?. However, here again, we do not see any repulsiveness for Our Lord to determine these kinds of visions by immediate action which constitutes a true presence. To challenge this power in itself in the Incarnate Word would be more than a temerity; and to challenge it because of the difficulties of multilocation is to reproduce objections to which we believe we have sufficiently answered.

What impels us towards this solution is, on the one hand, the persuasion where are the holy souls who have Joui of these favors, to have seen Jesus Christ in these various forms; and on the other, the declaration of the theologians and masters of spiritual life, that they can, and, according to others, that they must render to Our Lord, in these visions, the worship which is due to his person. When Saint John, in Revelation, * throws himself at the feet of an angel to worship him, believing that the voice he has just heard is that of the divine Mediator, he lifts him up and says to him, "Do not do this; I am a servant like you and like your brothers who have the testimony of Jesus: worships God. "The angels, whom it is said to hold the place of Our Lord in the visions, should do the same; or should it not, at least, decree that these homages fall falsely, and that he conCHAPTER VII

THE OBJECTS OF THE SURNATURE VISION

THE Bienheureuse VIERGE MARIE Most of the pilgrimages in honour of the Most Holy Virgin have for

légende quelque apparition. — Manifestations spéciales à presque tous

founders or reformers of religious orders. — Faveurs accordées

à quelques saints privilégiés. — Formes diverses de ces apparitions. —

Leur caractère personnel.

I. — Below the Incarnate Word, but at the top of the celestial hierarchies, shines the Virgin Mary.

May the Blessed Mother of the Saviour appear in bodily, imaginary and intellectual vision, all the authors are unanimous in recognizing him, and the history of the saints presents countless testimonies.

Most of the pilgrimages established in his honour have as legend, at their origin, an apparition of the Mother of God‘. We can cite Notre-Dame del Pilar or du Pilier, in Zaragoza, Spain; Notre-Dame de la Lumière, near Lisbon, Portugal; Notre-Dame des Anges, in Puy, France; Notre-Dame des Ermites, in Switzerland; Notre-Dame des Neiges, in Rome. Our century is perhaps the richest in these kinds of wonders: in a few years,

1 Cf. Hamon, Notre-Dame de France, 6 vol. in-8°. — P. Pome, the Triple we had the appearances of the Salette, Lourdes, Pontmain, and others that we refrain from designating in order not to prejudge the decision of the competent authority.

II. — It is rare that the Blessed Virgin does not intervene in the holy institutions that illustrate and fertilize the Church. It has appeared to almost all founders or reformers of religious orders, either to tell them their mission and to prepare them for it, to encourage them to continue it or to reward their glorious work.

Let us cite some examples among so many others that we regret not being able to mention here.

In the same night!, the Mother of God shows herself soft and radiant with light to Saint Peter Nolasque, Saint Raymond of Pegnafort and James I, king of Aragon, and makes them known that they will be pleasing to her divine Son and to herself, by founding an order to redeem the captives of the Turks' servitude. This was the origin of the order of Our Lady of Merci.

Saint Felix of Valois, who founded, together with Saint John of Matha, the order of the Most Holy Trinity for the redemption of the captives, was on the part of the Most Holy Virgin the object of the most insignificant favors, among which the most remarkable are the following two, which he received at the end of his life.

_ On the eve of the Nativity of Notre-Dame, the brother charged with this som having forgotten, by a special arrangement of God, to ring mornings, the Saint, who was watching, according to his custom, and who was warning the hour, went down to the choir at midnight. As he entered, he saw in the middle the Blessed Virgin clothed in a garment where the cross of order shone, and around her the same vet angels. As soon as he entered, the Mother of God, whose face projected admirable clarity, began the service, which was continued by the angels with heavenly harmony. Felix mixed his voice with these concerts, and his soul filled with joy and the holy desires of heaven. When the vision had disappeared, he remained on his face such a splendour that he could not hide the cause of it from his religious, and he told them about it to animate them again in virtue. It was like the docks of the sky. At some point an angel came to warn of his next death, This nanny seemed to give him strength first, by the joy she gave him. But he soon felt near his end, and realized that God's promise would be fulfilled. Only one regret remained for her was to leave her orphaned children; but on the last day of her life, the divine Virgin appeared to her and said to her, "I will be their mother."

One day St.Dominic? extended his watch in the church, according to his custom, heaven opened to his eyes, and he saw the Son of God sitting at the right hand of his Father, rising up in his anger to strike all sinners of the earth and exterminate all the ungodly. His appearance was frightening and his hand waved against the world three swords: from the moon he cut down the alder heads of the proud; he plunged the other into the bowels of the avares, and with the third he pierced the flesh of the voluptuous. No one tried to bow her indignation, when the sweet Virgin, her Mother, presented herself to him, and kissing her feet, she urged him to spare those whom he himself had redeemed, and to temper justice by mercy. "Do you not see," said the Son, "all the insults that are made to me?" Will my justice leave so many crimes unpunished? "You who know everything," says the divine Mother, "you know that mercy is the way by which you will bring them back to you. I have a faithful servant whom you will send into the world to tell them your word, and they will return to you, the Savior of all men. I've got another one I'll give her for help, and she'll work the same. "Your sweet face appeases my anger," the Saviour says, "but show me the workers whom you propose for this great work."Then the Virgin Mary presented in turn to her Son Saint Dominique and Saint Francis, and the Lord Jesus said to her Mother on cha-. cun d`eux: "Let him do with zeal and fidelity what you have said." Saint Dominique carefully looked at this companion who was given to him during the vision and whom he had not seen until then. The next day, he met him in a church, recognized him, threw himself at his neck, covered him with holy kisses, clasped him in his arms, saying, "You are my companion; you will walk with me; hold us together, and no one will prevail against us." Then he told him the vision he had had.

"The kiss of Dominique and Francis has been passed from generation to generation on the lips of their seed," said Fr. Lacordaire ‘. A young friendship still unites the Preacher Brothers with the Minor Brothers... They spread together in the world as they spread and intertwine the joyful branches of two trunks of age and strength; they acquired and shared the affection of the peoples, as two twin brothers rest on the bosom of their only mother."

This unique and common mother is the Virgin Mary, the first teacher and constant protector of these two large religious families.

As soon as she was five or six years old, Blessed Jeanne of Valois had a memorable appearance, which suggested to her the institution of which she was to enrich the Church. As she asked with a tender devotion to the Mother of God to make known to her what she could do more pleasantly to her heart, Mary daigned to appear to her, and addressed these prophetic words to her: "Jane, my beloved daughter, before coming out of this life, you will found in my honour a religion that will be a great subject of joy for me and my Son."It was to be the order of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or of the Annonciade.

Saint Térèse, the famous reformer of Carmel, received from the Most Holy Virgin, whom she regarded as her mother, the most insignificant favors. From the beginning of the reform, she had a vision that strengthened her courage and confidence. The divine Mother appeared to her, accompanied by her glorious husband Saint Joseph, that the saint honored a particular worship. They put on it with a dazzling dress of whiteness and light, and hanged a very beautiful gold necklace on his neck, where a high-priced cross hung. "This gold and these stones were so different from what we see down here, that there is no comparison to be made, and the imagination cannot conceive anything like it. It was also impossible to understand the fabric of this dress, and to give any idea of its whiteness; next to it, it can be said that all that is most brilliant in nature is black as soot. The beauty of Our Lady, St.Terèse continues, "was comparable, although I did not notice anything special in its features; I only saw that the whole of his face was lovely. She was dressed in white, with a wonderful splendour that rejoiced Ja saw, instead of dazzling. For the glorious Saint Joseph, I did not see him so clearly, although I knew that he was there, as in those visions I spoke of, where it is only known that the object is present. As for Notre-Dame, she seems to me in all the flower of youth. After they had spent a few moments with me, giving in my soul a happiness that she had not yet felt and that she would never have wanted to leave, I saw them ascending to heaven with a multitude of angels."

The first year that Terèse was prioress of the monastery of the Incarnation of Avila, his first care, as reported by Ribera, was to place in the choir, on the seat reserved for the prioress, a beautiful statue of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and to put in her hands the keys of the house. One evening, during the singing of the Salve, she saw the Mother of God, surrounded by a multitude of angels, going down to the stall of the Prioress, putting herself in the place of the statue, which disappeared in the eyes of the saint, then turning to her and telling her: "You had a happy thought of melturing me in this place; I will be present to the praises that the nuns of this monastery will sing in the honor of my Son, and I will offer them to her."

Even today, among the Carmelites of Avila, we see, holding in his hands the keys of the monastery, this statue of Notre-Dame du Mont-Carmel, to which Seraphic Terèse referred the title and the honours of superiority.

"Another day it was Saint Teresus who spoke, while after Complies we were all in prayer at the choir, our Maitress appeared to me in a very great glory and clothed in a white coat, under which it seemed to shelter us all; and I understood to what high degree of glory the Lord was to raise up the nuns of this house."

When building the seminary of Saint-Sulpice, Mr. Olier* went, according to his custom, with M. de Bretonvilliers, to consult with the Most Holy Virgin, at Notre-Dame de Paris, and submit her plan to her. The Mother of God made her appear, holding in her hands the model of the building that he had to build. "Monday, 22 March," reports he himself, "having gone to Notre-Dame to submit to him the enterprise of our building and to know if it would have pleased him, "it pleased this divine Mistress, in her ordinary goodness, to appear to us, carrying in her hands the model of the building that she gave me to take charge of it. I didn't dare accept it, being very unworthy and not having enough to undertake it. I begged her to put him in the hands of him who was with me; but her goodness showed me that she wanted me to take him to execute him."

HI. — It would be sweet to us, if time and our purpose allowed us, to be able to tell here, we will not say all the manifestations of the Blessed Virgin Mary: they are innumerable; but some of the most marked, made by this divine Mother to certain privileged souls: to the angelic Stanislas Kostka, for example; to the Blessed Réginald, companion of St. Dominique; to Mary of Agréda, who, alone, received more favors than several other saints of the most favored together, if we must add faith to her CITY MystiQuE or to the Life of the Most Holy Virgin, written in a way under the dictate of the Most Holy Virgin herself. Let us at least be allowed to quote some features of the life of Mother Agnes of Jesus: they will suffice to make heard the holy familiarities that Mary grants to the souls who honor and love.

"By the very deep respect that Mother Agnes has always had for the greatness, for holiness, for the sovereignty of the Queen of the universe," said the historian of this admirable virgin, "she has never qualified herself as her very humble slave; but it will appear, by what we are about to report, that the Mother of Mercy often treated her as her very dear daughter.

"Almost every time this humble and loving slave of Mary cast her eyes on the side of the holy place where her divine Mistress lived (the angelic church of Puy), and where she had received so many graces, she saw at the same time a star, much brighter than the others, above the bell tower. And once, among other things, she saw at the same time the Most Holy Virgin in the midst of the air, clothed in blue, having the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown composed of twelve stars.

"Another time, being in the room of her prioress, and looking with her ordinary feelings through a window that was on the side of this beloved place, she began to consider some of the incomparable favors of the Mother of God, and all of a sudden she felt pierced in the heart of a trait of divine love, so violently that she fell by "This holy wound held her ill for more than fifteen days, during which she experienced that a very cooking pain, which she endured throughout the body, was a participation of the pains of purgatory. She was comforted in this disease by a visit she had to make to her great and good Maitress...

"The consolation that such a great favor had caused to this admirable sick woman was changed from that very day into a great pain of mind, when, accounting to her confessor of what had happened in this apparition, he testified to her, to mortify her, that he did not believe anything of it: "For, "what appearance," he said to her, "that the Queen of Angels of heaven "to enter a place as dirty as "your room, and want to visit a creature "as miserable as you are?" This speech greatly troubled her, renewing her the great fears that she often had to be deceived. The Queen of Peace could not suffer her handmaiden for a long time in this anxiety. She sent him an angel, who assured him that it was truly the Blessed Virgin that had appeared to him, and the same one that she carried so deeply engraved in her heart.

"The Most Holy Virgin appeared again to her beloved Agnes on a day of her Immaculate Conception, after the midnight prayer, in a very compelling way. This Queen of heaven, holding a crown of roses, said to her, "See, my daughter, the beautiful crown which the thorns of your afliclions formed; I want to give it to you." At this word, the humble Agnes withdrew a little, and bowing down, more spirit than body: "My dear Mother," she replied, "I don't want it, please. What have I endured to deserve crowns?"The Mother of God urged her for some time to accept it, saying to her several times, "Take, my daughter."But she persisted in her refusal with such cordial humility, that her divine Master wished to testify that she had approved it; for, by disappearing, she left the room and the surrounding places so filled with the smell of the roses of paradise, that the nuns, all the next day, continually felt in the monastery a scent of roses, quite otherwise sweet than the one who exhales from the most exquisite flowers of the earth. "When she told me this vision," said Fr. Panassière, I said to her: "Since the Blessed Virgin urged you so much to take this crown, you had to take it. "I, Father, have crowns!" said Agnes, "I do not want them. I'm too miserable to deserve such rewards. What work have I done to remove such crowns, and especially from such hands?"

"It would take a whole volume to bring back all the favors our virgin of the Queen of Heaven received," said the author, in closing this chapter. This true Mother of mercy visited her, blessed her, comforted her in her afflictions, caressed her in her jubilations, healed her in her diseases, reassured her in her fears, protected her in her dangers, and gave her witness of a very special choice at all times."

These favors, granted to the venerable prioress of Langeac, meet in a multitude of other saints; but we must stop there these sweet accounts, to come to the various forms in which these delicious manifestations are carried out, and to the examination of their personal character.

IV. — When these visions are of the intellectual order, sometimes Mary appears to the eyes of the mind in the beauty that the blessed admires, sometimes she reveals her prerogatives, such as her status as Queen of heaven and earth, the power of her intercession, or the various mysteries of her mortal and glorious life: her immaculate conception, her birth, her divine matermté, her purification at the temple; her compassion at Calvary, her assumption and the other circumstances of her life, her death and her triumph. The revelations made to Mary of Agréda seem to have been, for the most part, this way.

These mysteries can also be seen in imaginary visions. There are many examples among contemplatives, among others, in Saint Elizabeth of Sconauge, the Blessed Osanne of Mantua?, the venerable Mary of Oignies5. These mental manifestations usually represent the Augustus Virgin in the brightness of glory, resplendent with light, as the Holy Teresus saw in the apparitions that we have reported, or under the outsides of modesty and gentleness that she had on earth. Most often she holds the child Jesus between her arms, to recall what makes her greatness and power. It was also seen in the pure form of the dove #, under the shape of a brilliant star, and under other emblems that express the purity, the fullness of grace, the sweet sovereignty of his empire.

Body appearances can take on all these appearances.

V. — Are these manifestations of the Most Holy Virgin Mary personal or simply imputative?

We have already said that the intellectual vision carries with it the presence of the object perceived by the mind, under penalty of digging between the real world and the mental world an abyss that no effort of logic can pass.

For the outward apparitions, what we have said about Our Lord applies entirely to his most holy Mother. Under the rule of an agreed notion of space, most scholastics do not see that a body can be found simultaneously in two different places, and they rightly believe that Mary should not desert the heavenly court in all terms, and deprive the elect of her presence. Suarez! admits the absolute possibility of multilocation, even for the Blessed Virgin, but he sees it as an unparalleled miracle that must be used only in the absence of any other explanation. We repeat, these are scruples and exaggerations that we are not obliged to share. Bilocation is a miracle like another; and, if it is a great miracle, such facilities can be given to the Mother of God in behalf of her friends. We saw Mother Agnes greatly attriterate when her confessor told her, with the intent of humiliating her, that there was no appearance that the Queen of Angels had come down from heaven to visit such a cheap creature, and this divine Queen sent an angel to her faithful servant to ensure that she had indeed appeared to her. This persuasion is that of all holy souls honored with these favors, and their testimony seems decisive. And this persuasion extends to even imaginary visions, as well as attests to the homages which one hastened to render to the Mother of God in these kinds of encounters, it seems logical to conclude to us the real presence of the very Holy Virgin Up in these mental representations.

Assuming them true, it remains to decide how to carry out these personal manifestations of the Virgin Mary.

In external visions, Mary appears with her own body or in a foreign representative form. In the first case, it is this glorious body that manifests itself in the same way that Our Lord showed his disciples after his resurrection. In the second, it can be admitted, in accordance with the traditional interpretation, that angels help to form these external appearances, which they provide by the combination of material elements the veils which surround the Blessed Virgin and through which she accuses her presence, although it seems just as natural to us to attribute these external forms to the Most Holy Virgin herself, exercising, to the point where the vision takes place, the action of space which would produce there, if it were real, the body whose appearance she takes on; just as Our Lord, in the Eucharist, makes succeed the action of his own body to the action of bread and wine which has disappeared. Demons can achieve such effects: why should they be forbidden to the Queen of the World?

A similar action on the imagination would also explain the mental representations: Undoubtedly, the excited images in the sensitive part of the soul will not be the very person of the Virgin Mary more than the external appearances under which she manifests herself; but both, if they are assumed to be due to an immediate and personal action on her part, attest to her presence. It does not reveal itself, it is true, as it is; but in reality it is there, and that is enough for the apparition to be said personal. CHAPITRE VIII

THE OBJECTS OF THE SURNATURE VISION

THE ANGES Angels manifest themselves in intellectual vision, — imaginary, — corperelle. — Nature and shape of the bodies they take on. — The circumstances in which they appear. — 1 they appear at the altar during the holy sacrifice and distribute the Holy Eucharist. — They warn God's friends of the hour of death, attend their last moments, and carry their souls to heaven. — They visibly fight the enemies of God and his saints, and engage in battles. — What angels are susceptible to these missions? — The three appointed in Scripture: Michel, Gabriel and Raphael. The Guardian Angels — Their Ordinary Intervention. — Nouveaux anges gardiens donnés à quelques âmes.

I. — Christian theology makes the greatest contribution to angels in supernatural apparitions. These heavenly spirits are God's messengers, and most extraordinary interventions in the world of creatures are accomplished through their ministry. The facts are innumerable, and they cannot, as a whole, be revoked in doubt by anyone who has some tincture, even the lightest, of religious history.

First, it is indisputable that they can be the subject of an intellectual vision. This kind of vision is even the most proportionate, and, indeed, the only connatural to the immateriality of these pure spirits. If, in fact, it occurs less often than the other two, it is because they are better suited to the sensitive nature of man, to whom these manifestations are addressed. However, there is more than one example. The Savior Jesus and his most holy Mother rarely appear without this escort of angels. Saint Teresus, in an apparition that we have reported, lives around the Blessed Virgin a multitude of "heavenly spirits, not in a sensitive form, but by a simple look at the mind, because, she tells us, "Ja vision was intellectual."

Il. — After intellectual revelation, the most accommodated to the nature of angels is that which is accomplished in imagination. As long as they take only ideal forms in our mind, it seems that they do not yet lose their quality of pure spirits.

The mysterious scale® shown to Jacob during his sleep, and along which the angels of God ascended and descended, is the first and most memorable example expressly mentioned in the Scripture of imaginary apparition accomplished by the angels; but he is not the only one. More than once we see the heavenly spirits come to proclaim the divine wills to men, either during their sleep, as to lie # fleeing the anger of Jezebel, falling asleep discouraged in the desert and awakened twice by an angel; or in mere vision, as happens to several prophets, especially Daniel {, Zacharias, St John in Revelation f, and several other Persians; to St Joseph? four times warned by an angel of the purposes of the Lord, in the centurion Cornelius 8, to Saint The facts of this kind do not count in the history of the Saints: what is enough for us to report the following two.

Blessed Colette ‘ once had a vision similar to that of the patriarch Jacob. The inhabitants of a noble house made large alms to the community: the saint and her companions responded with fervent prayers. But the humble servant of God saw once, in the middle of the night, a great light shining upon this house, and a multitude of angels defending it against the incursions of evil spirits; then a golden ladder going from this house to heaven, and the angels ascending and descending, presenting to God the prayers of the Blessed and the alms which these benefactors made to her and her nuns. Colette called one of her sisters to show her this sweet vision; but she could not see it until her holy mother had asked for this grace for her.

While St Thomas of Aquinas?, barely twenty years old, was confined in a dungeon by the tyranny of his brothers who claimed to divert him from religious life, a creature of a perfidious beauty was introduced into his prison, having all the audacity of evil, with the hideous mission of defeating, by all means, the constancy of magnanim. young man. But he, who had already swore to have no other wife than the divine Wisdom, as soon as he saw this supremacy of the demon, though moved first in his sense of a previously unknown disorder, sarma d'un ison, and, full of noble anger, chased the infamous out of his cell. Then, from this lion marking a cross on the wall, he bows down and asks God with tears the grace of perpetual virginity. As he mingled his tears with his prayer, he fell asleep, and in his sleep he saw two angels descending from heaven, attaching to his kidneys a mysterious belt, saying to him: "From God we gird you, as you have asked, with the cord of chastity, which no effort of the devil can overcome from now on; what human virtue cannot deserve, divine goodness grants you as a pure gift."From this moment on, the angelic Doctor will no longer know the revolts of the flesh.

IT. — No matter how opposed the nature of pure spirits may appear to material forms, angels have often manifested themselves under these outsides to men, and the fact is so constant, that there would be a temerity badge to contest it.

In the Old Testament, heavenly messengers appear in human form to a multitude of characters: Abraham, Lot?, Jacob, Balaam, Joshua, Gideon 5, David, Tobie ® and many others.

In the New Testament, it is the angel Gabriel° who presents himself visibly to the Blessed Virgin Mary to announce to her the mystery of the Incarnation; the same angel predicts at Zacharias ‘° the birth of John the Baptist; the angels serve the Savior in the desert!; they appear to the holy women after the resurrection; he is an angel? who delivers the apostles and orders them to preach Jesus Christ in the temple; an angel still, who brings Peter out of his prison and accompanies him through the streets, to the gates of Jerusalem.

In front of these testimonies as many as formal, Suarez # does not hesitate to conclude that this truth has the very certainty of faith. History confirms these accounts of Scripture with new narratives. The Bollandists point out more than a hundred examples of these by dealing with Saint Michael and the other angels °

IV.—Angels therefore clothe their bodies, and warn men of their presence by striking their senses. The common feeling f of theologians is that they consist of bodies with the ambient air of places where they appear, and give them the form they want by a suitable arrangement and condensation. Ainsi s'exprime saint Thomas’. However, these heavenly spirits, as the same doctor expressly teaches, and with

1 Matth. xxvmi, 3. — Luc. xxiv, 4. — Joan. XX, 42. — 2 Act. y, 49. — 8 Act. xu, 7.

4 De Angelis, 1. k,C. 33, n. 3, p. 536 : Itaque veritas haec de fide certa est, nec in illa generatim sumpta, dubitatio aut difficultas occupied. he as a whole of the School, do not inform in the way of living bodies the bodies they possess: they move them, but do not animate them.

The forms by which they make themselves visible are diverse. Ordinary!, it is the human figure in its most beautiful and pure expression: the child with his grace and candour, the young man shining with strength, nobility and beauty. Most often they have wings, as we see in Scripture and as Christian legends attest, to the sublimitity of their contemplation and the promptness with which they carry out God's messages. It is believed that the majestic old man who approached Saint Justin and determined his conversion to Christianity, showing him in the divine prophecies the wisdom that this philosopher pursued with greed, was one of those heavenly spirits ©. I appeared outside poverty to several servants of God famous for their love for the poor, to Saint Isves #, for example, to the venerable Mary of Maillies#, to Saint Philip of Neriÿ. They are still revealed in the appearance of luminous globes, splendid flames f. In general, the appearances they borrow express grace, agility, strength, purity, light, love. Rarely they appear in the form of animals, and when this happens, it is by resorting to the most noble and graceful types, such as lamb {, dove or similar?.

V. — Heavenly messengers are at God's command, and God sends them according to his purposes of love, mercy, and righteousness upon men. They appear around the Word incarnate in Bethlehem, in the desert, in Gethsemane. They assist man in the smallest details of life#. To list all the circumstances in which they intervene is impossible. We will only mention the most ordinary.

In general, they preach and carry out the divine wills, help those who call them or call upon help from above; they advise, comfort and recreate.

We have seen that they form the ordinary escort of the Saviour and the Virgin Mary in their apparitions.

VI. — They surround the altar and often make themselves visible to the priest or holy souls during the action of the sacrifice. St. Chrysostom, in the report of St.Nil's contemporary and disciple, saw these blessed spirits surrounding the church, especially during the time of sacrifice; and in his Joy he confided it to his friends. As soon as the priest began the divine oblation, the blessed Powers descended, he said, from heaven, clothed with splendid ornaments; and, bare feet, attentive eyes, and inclined face, they surrounded the altar in the attitude of adoration, immobile and silent, until the consumption of the dreadful mysteries; and then, spreading in the sacred enclosure, they attended invisible OBJECTS OF THE VISION: THE ANGES 145 lie the bishops, priests and deacons while they distributed to the faithful the body and blood of the Savior.

From the day of his ordination until his death, Saint Samson! de Dol never sang Mass without seeing at his side the angels, who more than once broke with their hands the Eucharistic species. Blessed Boniface, bishop of Lausanne, was frequently attended at the altar by two angels. While St. Oswald#, bishop of York, still being only a simple priest, once said the Mass, the poor man who served suddenly saw, at the time of the offering, a man of a majestic and heavenly aspect, holding in his hands a small piece of bread of extreme whiteness, which he raised up to his head with great respect, and which gradually took extraordinary proportions. Seized of terror, he fled out of the church; but from time to time he entered the door to see what was going on at the altar: the mysterious assistant answered all the prayers, and served the holy priest until the end of the sacrifice. Saint Catherine of Bologna # heard one day the angels repeat the SANCTUS of the priest at Mass, with a suavity that delights her in ecstasy.

An angelic apparition often repeated is that where these blessed spirits bring holy communion to fervent souls, greedy with this heavenly bread.

The holy soldier Zozime ‘, martyred in Pisidia under Trajan, after having been subjected to horrific torture, had been in his prison for three days without having tasted any food, when he saw two children, or rather two angels, one of whom carried the bread of the Eucharist, and the other a vase full of water: "Take, they said to him, the gift that God sent to you."The martyr took the food offered to him, and then giving thanks: "I bless you, Lord," he exclaimed, because you had pity on your servant, and that, far from leaving me, you filled me with your heavenly food. I will praise and celebrate your glory and magnificence forever."When the day came, the president ordered that the martyr be brought before his court. Lozime appeared, with a cheerful face and no sign of fatigue, which cast the judge and the executioners into the stupor, who expected to find him exhausted by the torments and by the farm.

St Stanislas Kostka? received the same favor for the first time during a serious illness which he made in Vienna in the house of a Lutheran: two angels brought him the Saint Viatic, whom he vainly asked of men. Another time, between Augsburg and Dilingual, having entered a church that was on his way, to hear the Mass there and commune there, he soon became aware that he was in a Protestant temple. He felt an extreme pain in seeing the holy mysteries desecrated by heretics, and made them the most touching complaints to God. As he complained with a great abundance of tears, he saw a troupe of angels coming to him; one of them, who held the Eucharist in his hands, approached him with an air full of majesty, communicated him, and left him filled with Joy in the possession of Jesus Christ. The Church! recalls these wonders in the legend of the saint and to the secret of the Mass which she authorizes in her honor.

The saints who thus received the divine Eucharist through the ministry of heavenly spirits are in large numbers. Among many others, we can add to the names already mentioned those of Saint Bonaventure?, of the venerable Ida, Cistercian religious, of Saint Agnes of Montepulciano‘, of the Blessed Veronica of Binascos, of the venerable Mother Agnes of Jesus 6.

Sometimes angels escort the holy souls as they receive Our Lord or carry him with them. Blessed Lutgarde, having difficulty walking because of her weakness, was supported by two angels, who led her to the altar and brought her back to her place. The holy penitent Eudoce®, from Samaria, martyred to Ileliopolis under Trajan, before surrendering to the satellites who came to arrest him, hides in her womb a parcel of the divine Eucharist, and immediately she sees an angel walking before her, in the form of a young man dressed in white, carrying in her hands a torch whose 1 illuminates the steps of martyrdom in the deep darkness of the night, without the soldiers seeing neither the light nor the guide n1.

VII. — Ün other office than angels frequently render to God's friends is to warn them of their next death. We have already pointed out this fact, in the previous chapter, by speaking of the apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Saint Felix of Valois a few days before her death. It is also reported from Saint Simeon Stylite the Young, St Maximus martyr, St Guedas to, Abbé de Ruy in Brittany, St Aldegonde # and many others.

More frequently, they assist the saints at the hour of death, making their presence visible, to support them in this last struggle and to add to the impatience of their desires.

Saint Vincent, the illustrious martyr of Zaragoza, after ibat Eudociæ ephecbus candidateus facem ferens: nec DURE um nec lucem vicentibus satellitibus.

1 BB. 24 maïii, t. 18, p. 396, n. 248 : Agebat igitur S. Simeon, now in the seventy-fifth year of his age... when he was informed by a familiar Angel that the end of his life was drawing near.

3 BB. 2 Jan., tt. 1, p. 94, n. 26: Noli timere, crastina die viebis mirabilia. But suddenly the darkness of this prison dissipates, a heavenly light fills it, the obstacles break. These sharp heads turn into fragrant flowers, which make the martyr a delicious layer. A multitude of angels surround him, talk to him, congratulate him on his victory. "Recognise, to an invisible victor, they say to him, He for whom you have so valiantly fought; He himself, who made you victorious in the midst of torments, holds in his hand the crown of glory which he prepared for you. The struggle is over, and the hour is about to ring where, taking away this burden of death, you will be gathered to the choir of the blessed."And all, uniting their voices in one concert of praises, make sound these dark vaults with the most melodious accents.

The martyrs who were supported in their battles by God's angels are in large numbers. The forty legionaries of Sebastia, celebrated by Saint Basil!; Saint Agnes of Rome, who was by Saint Ambrose?; Saint Constance, Bishop of Perugia, and an infinity of others received this heavenly assistance.

The servants of God, who, without giving their blood to Jesus Christ, nevertheless deserved the same favor, are even more numerous. Among so many names, we will mention only that of St.Antoine. His historian, the illustrious Athanase, tells us that at the time his soul was about to fly away, the face of this great patriarch of the cenobits lit up with a sweet light, and his eyes rested, with the joy that one feels to see friends, on the angels descended to collect his soul and carry it to heaven.

Conducting and depositing pure souls in God's bosom is the principal service of heavenly spirits, and that is why they appear so frequently at the death of predestined ones. In the same Life of the Great Solitary, St.Athanasius ‘ reports that a Day of Anthony, sitting at the top of the mountain, suddenly looked up; he saw an unknown soul rising up to the heavenly abode, and the angels, joyful, come to meet him. When he prayed, he asked God to let him know what this blessed was, and immediately a voice was heard and told him that it was the soul of the monk Ammon, who had just died in the desert of Nitrie. In St Jerome's report, Antoine still had the same spectacle when he saw the soul of Paul, the first hermit, flying to heaven, shining with whiteness, in the midst of angelic phalanges, choirs of the prophets and apostles.

Harmonious songs usually accompany these heavenly apparitions, and have transformed more than once the funeral of the saints into manifestations of joy and triumph. This was the case at Saint Martin's funeral, according to his first two historians, Sulpice Severe* and Gregory de Tours #. The same is reported of several servants and servants of God, among others of Saint Nicholas of Myre', Saint Walfrid?, first abbot of the monastery of Mont-Vert in Tuscany, Saint Laurent Justinian *, Saint Romule #, Blessed Colette $, venerable Mary of Maillies 5.

VIII. — Angels sometimes appear to visibly protect the holy causes and to suppress the audacity of the wicked. The Scriptures contain memorable examples. The angel of the Lord strikes in one night the army of the king of Assyria Sennacherib 7. An angel stops Balaam's donkey and threatens this greedy prophet from the sword he holds in his hand. Heliodore * was castigated by the angels as he attempted to capture treasures from the temple.

The heavenly militia also intervenes in battles for God's friends and justice. Judas Machhabea fought with his family the hordes of Timothy. At the height of the mushroom, the enemies of the Jews saw five warriors coming down from heaven on horses, with a noble and proud attitude, who supported and led worshipers of the true God. Two of them stand around Machhabea and protect him from their weapons; the others cast strokes and lightnings against his enemies, who, struck blindly and in complete disarray, fall in front of them. In another meeting, "when Machhabea and her soldiers came out of Jerusalem to meet the army of Lysias, a man on horseback dressed in white clothing, with gold weapons and a spear in his hand, suddenly appeared, walking before them, as if to excite them in battle.

Benadab, king of Syria, irritated to see his war tricks discovered to the king of Israel by Elisha, made the city of Dothar, where the prophet was, known by his troops during the night. At dawn, the servant of God's man comes, trembling, to teach him that the Syrian army, with its horses and chariots, surrounds the ramparts. "Be ye fearless," said Elisha, "there are more people with us than there are with them." Then he prayed, "Lord, open his eyes to him so that he may see." The Lord opened his eyes to this servant, and he saw the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire, which were all around Elisha.

Christian legends abound in similar accounts, and they probably gave rise in Portugal, France and other countries to the institution of orders of chivalry under the patronage of Saint Michael, prince of the heavenly militia? A fact of unquestionable authenticity is the assistance that the angels gave to Saint Wenceslas, Duke of Bohemia, in a singular fight against Radislas, Prince of Gurcine, as can be seen in the Roman Breviary, at the feast of this saint. It is similarly reported in the life of the Emperor Saint Henry that he saw more than once the angel of the Lord and the holy martyrs his protectors fighting for him at the first battle front.

IX. — What angels appear to the authors in this way are divided into two opinions. The first argues that a part of the angels is never conscripted to the lower creatures, and attributes this function to the smallest orders of the heavenly hierarchy. It divides the blessed spirits into two parts: the assistants, who never come out of the face of God, and the ministers, who intervene in the material and human world. According to Saint Gregory the Great, the last two orders are sent alone, the Angels for common missions, and the Archangels for the greatest. St Thomas? thinks that the last five orders can be deputies, and that the first four, namely: the Seraphim, the Cherubim, the Thrones, and the Dominations, are not employed in this office. Suarez * and several other theologians make this reservation only for the three orders of the first hierarchy. In this sense, the higher angels, or remain alien to, or exercise, any outside intervention only through the lower angels. This is the first opinion with its various nuances.

The second admits that all angels indistinctly are

1 Homil. 34 in Evang. n. 8. For in the Greek tongue, Angels are called messengers, and Archangels are called chief messengers… But those who announce the least things are called Angels; while those who announce the greatest things are called Archangels. Hence it is that to the Virgin Mary not just any Angel, but the archangel Gabriel is sent.

2 Sum. 1. And therefore it must simply be said, with Dionysius (On the Celestial Hierarchy, ch. 5), that the higher Angels are never sent to an outward ministry.

Therefore the Angels of those orders are sent to outward ministry, from whose names some execution is given to be understood; but in the name of the Dominations no execution is implied, but only the disposing and commanding of things to be carried out; whereas in the names of the lower orders some execution is understood.

According to the doctrine given above, it can easily be answered, first of all, that apparitions always occur through ministering Angels, not through assisting ones, since they do not appear nor take on bodies unless they are sent, as is clear in itself; and those who assist are not sent, but only those who minister. — Et 1. 6, c. 9, n. 24, p. 682. susceptibles de mission. Selon le P. Petau!, who reports the testimonies, this feeling is much more common among the holy Fathers, and 1 he kisses himself for this reason and also. because of these words of the Apostle to the Hebrews: "Are they not all spirits destined to serve, and sent to exercise their ministry, in favor of those who must collect the inheritance of salvation?"This learned author still relies on the example of the Word, superior to all the angelic hierarchies, and nevertheless sent and descended to the flesh of man. The angels who are sent do not for this reason lose the clear vision of God, and do not cease to be assistants in his presence, as the angel Raphael said of himself; * or it should be concluded that the guardian angels are exiled from heaven all the time that they exercise their tutelage with souls, contrary to what Our Lord says in the Gospel: "I tell you, the angels of these little children see the face of my Father without ceasing to see the face of my Father in heaven."5

For all these reasons, the second opinion seems preferable to the first.

X. — Of the angels who appeared to men, Scripture only refers to three by a proper name: Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, names that express the special virtue of these heavenly spirits or the missions they have fulfilled. It is known that Michael or Michael means: Who is like God? a cry of war made by the leader of the faithful phalanges against Lucifer and his cursed legions; that Gabriel means the strength or the Fort of God, that is, the messenger of the great plans where God deploys his power; that Raphael, or Remedy of God, recalls the healings performed by the angel who accompanied the young Tobie.

Some particular revelations, whose authenticity or authority are questionable, mention other names of angel. In interviews, for example, which we were kept from Blessed Humility?, this saint tells us that two angels were in charge of her guard, whose names she had learned from the mouth of Saint John the Evangelist. One, from the ordinary choir of angels, who had been his guardian since his birth, was called Sapiel; the other, who was a cherub, and whom she had received at the age of thirty, was named Emmanuel. In the fourth book of Ezra, one is mentioned of the angel Uriel * and the archangel Jeremiah #; but it is known that this book is apocryphal and does not deserve a debt, even from the historical point of view. It is a constant tradition in the Church that the three angels who are named in Scripture are the only ones whose names are known. A council! held in Rome, 745, under Pope Zachariale, resents this prayer composed by an impostor named Adelbert: "I address to you my vows: and my supplications, angel Uriel, angel Raguël, angel Tubuel, angel Michael, angel Inias, angel Tubuas, angel Sabaoc, angel Simiel;" and the reason alleged by the Fathers of this council, is that, with the exception of the name of Michael, all the others designate demons rather than good angels, only three of which are Summoned by Scripture and tradition, namely: Michael, Gabriel and Raphael. This is less a decision of law than a question of fact and history; for nothing prevents other angels, in addition to those already appointed, from receiving names that express their missions.

The angel Raphael is mentioned in Scripture only at the free of Tobias; but he intervenes quite frequently in the revelations and acts of the Saints. He helps Saint John of God to load a poor sick man on his shoulders, and leads him into the darkness of the night to the hospital. Another time, he distributes bread to the poor outside the same saint?. It serves as a guide and support to Saint Francis Roman! and Saint Baront?, in their famous visions of hell, purgatory and heaven.

Gabriel is the angel of the Incarnation. It is he who reveals to Daniel® the succession of empires and fixes with the last precision the date of the coming of the Messiah in the famous prophecy of seventy weeks. It appears twice in the Gospel, to predict to Zacharias the birth of the forerunner, and to announce to the Blessed Virgin Mary the mystery of her virgin motherhood. He is attributed several other Bible apparitions, but with the help of interpretations that seem to us to be unsubstantiated. He also intervenes more than once in private revelations ÿ.

Although St Michael is appointed several times in Scripture f, in reality there is only one appariion made in the name of this archangel. It is described in chapter x11 of Revelation, when St John sees a great battle going on in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting the dragon and his companions of revolt; the dragon defeated and cast to the earth, where he becomes the seducer of man, the devil or Satan. Cependant quelques interprètes attribuent à saint Michel un certain nitus deputatus.. Some days having passed after this, when the Father was anxiously distributing food to his poor, bread was lacking that would suffice for all; and presently the archangel Raphael was present, visible to many who stood by, bringing, in the same habit as John, a basket full of loaves.

Now that companion was, as was shown to him afterward, the angel Raphael.

2 BB. Visio S. St... came to my aid. The archangel Raphael, resplendent in [illegible] of brightness.

3 Daniel. vi, 3-25; 1x, 21. Behold, the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, flying swiftly, touched me.

4 Luc. 1, 11, 16.

$ EcINaarp, Transl. SS. Marcellini et Petri, BB. 2 jun., t. 21, p. 189, n. 48. — JOHN OF SAINTE-MARIE, Lifes and memorable actions of the Saints and Blesseds of the Order of Saint-Dominique, vol. 1, p. 266.

6 Daniel. x, 13, 21; xu, 1. — Epist. cath. Judæ, 9.

T Apoc. xu, 7-9. And factum prælium magnum in coelo: Michael and Angeli number of angelic apparitions, both old and new? Testament, where this archangel is not expressly designated.

It is certain at least that he has manifested himself several times in Christian ages. The Greeks have their legends and solemnities on these apparitions*, the most famous of which is that of Chones, former Colossus, in Phrygia. In Oceident, the facts are even more numerous and more precise. Some saints are mentioned honored with this favor, among others Saint Martin de Tours#, St Wilfrid, Bishop of York, Blessed Ferdinand!, Prince of Portugal, the glorious Pucella of Orleans, Joan of Arc, to whom the defeated English will pay dearly for her visions.

There are other apparitions whose memory, consecrated by festivals and monuments, has the character of greater authenticity. This was the one that founded, around the year 708, the so famous pilgrimage of Mont Saint-Michel, in Normandy. Saint Aubert, bishop of Avranches, miraculously warned, three times during his sleep, to consecrate on the rock of the Tomb a church in honor of the glorious archangel, hastened to erect this pious sanctuary, around which soon a monastery and a small village were erected. But of all the apparitions of Saint Michael, the most famous is that which took place under Pope Gélase Jer, about 495, at Mount Gargan, today Mount Saint-Ange, in the Italian province of Puglia. To perpetuate the memory of this wonderful fact, the Church established a feast that is celebrated throughout the Christian world on the eighth day of May.

Here is a brief account of this memorable event. A shepherd who was grazing his flock on Mount Gargan, who wanted to bring out from a cave a bull who had taken refuge there, took an arrow on him; but when he had come to the end, the arrow, which was swifter than the wind, returned to herself and wounded him who had thrown it. This wonder struck astonishment and frightened those who witnessed it, and the noise soon spread in the city of Siponto, at the foot of the mountain. The bishop was warned, who, suspecting some secret plan of Providence, ordered a three-day fast, to ask Heaven to manifest its will clearly. On the third day, the archangel St. Michael appeared to the bishop in the time of the night, and told him that the place where the miracle was performed was under his protection, that he should be consecrated to divine worship, in his honour and in that of the angels. The pontiff went with his people to the designated place. They found there a spacious, temple-shaped cave, in which they only had to set up an altar to celebrate the holy mysteries. The people around them rushed in crowds to this new sanctuary, constantly making the praises of God and his glorious Archangel sound. The miracles? and the help of the pilgrims made him XI. — As guardian angels are God's representatives and mediators to souls, most angelic apparitions are their work. At least in a multitude of cases, they are expressly referred to as the authors of these supernatural manifestations.

The angel of the martyr Saint Quick! appeared to him in his childhood, and said to him, "I was given to be your guardian until the end of your life: ask the Lord whatever you want, and you will be answered." Saint Francis of Rome lived in a holy familiarity with his guardian angel, as the Church recalls in the prayer of his office?. These facts are found in the lives of Blessed Marguerite of Cortona*, Mary of Oignies #, Saint Lidwine, Saint Rose of Limaf, Saint Anub?, Hermit, Blessed Dalmacef, Dominican, and so many others, whose only enumeration would take whole pages.

es

One of the most memorable facts of this kind is that which is reported to the Acts of Saint Cecilia, and of which the Church

1 BB. 15 jun., t. 23, p. 499, n. 1. But the Angel of the Lord appeared to the little child, comforting him, and said to him: I am given to you, he said, as a guardian, that I may guard you until the day of your departure, and whatever you shall ask of the Lord will be given to you.

2 Brev. Rom. 9 mart. orat. : Deus, qui B. Frances, thy handmaid, thou hast adorned, among the other gifts of thy grace, with the familiar companionship of an Angel, etc.

After this the Angel appointed to Margaret's guardianship approached, and spoke many good words to her, etc.

For she was bound to obey her familiar Angel, appointed to her guardianship, as she would her own Abbot.

5 J. In all things, indeed, a daughter of holy obedience, she strove to obey the Angel, her guide. When he went before her, she went; when he stood, she stood; when he returned, she returned.

Rose had her Angel not only as a guardian but as a most friendly companion..... ; hence there was between the virgin and her Angel so intimate a trust and familiarity that she was accustomed to use him as a messenger whenever, at the customary hour, the Bridegroom did not appear.

An Angel was always present with me.

8 Brev. On account of his familiar intercourse with the Angel, he was called the Brother who speaks with the Angel.

3 BB. 14 April 11, p. 204 et seq. reproduces the account in the office of this kind and illustrious martyrdom!

Cecile, of a large family in Rome, and a Christian from his childhood, had dedicated his virginity to Jesus Christ. However, his parents, against his will, gave it in marriage to a young man of noble line, named Valerian. On the evening of the wedding, she spoke to her husband: "Valerian, I am in the care of an angel who protects my virginity; don't try to harm it, if you don't want to draw the wrath of Heaven upon you."Afraidly, Valerian replied that he would add faith to his words, if he saw with his eyes the angel whom she spoke to him. The Christian virgin replied that it was necessary for him to grow into Jesus Christ and be baptized. Stunning to see the heavenly spirit, Valerian went to ask Pope Saint Urbain for baptism, and returned to his wife. He found her in prayer and saw at her side her angel, bursting with light and holding in her hands two crowns intertwined with roses and lilies. He offered one to each one, saying, "Keep with great purity of heart and body the garlands that I bring you from God's paradise. You will recognize it by this sign, that these flowers will never wilt or lose their sweet smell, and that those only will be able to see them who, like you, will love chastity. And you, Valerian, because you have consented to the invitation of purity, the Christ Son of God sends me to tell you that he is ready to hear all your prayers."Valerian humbly bowed to the earth, and replied that his greatest desire was to see his only brother Tiburce converted to faith. The angel assured him that God would give him this grace, and disappeared in their eyes.

Tiburce came incontinent, and smelling the scent of the crown that adorned Cecile's head, asked where came, in a season when the flowers had passed, this heavenly smell that was embalming. The blessed husbands then told him of the grace that God had bestowed upon them, and urged him to open his eyes to the light and to share their happiness. Tiburce, too, wanted to see the angel; he asked for baptism, and obtained the same favor. Cecile and the two brothers soon received the most precious crown of martyrdom and glory.

The venerable mother Agnes de Langeac also had with her guardian angel the most admirable, charming relations. Let's judge by a few features gleaned here and there.

"It was especially her holy guardian that she saw," said M. de Lantages!, an angel with whom she had almost perpetual communication, and from whom she received all kinds of help at all times. He was teaching, one that we couldn't admire enough.

"Many times, when she had forgotten something, this charitable guardian remembered it; and she was accustomed to speaking to him for it simply.

"As she was always well gathered in God, sometimes she did not hear the bell ringing of the door when she was under-door; and then her angel said to her, "We call at the door." Still, having not yes the sign of the divine office, he warned. And as one evening she was to sound for the retreat of the sisters, being all absorbed in God, her angel led her and put the cord of the bell in her hand."

It was not only in the cloister that Mother Agnes enjoyed this favor; being still in the world and several years before she became a nun, she had with her angel this holy familiarity.

"When she came out of the house, she could go wherever it was necessary, without having to think about where she was going, where she was going, where she was going, where she was driving, and where she was going. It was that as soon as she went out to go to some place, at the same time she saw a small white bird flying in front of her, similar to a butterfly, which served as a guide to the intended place. Otherwise she had misled herself, as a result of the holy drunkenness, where she was being captivated.

"This extraordinary favor, which lasted for eight years, was certainly done by the ministry of his angel, which took the form of this little bird!"

XII. — We will add one last trait on the angel of Mother Agnes of Jesus. At the death of this great servant of God, his angel became M. Olier, founder of the seminary of Saint-Sulpice. Cest M. Olier himself who teaches us in his autograph memories.

"There," writes 1l, "that an angel melts upon me from heaven, with the speed and power of an eagle that melts upon His prey, and surrounds with his wings, greater than ever that it was necessary to defend me.

"This angel who has been given to me by special kindness, and whose gratitude I cannot give to God enough, is a Seraphim, as it is believed on words that Sister Agnes said before her death. I remember that, passing through the streets of Paris, shortly afterwards, where there was a great world, it seemed to me that I saw the other angels paying him great homage and respect. Now, on the day that I heard the news of this death, immediately touched everything, I went before the Blessed Sacrament to make my complaints to Our Lord.... I even addressed myself to her in the Blessed Sacrament, since the saints are present there... This holy soul, which had great compassion for the least of my sorrows, told me these words, which departed from the tabernacle, and which I heard as in my heart: "I have left my angel..." Since that time I have felt great respect in my soul when I invoke this angel, and I cannot invoke him or honor him, or render any duty to God for him, that it seems to me absolutely not mine.

"This angel," M. Olier in 1647, more than twelve years after the death of Mother Agnes, is not my guardian angel, since this one, who has been with me since the baptism, tells me about the other, in the day that it was given to me: Honor this angel who is now given to you; he is one of the greatest who was given to a creature on the earth. It is that of the charge and not of the person; and his wings so wide made me hear that he would cover several others that would be with me: as since that time the company of the ecclesiastical saints whom God gave me felt assistance, living under his care and receiving a thousand protections!"

Ïl est pareillement rapporté de sainte Françoise? Romaine that she received a second guardian angel, in human form, taken from the fourth chorus, that is, from the order of the Powers, whose outside announced virtue and glory, and who by his presence alone put the demons to flight. Blessed Catherine of Racconigi! also had two angels, one of whom was a Seraphim.

Here we must suspend these interesting stories: where would we go if we wanted to reproduce everything? CHAPITRE IX

THE OBJECTS OF THE SURNATURE VISION

THE WELCOME The saints rarely appear in intellectual vision. — Fréquence des

Imaginary visions, — and body visions. — Les causes et les

circonstances qui les déterminent. — Leurs formes diverses. — Are these apparitions personally accomplished by the Blessed, or,

in their name, by the angels?

Ï. — The saints of heaven frequently manifest themselves to the traveling men, their brothers, to comfort them in the bitterness of exile and to support them in their journey to the homeland. Doctors are unanimous in recognizing the possibility and existence of these apparitions; and history, moreover, presents so many examples, that it is necessary the grossest ignorance or the bias of unbelief to revoke them in doubt.

The Blessed may be revealed in intellectual visions, as we have said in speaking of these kinds of manifestations. However, according to the learned pontiff Benedict XIV!, they rarely appear in this way, but rather in sensitive vision, either mental or bodily.

1 De serv. Dei beatific. 1. &, P. 1, c. 39, n. 11, t. 4, p. 239 :.. Whether the apparition be intellectual, which rarely happens, or corporeal, which by custom … — In general, as we have already said, when the manifestation takes place during sleep or in ecstasy, and it takes sensitive forms, it must be regarded as imaginary.

This was the famous dream of Judas Machabeet. He saw the high priest Onias extending his hands and praying for all the people. Jewish. Then, by his side, appeared an old man venerable, full of glory and majesty, whom Oneias showed him, saying, "This is the friend of his brethren and of the people of Israel; it is Jeremiah the prophet of God, who prays a great deal for the people and for all the holy city." And Jeremiah, extending his hand, gave Judas a golden sword, saying, "Take this holy sword as a gift of God, with which you shall overthrow the enemies of my people Israel."

These facts are multiplied infinitely in the annals of holiness. a,

Sometimes it is the multitude of elect who reveal themselves in the vastness of the heavens, as Saint Elizabeth of Sconauge tells of herself. In the midst of infinite light, and around the throne of God, she saw the triumphant heavenlys, arranged according to their dignity and merits. In the first row the apostles shone, adorned with palms and radiant crowns, and bearing the signs of their victory on the forehead. To their right stood the glorious army of the martyrs, then the multitude of the saints who did not shed their blood for Jesus Christ; to the left, the sacred order of the virgins, decorated with the insignia of the martyrdom; after them, the crowd of the simple virgins and the holy women, and all around, in a light circle, the countless choirs of the angels.

Blessed Osanne of Mantua‘ had a similar vision at the age of twelve. Introduced into the heavenly city by the apostle Saint Paul and by a majestic vicar, whom she knew to be Simeon, the one who received in his arms the Child Jesus on the day of his presentation at the temple, she admired the number and splendor of her happy inhabitants, some dressed in white robes, the other ornaments of purple and fire, all in the supreme drunkenness of joy. This spectacle ignites his heart with such love, which she would have wished not to return to the earth. After ardent prayers and divine answers that resound at the bottom of his soul, the Almighty said to him: "I willed, my beloved daughter, to make you see the glory of the virgins and martyrs, that the memory of this incomparable bliss may preserve you from all defilement, and make you faithful and diligent in my service."The virgin pious prostrated herself as a sign of thanksgiving; after which her two guides, Paul and Simeon, took her back to the gates of the blessed city.

One day of All Saints, a great multitude of saints appeared in vision to the Blessed Lutgarde, and the Holy Spirit revealed to him that she was filled with the spirit and grace of all these faithful servants.

As she approached her feast, each saint warned Mary of Ognies, and in the coming day he visited her with a multitude of other blessed ones, occupying her mind with heavenly thoughts and desires!

We pass under silence the special apparitions: the examples are multiplied infinitely in the Lives of the Saints.

IE. — Body visions are neither less frequent nor less indisputable.

In the Old Testament, we find Samuel's evocation, which many interpreters consider to have been a true outward appearance. * In the New, Moses and Elijah appear on the Tabor next to the transfigured Saviour. Elijah did not have to take a foreign body, since according to tradition he is still alive, as well as Enoch; but Moses had to form a body with external elements, and clothe it for the occasion?.

In the Lives of the Saints, these kinds of wonders do not count. All we have to do is report two between so many others.

The apostle St. Peter appears under the lines of an DE lard to the glorious martyrdom Agathe, in his prison, to heal her from the wounds and cruel amputations she suffered from her executioners. La pudique vierge refuse

Now when the feast day of some Saint was approaching, that Saint would announce his feast to her; and coming to her on his day with a multitude of his heavenly companions, he would visit her, so that with that Saint her spirit rested in joy for the whole day. Calleet, Dissert. on Samuel's app. to Saul. Bible de ven, in-40, t. 4, p. 84.

3 S. This is not to be understood as though the soul of Moses had resumed its own body, but that his soul appeared through some assumed body, just as angels appear. Elias autem appeared in proprio corpore, non quidem de coelo empyreo allato, sed de ii a eminenti loco first to receive no relief from a man's hand; she expects salvation and remedy only from the Saviour Jesus. But the old man smiling, "It is himself," he said to him, "who sends me to you; I am his apostle, and know that in his name you will be healed." The saint falls on her knees to thank Our Lord for the help he sends to her, and her prayer is barely finished, that she sees no more wounds on her body.

Saint Augustine! reports, not, as he says, on uncertain rumours, but after very reliable testimonies, that the martyr Saint Felix appeared to the inhabitants of Nole, while this city was besieged by the Barbarians. The holy doctor claims this example to show that the happy citizens of heaven are interested in the things of the earth, and that they respond with their blessings to the prayers addressed to them.

IV. — It is difficult to list the causes that determine these visits from holy souls.

Most often it is to answer the supplications that one addresses them.

Saint Lucia, whose acts are reproduced in the office which the Church devotes to this virgin, had come to the tomb of Saint Agathe to plead the healing of his mother Eutychi, who had been suffering for four years from a disease that resisted all the care and remedies. During her prayer, she fell asleep, and lived in a dream, in the midst of a troupe of angels, Saint Agathe, all shining with diamonds and precious stones, who said to her with a laughing face: "Lucie, my sister, the virgin of the Lord, why ask me what you can get to your mother at once? Your faith has earned her health, and because you have prepared in your virginal purity a home acceptable to God, you will make the city of Syracuse famous, as I myself illustrated in Jesus Christ that of Catania."Lucie awakened to these words, and turning to Eutychia, prostrated like her daughter before the remains of the glorious martyrdom: "My mother," she exclaimed, "you are healed."Then, taking advantage of the good dispositions that such a prodigy should inspire her, she obtained that her mother no longer thought of any earthly union for her, and that their goods would be distributed to the poor. It was the prelude to martyrdom. Declared to the prefect Paschase, we know how constant he was before his executioners, and by what wonders God preserved his virginity from infamy.

Since it is mainly on the occasion of their holidays that the Blessed are invoked, it is also ordinary in these days that they reveal themselves. Saint Térèse!. tells of herself that at the feast of Saint Claire, at the moment of communion, this saint appeared to her all bursting with beauty, and encouraged her to continue the work of reform: The saints whom the Church honors were shown in turn, on the day of their solemnity, to the Blessed Véronique de Binasco?, and had with her ineffable interviews. For a whole year, they took her from the mistakes she had made.

1 Sa Vie, ch. 33. |

2 ISIDORE DE IsoLANIS, BB. 13 Jan., p. 183, 1. 2, c. 31: Veronica per yes had committed, which cast her first into Ja fear and confusion; but soon she thought only of singing the Lord's mercies, which had forgiven her everything. In the days when she honored several saints at the same time, all appeared to her and poured in her soul a repetition of joy and heavenly desires.

More than once also the saints warn their friends of the earth of their entry into the glory and the beatitude of which they are drunk!.

St Peter of Alcantara shows himself, at the moment when he has just returned the last sigh, to Saint Teresus and tells him that he is going to rest ©. Saint Teresis* appeared to many, all radiant with glory, the very night she died. Saint Anthony of Padua ‘visits dying one of his friends, and tells him that he leaves his poor donkey (he spoke of his body) in Padua, and that he goes to the homeland. This friend first believed that the Blessed went to Portugal, the place of his birth; but the news of his death soon came to him, and gave him the meaning of vision. Saint Charles Borromée also presents himself to several people, at the time of his death, leaving to all an impression of grace and joy.

Shortly after his death, Saint Louis de Gonzague © reveals himself, in the brilliance of bliss, to Saint Maric Madeleine de Pazzi, who exclaims in his ecstasy: "Oh, what glory has Louis, son of Ignatius! I would never have believed, if my Jesus had not shown it to me."

The saints still announce the hour of death to their friends, and join the angels to gather their souls and carry them to heaven.

Saint Francis of Assisi appeared to Blessed Guy of Cortona, one of his seventy-two chosen disciples, and said to him, "The time has come, my son, to receive the reward of your labors; in three days I will return to the hour of nun, to lead you into heaven." And he disappeared blessing him. Guy rose up immediately, and went and told his confessor what he had just seen and heard; then, retreating into his cell, he waited, in continuous contemplation and with all heavenly joy, for the return of the holy patriarch. On the third day he began to feel sick, called his brothers and asked for forgiveness, received the last sacraments in their presence, and when the last prayers were finished, at the very hour of none, he was heard shouting with the accent of love: "Here is St Francis my father; rise up and go to meet him." And when he cried out, he fell asleep in the Lord.

Blessed ones also have their favourites, and it is especially to these privileged clients that they love to manifest themselves. [There would be charming things to tell about this sweet trade of prayers and blessings, about this familiarity between the saints of heaven and those of the earth.

Saint Catherine of Siena was given by Our Lord as mistress and adviser to Saint Rose of Lima. So it often appeared to her, and the celestial rays that escaped from her glorified face, reflecting on that of the Peruvian virgin, had created striking similarities between one and the other, so much so that the inhabitants of Lima called Rose another Catherine of Siena.

The venerable and very beloved Mother Agnes de Langeac seems to us to have equalled, if not surpassed, in this kind of favors, the most privileged.

"Mother Agnes," said her pious historian?, "was of those souls who dwell in the spirit in heaven, and truly have their most ordinary conversation there. She had made a special acquaintance and friendship with several holy wives of Jesus Christ, whose life was chaotic and served as a model for her. In the first place, having as her special patroness the very illustrious virgin and martyr saint Agnes, she had for her particular feelings of veneration, love and trust. So this great saint did not fail to be truly her patron saint to God, and to favor her in various ways... Several times she honored him with her visits. And she did so willingly, that once, on the eve of her feast, she was all day with her, appearing to her wherever she was. Saint Térèse, Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Madeleine, Saint Dominique, Saint Francis, were no less of his friends and frequently visited her. But his dearest patroness was Saint Cecile, who did not fail to support and console her in the great sorrows that came to her."

V. — The forms by which the saints manifest themselves to men are diverse, as well as for God, Our Lord, His divine Mother and the angels.

They often come with the outside that they have been known on earth, as we have seen in St.Antoine of Padua, or as they are usually painted and represented. They also appear wearing insignia of their dignity or profession, with the clothes and ornaments of the bishop, the priest, the Levite, the religious. Saint John the Evangelization revealed itself more than once under the symbol that characterizes it, a luminous eagle. Often 1l have crowns on their heads and palms in their hands, mainly virgins and martyrs, as well as attest to the higher recorded visions of St. Elisabeth of Sconauge and the Blessed Osanne of Mantuas. Always their physiognomy breathes something pure, heavenly, and leaves a suave emanation of virtue and holiness.

In general, they show themselves in the light, which serves them as clothing. This is why they are usually represented as bright whiteness®. The face of the Saviour, say the evangelists® describing his glorious transfiguration, shines like the sun, and his clothes become as white as snow. These apparitions are still carried out in the form of inflamed globes, as St. Germain of Capua', St. Chantal? and many others are told; or in the form of brilliant stars, as is reported from the martyrs of Lerins*, St. Francis of Assisi ‘, St. Rose of Lima 5: Light and fire admirably express the clarity and ardour of the blessed.

Another symbol, singularly loved by the saints, is that of the dove. Among the glorified souls that have. appeared in this way, either at the time of death or in other encounters, we will cite Saint Blaise $ bishop

1 S. GREG. M. Dialog. 1. 2, c. 35. Migne, t. 66, col. 198. This venerable Father (Benedict), while he fixed the intent gaze of his eyes upon this splendor of flashing light, saw the soul of Germanus, bishop of Capua, being borne by Angels in a fiery sphere. — [Abelly, Vie de S...] Vincent de Paul, 1.2,c.7,t. 2, p. 22: "We, Vincent de Paul..., certify that a person worthy of faith, who I assure her that she would rather die than lie (he speaks of himself)... having had news of the end of the illness "of our deceased, he kneeled down to pray for her, and the first thought that came to her in the mind was to make an act of contrition of the sins that she had committed and that she habitually committed; and immediately afterwards he appeared to her a small globe, like fire, which rose from the earth and went to join in the upper part of the air to another greater and brighter globe, and, the two, reduced in one, rose higher, entered and spread to another globe infinitely greater and brighter than the others, and it was said inwardly that this first globe was the soul of our worthy Mother, the second of our blessed Father, and the second of our Father, and the other was the Father's essence worthy of our Father, and the other was the Father's principle.

[Surius, 12 Aug.]: ...seeing the souls of their companions in the air, shining like stars, rejoicing with the Angels.

He saw that glorious soul, freed from the flesh, in the likeness of a great and radiant star.

6 LEONARD HANSEN. In the form of a star, a matron of proven perfection appeared in a vision.

6 BB. 3 febr., t. 4, p. 357, n. 4. But those who were present at his death saw, as it were, a white and shining dove fly from his mouth into heaven — [as with the martyr] of Sebaste, and [the story is told also of] saint Felix of Trier, saint Gurvalle bishop of Saint-Malo, the holy abbot Spes of whom Gregory the Great speaks in his DIALOGUES, saint Scholastica sister of saint Benedict, saint Agrippina martyr, saint Olive of Palermo, and saint Teresa.

What proves how supernatural the prodigy is is that, in most cases, the symbolic bird differs from an ordinary dove in its grandeur, radiance, colour and many other ways. Let us judge by what is reported from Saint Lidwine®. She appeared, after her death, to her confessor, in the form of a beautiful dove, whose beak and neck had the brilliance of gold, whose feet were bright red, silver-coloured wings, and all the rest of the white body as snow.

We have also seen the blessed clothe the appearances of poverty, that of a certain flower, whose radiance or

Then, in the sight of all, a golden dove was seen to come forth from his mouth and to pierce heaven itself.

His most holy soul, in the form of a dove, was seen by his disciples to ascend.

3 Dialog. |. 4, c. 10. But all the brothers who were present saw a dove come forth from his mouth, which, going out at once through the opened roof of the oratory, while the brothers watched, pierced the heaven. Cujus idcirco animam in columbæ specie apparuisse credendum est.

4 S. Grec. M. Dialog. 1. 9, c. 34. With his eyes raised to heaven, (Benedict) saw the soul of his sister, having gone forth from the body, penetrate the secret places of heaven in the form of a dove.

Armed with the panoply of the cross, like a golden dove, you destroyed the Hagarenes who attacked your bulwark by night, preserving the faithful from their savagery, O Martyr.

5 Ocr. CaseTax. Her soul, in the form of a white dove, having gone forth from the body, was received into heaven by the hand of Angels, with hymns and canticles, in the sight of all who were watching.

But another nun, at the very moment of death, saw as it were a white dove coming forth from the virgin's mouth.

8 J. Her confessor, as he lay in his bed at night, saw with open eyes that blessed soul, in the form of a most gleaming dove, whose neck and beak appeared wholly golden, its feet ruddy and glittering, its wing feathers silvered, and the rest of the body exceedingly white as snow.

9 BB. 20 mart. Transi. S. Cuthberti, t. 9, p. 127, n. 2 and 3: Adfuit intele perfume expressed the character of their virtue, the lilies!, for example, image of the perfect purity, and others that we renounce to enumerate and describe, so as not to distance ourselves from our suJet.

VI. — Are these various apparitions made personally by the saints, or are they made in their name by the angels?

Saint Augustine asks himself this question in his book ON THE CARE OF DEATH, and seems to imply that these Visions could be made by angels, perhaps even without the knowledge of the dead. "If the deceased intervene at their will in the world of the living, do you think," the grateful son of Monique said, "that my godly mother, who during her life pursued me through the earth and the seas, could spend a night without speaking to me?" However, the saint doctor summarising her appreciation, dares to pronounce herself, and declares the problem above her forces?. rim peregrino habitu quidam obnixe eleemosynam postulans, etc. As for your asking my name, know that I am called Cuthbert, servant of God.

1 BB. Vita S. He appeared in his own form, standing before him; but immediately the likeness of the man was changed into a flower of wondrous whiteness after the manner of a lily, which the Angels took up and bore to the heavens.

? On the Care to Be Taken for the Dead, ch. 16, p. 117: Why should we not believe that these are angelic operations, effected through the dispensation of providence, which makes good use of both the good and the wicked, according to the inscrutable depth of its judgments?.. Let each one take what I say as he will. If the souls of the dead had a part in the affairs of the living, and they themselves spoke to us when we see them in dreams; to say nothing of others, my devoted mother would not have failed me a single night — she who followed me by land and sea that she might live with me. For far be it that, made happier by that life, she should have become cruel, to such a degree that when something grieves my heart, she would not console her sorrowful son, whom she loved uniquely, whom she never wished to see downcast.

Although this question surpasses the powers of my understanding — namely, how the Martyrs help those whom it is certain they aid; whether they themselves are present in person at one and the same time in places so diverse, and separated from one another by so great a distance…; or whether, remaining in the place suited to their merits, removed from all converse with mortals, and yet praying in general for the needs of their suppliants…, Almighty God, who is present everywhere, neither joined to us nor removed from us, hearing the prayers of the Martyrs, bestows upon men, through angelic ministrations diffused everywhere, those consolations which he judges ought to be given amid the misery of this life… This matter is deeper than [text breaks off; a following note states that] the Angelic Doctor is less hesitant. He recognizes that souls can come out of heaven and even from hell, to appear to the living!, with this difference between the damned and the saints, that they appear when they want to, though always in accordance with the provisions of Providence?, while these reveal themselves only on the order or permission of God. However, he did not conclude that all these apparitions were personal in nature without distinction, several, according to him, being due to the intervention of angels ÿ.

The theologians quite commonly admit that the apparitions of the saints are impersonal, with rare exceptions, and that they are usually performed by guardian angels; but, it must be recognized, the agreement is ut a posit attingi, and abstrusior quam ut a me valeat perscrutari; and ideo quid horum duerum sit, an vero fortassis utrumque sit, ut aliquiando fiant per ipsam préæsentiam Martyrum, aliquado per angelos suscipientes personam Martyrum, definire non audeo; mallem a sawentibus ist perquirere.

According to the disposition of divine providence, ... When souls, having departed and separated from their receptacles, present themselves to the sight of men. But this is the difference between the saints and the damned: that the saints, when they wish, can appear to the living, but the damned cannot.

Nor does it follow, even if the dead can appear to the living as they wish, that they appear as often as the living appear in the flesh; because, separated from the flesh, they are wholly conformed to the divine will, so that nothing is permitted them except what they perceive to accord with the divine disposition, etc.

Ibid., ad 3: It must be said that, although sometimes the souls of the saints or of the damned are present in person where they appear, it is nevertheless not to be believed that this always happens. For apparitions of this kind sometimes occur, whether in sleep or waking, through the operation of good or evil spirits, for the instruction or deception of the living.

# Voss, Dir. Myst., compend. Finally, that apparitions of the blessed souls languishing in purgatory, and of the Saints still living on earth, occur through the ministry of Angels, is the common... ...opinion of the Fathers, although some also think that they are accustomed to occur through their own person, with the help of Almighty God.

From these things, with P. Reguera (TR. myst. t. 2, p. 589, n. 101) concludere licet, apparitiones SS. ...that the apparitions of the Mother of God, and of the other Saints, are commonly only impersonal, and occur through the substitution of an Angel — often the guardian Angel — unless perhaps by special privilege they take place in [the saint's] own person... [this account remains] less complete on this point than on the manifestations of God, of Jesus Christ, and of the Virgin Mary.

"Some," said Cardinal Bona‘ summarising the different opinions, "think, with Saint Bonaventure, that the righteous can go out for a time from the place where they are, but that the damned can never go out. Others agree with Saint Thomas that the damned can do so to correct the living and to give them terror. Some believe that souls can regain their own bodies and move them as if they were re-animating, something others explicitly reject. There are some who say that souls can take air and form a body; others deny that they can, yet do not give certain reasons to prove that this is repugnant to the natural forces of the soul."

To consider only the point of view that is currently before us, namely the personal character of these apparitions, we taste fully Cardinal Bona's last reflection on the inadequacy of the reasons for trying to challenge it. In essence, blessed souls are, in relation to matter, under the same conditions as angelic spirits. So if these can appear personally, either in imaginary vision or in body vision, why would it be forbidden for souls freed from the flesh? Suarez? insinuates this reason that it may not be appropriate to give the souls of the righteous an equal empire over the elements that the angels possess; very just restriction, heard from the whole world, whose government was entrusted rather to the angels than to the elect. But if it were men, and especially men who were believers and sanctified, we would be inclined to make the share of the blessed as broad as that of the pure spirits.

What is beyond dispute is that men render more duties and address more invocations to the saints than to angels: why this, if not because they are convinced that their brothers and fellow citizens of glory are interested in them and are able to help them, as much and more than angels? Another persuasion that we have already more than once opposed to scholastic interpretations is that of most people who receive these visions, and who have no doubt that they have not seen and heard any saint in person, and not a heavenly messenger holding their place.

VIL. — Bona has already made known to us the diversity of opinions concerning the nature of the bodies of holy souls to appear to men. Some claim that they unite with the elements of their flesh, and move them as if they were still animating them. It is more natural to think that they take, like angels, foreign bodies formed, for the occasion, with ambient elements. For, if the soul again informs its own flesh, it would amount to a resurrection, which no one claims; and, if there is no question of vital union, why does the soul have to its body rather than to another?

This becomes even more plausible when the manifestiation is accomplished, not in a human form, but by someone of the symbols we have indicated, or by others whom God chooses at his will. CHAPITRE X

THE OBJECTS OF THE SURNATURE VISION

THE AMES OF THE PURGATORY Visions of Purgatory granted to several holy souls. — Special adaptations made to the living. — Once delivered, these souls no longer return, except to give thanks. — The forms in which they are manifested. — Do they appear in person or are they represented by angels? — They do not inform the bodies in such a way as to make them alive unless there is a resurrection. A very authentic history of a similar resurrection.

[. — These kinds of appearances are not uncommon. God allows it for the relief of those souls who come to excite our compassion!, and also to make us hear to ourselves how terrible are the rigors of his righteousness against the faults that we write lightly?.

In his DIALOGUES, which charmed and built up his contemporaries, and which the seed did not tire of reading, reports several examples of which, it is true, one can contest the full authenticity, but which, 1 S. Taomas, Suppl. q. 69, a. 3: Permittuntur viventibus apparere..., ad suffragia expetenda, quantum ad illos qui in purgatorio detinentur. ? Bona, De discreet. spir. c. 19, n. 8, p. 309: So purgantes, divinam quoque justitiam prædicant et opem implorant, ut nostris adjuti suffragiis istius a poenis liberentur. 3 Dialog. 1. 4, c. 40 et 55.. in the mouth of the saint doctor, prove at least that he believed in the possibility and existence of these facts; and, by this point of view, his testimony is worthless than a narrative.

There is no shortage of stories: they are overabundant in the history of the saints. Always the suffering Church has implored the votes of the Church of the earth. This trade full of sadness, but also full of instructions, is for one source of unbreakable relief, and for the other a powerful excitement to holiness.

The vision of purgatory has been given to several holy souls, usually imaginary, sometimes bodily, rarely intellectual, although this latter form still meets! from time to time.

Blessed Catherine of Ricci went down in spirit to purgatory, every Sunday night; and there, the guardian angels of the souls that were purified there showed her the pitiful state of each of them, in order to excite her commissation in their behalf.

The Blessed Lidwine * entered this atonement place during her ravishing, and saw the souls subjected to terrible torture, surrounded by flames rising up to tremendous heights. Once, her angel, showing her a soul, asked if she would not help her. "Yes, I do," she replied. "To do this, you must pass through these flames. "I will pass over there." And, simmering immediately, she released this soul that ascends, giving thanks to him, towards eternal joys. On another occasion, it passes through a dark, horrible gulf, where an impetuous torrent rushes its waters with a dreadful rush, to deliver the soul of a priest whom death had surprised before he had fully satisfied God's righteousness, and who had been in this place of torment for twelve years. In most of these visits, the angel who serves as his guide points out to him some soul especially recommended to his prayers, and exhorts him to hasten his deliverance through his atonement and prayers.

An angel also leads the Blessed Osanne of Mantua! through these dark abysses. There, she sees unfortunates of sadness, who cry and grieve lamentable. This spectacle teares its entrails and makes such a vivid impression on it that it cannot understand the recklessness of those who speak slightly of purgatory and send back their penance until then.

Blessed Véronique de Binasco? and Saint Francis Romaine* receive quite similar visions, with the same impressions of terror.

On the day when the Church prays for all the fallen faithful, Saint Elisabeth of Sconauge # sees, at the bottom of a valley that inspires horror, unfortunate souls in the torment of fire, tormented by ruthless executioners who harass and desolate them.

Afterward hell was shown to me, and pur— — More often than not, it is the suffering souls themselves who turn to the living and demand their intercession. Many thus appeared to the Blessed Marguerite of Cortona; and when the handmaid of God came out of this world, a great multitude were delivered to her prayer, and marched her into her glory.*

The souls of the deceased frequently implored the mercy of Denis the Chartreux, great servant of God, whom a high contemplation and his writings concerning this matter called the ecstatic Doctor. One day he was asked whether these poor souls often appeared to him: "Oh, yes," he replied, a hundred and a hundred times."Loër‘, one of his historians, reports in detail several of these apparitions.

Saint Catherine of Siena offers herself to satisfy God's righteousness for the sins that her father would have to atone for after death; and at the very hour when he makes the last sigh, she is seized with a pain of entrails that read more or less alive until the end of her life. In return, his father's soul appeared to him assiduously to thank her and to make her the most useful revelations.

1 F. By divine permission the souls of the departed, coming from their abodes, urgently begged for her intercession.

2 Ibid., p. 362, n. 281. She was to pass with joy to Christ, along with no small joyful throng of souls to be given to her and freed from the pains of Purgatory...

3 Loer, BB. 12 mart., t. 8, p. 248, n. 17. Concerning the spirits of the dead this is to be held in general: that they very often appeared to Dionysius, and also asked for relief from their punishments. Asked once... whether the souls of the departed had often appeared to him, he replied: Yes; indeed a hundred times and more.

4 Jbid., cap. & totum.

At length, after much [discourse], the virgin added: If this grace cannot be granted unless some measure of justice be observed, then let that justice be done upon me, for on behalf of my father I am prepared to endure whatever punishment your goodness has decreed. The Lord assenting to this, etc... Illius anima egrediente de corpore, in eodem instanti apprehenderunt virginem dolores iliaci, qui nunquam usque ad terminum It was also by voluntary atonements that Blessed Marguerite-Marie Alacoque lightened and delivered the souls of purgatory. She tells! herself that, giving herself once the discipline to this intention, as she exceeded what had been allowed to her, these souls immediately surrounded her, complaining about what she was hitting on them.

"Another time," she said further? "As I was before the Blessed Sacrament on the day of his feast, all of a sudden he stood before me like a burning person, whose ardour penetrated me so hard that it seemed to me that I was burning with her. The pitiful state where she made me see that she was purgatory made me shed plenty of tears. She tells me that she was this Benedictine religious who had received my confession once, and that he had commanded me to make holy communion, in behalf of which God had allowed her to address me to give her relief in her sorrows. He asked me, for three months, all that I could do and suffer; what he promised after asking permission from my superior, 1 he told me that the subject of his great suffering was first that he had preferred his own interest to the glory of God, by too much attachment to his reputation; the second was the lack of charity towards his brothers; the third, the natural affection he had had for the creatures, and the too many testimonies he had given them in the spiritual talks, which was very unpleasant to God.

"But," she adds, "it would be very difficult for me to express what I had to suffer during those three months. For he didn't leave me, and on the side where he was, he seemed to me to see him all on fire, but with so much pain, that I was forced to moan and weep almost continuously. And my superior, touched with compassion, ordered good penances, especially disciplines... And after three months I saw him in a very different way: all filled with joy and glory, he would enjoy his eternal happiness; and when he thanked me he told me that he would protect me before God. I had fallen ill, and as my suffering ceased with his, I was soon healed."

III. — When souls have obtained the help they ask, they do not come back, except to thank their deliverers. A soul freed by the prayers of Saint Oswald appears to him, announces his deliverance, and gives him thanks. The venerable Mary of Maillies? receives these testimonies of gratitude several times.

If, after ordering restitutions and asking for certain prayers or sacrifices, they continue to be important, even though these prescriptions have been faithfully fulfilled, it is, according to Bona, the mark of a bad spirit.

IV. — These souls always present themselves in an attitude that excites compassion, sometimes under the traits they had from their lifetime or to their death, with a sad face, begging eyes, in mourning clothes, with the expression of extreme pain; sometimes, as a clarity, a cloud, a shadow, a fantastic figure of any kind, accompanied by a sign or a word that makes them recognize! Other times, they accuse their presence by

moaning, sobbing, sighing, breathing, complaining accents. Often they appear surrounded by flames, in the hands of demons who are trying to torment them?. Sometimes they send harsh blames to those who should help them.

Another kind of revelation is made by invisible blows received by the living, by sounds of voice, by sneezes they hear, by feelings they feel at the time of the death of their friends. These facts are multiplied too much so that they can be revoked in doubt: the only difficulty is to establish their relationship with the world of atonement. But when these manifestations coincide with the death of loved ones, and cease after prayers and reparations have been offered to God, is it not reasonable to see signs by which these souls warn of their distress?

1 Voss, Direct. Myst. Compend. When the souls suffering in purgatory appear, they present themselves to be seen in various ways, yet always in such a way as to excite compassion in those who see them. Often under sorrowful appearances, surrounded by burning flames; sometimes in the forms which their bodies had either in life or after death, sometimes also under the figures of light, flame, cloud, shadow, and other things they appear, yet in such a way that they are recognized by those who see them either by some sign or by a word.

2 Isolanis Isibore, Life of B. Véronique de Binasco. The place of the damned and of purgatory seemed indeed different, but there was no distance between the punishments. For it was the same fire, the same tormentors.

3 Vie de la B. Marguerite-Marie Alacoque, by her contemporaries, vol. 4, p. 304: "Once, having seen in a dream a nun who had been dead for a long time, she told me that she was suffering a lot in purgatory ...; obedience having made me withdraw to take rest, I was not soon in bed that it seemed to me to have her close to me, telling me these words: "Here you are in your bed, well at your ease, look at me, lying in a bed of flames, where I suffer intolerable ills."

In two ways can the spirits of the dead be present to the affairs of men. For either they only attest their presence by certain signs, or they also show themselves to be recognized. The indications of presence are blows which they sometimes inflict, sad groaning, sneezing, the clapping of hands, disturbances stirred up, and things similar to these. They show themselves to be recognized when they leave the forms of themselves in our senses. They can still excite the commissioning of the living in another more intimate and no less effective way, which consists of presenting themselves to the mind as a kind of supposing obsession. When this knowledge is not sensitive, it must be concluded that it is intellectual{. However, if it only evokes a memory or a simple thought, there is no appearance itself, but only a mental excitement that, by determining in an extranatural way the memory or the thought of a suffering soul, invites to pray for its relief and deliverance.

At these signs, we will recognize the poor souls of purgatory. But we must point out a case where the appearance should be considered suspicious: it is when a scandalous sinner, unexpectedly surprised by death, comes to implore the prayers of the living to be delivered from purgatory. The demon is interested in making believe that one can live in the greatest disorders until death, and yet escape from hell. However, even in these encounters, it is not forbidden to think that the soul that appears has repented, and that it is in the flames of temporary atonement, nor, consequently, to intercede for it; but it is necessary to observe the greatest reserve on these kinds of visions and on the debt that is given to them?. V. — Several theologians ‘ believe that the apparitions we are talking about are generally impersonal and realized by angels, especially guardian angels, whom God leaves with these unfortunate souls to support them in their painful purification. Others, Tyre? for example, look at them as personal. In short, there are many dissents on this point. "Do they appear in their own bodies or in feigned and borrowed bodies," said Cardinal Bona*, "speaking and blessed souls and suffering souls; and, admitting that it is with foreign bodies, can they form them by their natural power, or do they need the help of angels; and do they intervene in person, or are they represented by heavenly spirits? These are problematically agitated issues in schools."

The reader already knows in what sense our mind is tilting. When there is a real appearance, whether intellectual, imaginary or body, it seems quite free to resort to angels, since souls can be the immediate object of these visions. Apart from the theological explanation contradicts the common belief of the faithful, there is a special difficulty here. Sometimes guardian angels have shown their clients, in the flames of purgatory, to holy souls admitted to contemplate this. 1 Scuram, Theol. myst. S 500, schol. t. 2, p. 214. Apparitio haec animarum purgantium communiter fit per sanctos Angelos, maxime custodes, in assumeptis cortoribus on pro defunctis clientibus expectantes, and sunt place of atonement, as we said by the Blessed Catherine of Ricci. It is not the guardian angel who then represents the suffering soul, unless he adds to the first hypothesis the even more gratuitous hypothesis that he fulfills at the same time a double role. Whether it is the same or another, how do we not see that these theories strangely complicate the play of the supernatural world, and that they result in making the angel a sort of ministerial factitum in the service of spirits and bodies?

We will, however, make a reservation. When the manifestations are confined to a memory, to a thought, to a feeling, to an inner or external sign, which leads the mind to the person, but which does not accuse by itself the personal presence, it can be admitted that these warnings arrive to the living through the angels; however, even then, nothing prevents us from believing that there is immediate intervention by souls who demand the vote.

VI. — In relation to the bodies that they take up in external apparitions, it is likely that they are composed by these souls themselves, with subtle elements that lend themselves to these kinds of representations, as we have washed up speaking of angels and blessed ones. Assuming that they take back their own bodies, it is certain that they only move them, but do not remind them to life, unless there is a real resurrection.

The story of St Stanislas, bishop of Krakow, presents a remarkable example of a momentary resurrection accomplished by a soul of purgatory, which seems to be equivalent to an apparition. We quote this fact all the more readily, since it seems to us to fulfil all the conditions of truthfulness and historical certainty. It is reported by several Polish writers, inscribed in substance in the Roman Breviary, and reported without any restriction by the Bollandist scholars. The publicity and the resounding that is supposed to him are such, that anyone who would have tried to imagine them to pleasure could have escaped brilliant denials, denied that however exist nowhere*. This fact, here it is in its most succinct version.

King Boleslas reigned in Poland and outraged his peoples by infamous overflows. Like another John the Baptist, the holy bishop whom we have appointed addressed him with respect but severe reverences. The prince conceived a deep hatred of it, and sought only an opportunity to smite against this unwelcome censor. The prelate had bought for his church, and duly paid to a gentleman named Peter, who soon died, a land that nephews expected to inherit. Driven by Boleslas' bad dispositions towards the saint, these greedy heirs quoted him, after three years of quiet possession, in the king's court, as having property belonging to them. The threats intimidated the witnesses, not one of whom was a nosa to testify in favour of the accused. Abandoned by men, God's servant turned to the very source of righteousness. He asked for a period of three days, after which he undertook to bring as a witness the same one from whom he had bought this domain, and who had received the prize. He was allowed to laugh at the suspension requested.

The saint spent this time in fasting, tears and prayer. On the third day he put on his papal clothes, and accompanied by his clergy and an innumerable people, he came to the place where the dead were buried. There he commanded that the body should be uncovered, completely defiled and almost dusted; then, after an ardent invocation to the God of righteousness, he commanded the death, in the name of the very Holy Trinity, to stand up and come and testify the truth before his judges. At the same time the dead man rose alive, and as he had known before his trepas. The spectators had questions about what was happening in eternity; he simply replied that he had not come to reveal the secrets of the other life, but only to act as a witness.

Stanislas took him by the hand and led him first to the church, at the foot of the altar, to give thanks to God, and then to the council that was to judge his cause. This witness, whom the men did not think of corrupting or intimidating: laid down that he had indeed sold to the bishop, who had paid the agreed price, the land whose property was contested, and he took over his nephews and the king himself from their criminal prosecution. We had to go to that witness.

The resurrected man's mission was over. Saint Stanislas asked him if he wanted to prolong his life on earth, or if he wanted any other favor. Peter replied that, although he had been in purgatory for three years, he knew too much about the dangers and uncertainties of life to be tempted to repeat it; he requested only a grace, it was that the bishop obtained him by his prayers his complete deliverance, or at least his relief. The pontiff promised to intercede for him. So he was taken back to his rest. There he lay again in his sepulchre, and made the soul in the eyes of a great multitude! The life of Saint Macaire! of Egypt presents several cases of similar interrogations made to the dead, and to which the dead answered; but after they had satisfied his question, the holy abbot, without in any way informing them of their condition, said to them: "Now sleep in peace until Christ resurrects you." sesi. He appeals to witnesses, but no one dares, the King forbidding it. Then the holy Pontiff, destitute of all human help and testimony, sorrowfully bursts into these words: In the name of Jesus Christ, I undertake that from this day, on the third day, I will bring Peter himself, alive, as a witness of the truth and of the justice of my cause, before this tribunal... Then, in the name of the same almighty God, he addresses Peter: Come forth, he says, Peter, and, though dead, bear witness from the tomb to the truth that has been buried by the living. He comes forth, dead now three years.. I am, he says, that Peter, who, about to render testimony of the truth, come hither from the seats of rest. To this man I sold and made over my country estate at a just price. He then rebukes the king and his nephews.. The bishop leads his witness away from the judgment, and asks him whether, for the sake of penance, he wishes to prolong his life. When he had refused this — namely, on the ground that he had already paid off the greater part of his punishments in purgatory, and did not wish to commit himself again to the dangers and storms of the world and of sin, trusting that by the prayers of the holy man of God he would be freed from the remainder of his punishments — he led him to a place of rest: and as soon as he reached it, he expired.

1 Vitæ Patrum. Migne, Patr. gr., t. 34, col. 47-146. CHAPITRE XI

THE OBJECTS OF THE SURNATURE VISION

THE DEMONS Glory struggles of the saints against Satan. — Saint Antoine. — Saint Guthlac. — Various circumstances in which demons appear: to frighten and reunite repentant souls, — to disconcerte holy resolutions, — to prevent healthy influences, institutions and reforms; to inspire, without their knowledge and against their will, the horror of sin, and finally to disturb the soul at the hour of death. — Demons appear in intellectual, imaginary, bodily visions. — Where do they take the bodies they wear? — They often borrow the traits of man. — They are transformed into angels of light and outside the most likely to mislead. — In most cases, they use bestial forms, preferably the most abject. — Other ways of showing their presence: projectiles and vcarm. — Résumé par Bona.

I. — The first appearance of this kind opens the story of our misfortunes. Who knows that the fallen angel approached and seduced our mother, in the form of a snake? Since the original fall, these manifestations have been repeated a thousand and a thousand times in the world of man. We will talk later, by dealing with magic, about the sensitive trade of demons with the unfortunate who bind themselves to them by a more or less declared pact. At the present time, we only want to report the assaults on the righteous by these evil spirits. There are few saints who had to fight against these evil ghosts, sometimes hideous and dreadful, sometimes seductive and lascivious. Whatever their form and nature, the aim is the same: to pervert souls by pride, voluptuousness or fear.

God allows Satan's violence for the cleansing of the elect and the shame of this angel of darkness. It is a magnificent spectacle that the saints present in these terrible battles delivered to their virtue, from Job, stripped of everything, reduced to the last misery, persecuted by his friends, but always invincible, until the humble parish priest of Ars, as a victim, during the parsimony hours of his sleep, to the strangest vexations, and however not yielding anything of his oraisons or his austeritys. Saint Anthony is famous among all in this kind of fighting. Athanasus, the illustrious doctor of the Church, has traced these glorious struggles to us, and his stories deserve a complete claim, because he had to collect them from the mouth of the great solitaire, his confidant and his friend.

IL. "Antoine's first victory was against the demon of the flesh. After! having appeared to him, for long nights, under the seductive features of a woman, ct vainly put into play all the images of voluptuousness, the filthy spirit is discovered outside of a black and horrible slave; and, grinning teeth, rolling furiously in the dust: "I have deceived many of them," he said; "there are many of them whom I have overthrown! I came to make you suffer the same fate; but on you I could not! "Who are you?" asked the holy young man. "I am, he replied, a friend of the carnal enjoyments; my mission is to tempt youth, and my name is Genication. Combien voulaient vivre pudiquement, 158. A Vila S. Anton n. 5 ct 6. Migne, t. 26, col. 847, 850. The wretched devil even endured to put on the form of a woman by night, and to imitate a woman's gestures, in order to deceive Anthony and... Sciscitante. To Anthony: "Who are you, who speak these things with me?" Tum ille..: Spiritus fornicationis vocor... Hæc prima flees THE OBJECTS OF VISION: DEMONS 197 were doomed to continence, and yet my artifices have shaken the constancy! But by you I am defeated."Antoine, raising his soul to God, gave thanks to him; then, calling upon the infamous spirit: "Missable, therefore, you deserve nothing but contempt; from now on you will not inspire me any more fear: the Lord is my kinsman, and with his help I disdain all my enemies."These proud words put the tempter on the run; but the struggle had to be renewed.

In order to go more freely to the contemplation of the eternal things, the servant of God withdrew from the city, and locked himself in a sepulchre whose door he opened only to a friend, who brought him from time to time a bread, his only food. The demon, fearing that this deserted place would soon be filled with pious ascetics following Antoine, attacked him one night with a whole legion of infernal spirits, shot him, covered him with wounds and left him half dead. L'ami, having come the following day, found him lying on the ground and almost inanimate. He loaded him on his shoulders and carried him into the church of a nearby village, where he was given care to remind life. At about midnight, Antoine regained his senses a little, and, seeing everyone sleeping by his side, with the exception of the friend who transceded him. ATHAN. Vita S. Antontii, n. 8-13, col. 854 et seq. Thus constraining himself, Anthony betook himself to tombs situated far from the village..., having entered a certain tomb, and, the door having been shut by him, he remained alone within. When the enemy could not bear this.., he inflicted so many blows on him that, from excessive torments, he lay mute on the ground... The next day, that acquaintance of his arrived..., and, carrying him off as though he were dead, brought him to the Lord['s house] in the nearby village... But around midnight, Anthony, having come to himself and awakened, summoned by a nod that companion who alone was keeping watch, and asked that, with no one else roused, he be carried to that place; he signaled to him to carry him back to his first retreat.

There, lying on the ground, for his wounds did not allow him to stand on his feet or on his knees, he began to pray. Then, raising his voice, he challenged the demons; "Antoine is still here: he does not flee from your blows; you may strike him, but nothing will separate him from the charity of Christ. When all your armies camp in front of me, my heart is without alarms."

To these unexpected provocations, Satan reunites his pack and arouses it to more atrocious fury; but this time, God forbids them to touch his servant. At least they try to scare by howlings and ghosts. At night, they invade the retreat of the solitary with a terrible noise that shakes the walls from all sides: in an instant, this place is filled with ghosts, reptiles and ferocious beasts; lions, bears, leopards, bulls, wolves mingle with snakes, aspics, scorpions. Chacun se meut à sa manière. The lion roars and seems ready to sting; the bull mukes and presents its threatening horns; the snake crawls and whistles; the voracious wolf is ready to tear its prey. Impassive before all these apparitions, Antoine laughed at so many useless efforts: "If you had any power," he said to the evil spirits, "only one would be enough; you come in so many numbers only to be afraid; all these hideous forms of cruel beasts are an obvious sign of your weakness. If you can do something, go ahead; if you can't do anything, why give you so much trouble? Faith in Jesus and the sign of his cross are an inexpugable bulwark."

The Lord, who was watching, Unseen, at this battle, then manifested his presence. The sky seemed to open, and a ray of light, descending on the face of the valiant athlete, put the demons on the run. Antoine suddenly found himself healed of all his wounds, and felt his soul filled with heavenly consolations: "Where were you then, Lord," he exclaimed, "and why didn't you show up earlier?"And a voice was heard, "I was here, Antoine, near you, spectator of this struggle. Since you have fought valiantly, I will forever be your support, and I will make your name famous throughout the earth."

After these triumphs, Antoine sank into the desert to live there with the cenobites. The filthy spirits followed and harassed him in all ways and in all forms. Later, when he became the father of a multitude of lonely men, he told them about Satan's tricks and audacity, to protect and strengthen them. He will teach them ‘ to dispel, through acts of faith and by the blessed sign of the cross, these vain prestiges, the various ghosts of women, beasts, reptiles, gigantic bodies, armed troops, presented by demons to seduce or to frighten. ISl will remind them that the coming of the Saviour has reduced these enemies to impotence, and how the very prince of darkness made him a day of darkness.

"Once," he said to them, "I heard him knocking at my door, and going out to see who it was, "I saw a man of a prodigious size, "Who are you?" I said to him. He answered me, "I am Satan.""What are you doing here? "I have come to find out," he said, "why the monks and all the others..." ...and [the darkness] did not vanish at once; but immediately the pains of the body subsided, and the dwelling appeared whole again. The vision that appeared addressed him with these words: "Where were you?".. Then a voice was sent forth to him: "I was here," he said, "Antony," etc.

1 S. Aran. Vila S. But we need not fear their phantasms; for since they are nothing, they suddenly vanish; if Christians accuse me without reason and curse me without ceasing. "Why are you hurting them?" "If they have trouble, it is not to me that they must take it," he said, "but to themselves; for my strength has been broken." Do they not read these prophetic words: "The enemy's weapons are never broken, and you have ruined his cities?"There is no more one trait left to me; I have no city or place to myself. Christians are everywhere, and the monks have come to argue with me in the desert, which was my last asylum. So let them warn themselves against themselves and stop their wrongdoers from abhorring me. "You always lie," I said to him, "but this time you say true despite yourself: "Yes, Jesus Christ, coming into this world, has destroyed your power and stripped you of all honour."Hearing the name of the Saviour, the ghost faints."

HT. "We know no more of a scene. Horrorous and more beautiful at the same time, on the fury of demons and the Courrage of the servants of God, than that which is described in the life of another anachorete, Saint Guthlac, first monk at the monastery of Reppington, in AANBIAIETESS and then removed to the island of Croyland.

One night, while the pious hermit was watching, according to his

1 S. ATHAN. Vitæ S. Antonit, n. 41, col. 903.

Then suddenly he saw his whole cell filled with the most foul hosts of unclean spirits. For as they came in from every side, the door lay open to them; bursting forth from heaven and earth, they covered the whole expanse of the air with dark clouds. For they were fierce in appearance, terrible in form, with large heads, long necks, gaunt faces, livid countenances, squalid beards, bristling ears, grim brows, fierce eyes, foul mouths, horse-like teeth, flame-vomiting throats, twisted jaws, broad lips, dreadful-sounding voices, scorched hair, thick jowls, towering chests, scabby thighs, knotted knees, hooked shins, swollen ankles, twisted feet, gaping mouths, hoarse-sounding cries: for they were heard to shriek with such immense wailing that they filled almost the whole space from heaven to earth with the din of their clanging roars. Nec mora, irritating ingruentes domum ac castalam, dicto citius custom, and went to the oration, he suddenly saw a multitude of spectra invade his cell, deafening from all parts to rushed waves, and in an instant to make in the air, around him, like a thick cloud. They had a fierce appearance, terrifying forms, huge heads, long necks, fleshy and livid figures, a disgusting beard, hairy ears, threatening forehead, fierce eyes, fetid breath, raucous and noisy voices!, thick lips, horse teeth, gossip that vomited the flame, calcined hair, bristly breasts, rough legs, bowy knees, crouched and overturned feet, callous heels. From their blissful mouths escaped dreadful sighing, which made the air sound in the distance. [They fell upon the solitary, and, after having bound the limbs to him, they drew him out of his cell, and plunge him into the muddy waters of a nearby pond; then they drag him and tear his body through the asperities and brushes that border this marsh. After that, they stop for a while, but it is to sum the saint to have to leave his desert. The man of God, whose heart remains firm in the midst of these trials, answers them with this verse of the psalm: "The Lord is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken."

Their fury repeats; they flatter their victim with chains of iron, without succeeding in defeating his constancy. They take it to the top of the air, and, coming together to new troops from the north, they go towards the dark abyss that form their domain, and they suspend the invincible athletic on the bountiful gulfs of hell. The most horrific show is taking place in his eyes. Torrents of fire and flames bubbling in these proctum in atræ paludis coenosis laticibus immerserunt : deinde asportäntes eum per paludis asperrima loca, inter densissima veprium vimina, dilacefondeurs, tourbillons of sulfur , mix with a rain of hail, which makes a freezing cold succeed the ardours of fire. Ardent demons traverse these dark caves in all directions and exert all kinds of torture upon the souls of sinners. This view penetrates the saint anachoret of an unspeakable horror, and makes him forget all the torments that he has suffered.

In order to fill his fear, the hideous spectra that surround him cry out to him all together in a dreadful concert: "We have the power to plunge you into the abyss and to make you suffer all these torments. This is the fire that your crimes have set on; you will become his prey! Here you are on fire; you will go down there!"

Unmovable and serene in the midst of these threats, Guthlac replied to all these shouts: "Woe to you, son of darkness, race of Cain, ashes and smoke! If you have the power to rush me, here I am: why do you stick to vain and lying bravades?"

At the height of rage, the cursed angels seem this time to be determined to accomplish their sinister purpose, when Saint Bartholomew, who had taken anachorete under his protection, appears all bursting with light, in an immense splendor, which suddenly illuminates these dark regions. While Blessed Guthlac tressal of Joy to this unexpected help, we see the evil spirits, unable to support the heavenly clarity, trembling, trembling, running wild. But the apostle reminds them, and commands them to report in his cell, without any shaking, without harming him, the servant of God on whom they dared to carry their hands. They must obey. As they split the space, not with violence, but with a suavity contrary to their nature, harmonious songs were heard, and heavenly voices, celebrating the courage and fidelity of the saints, sang these words: "They will go from virtues to virtues! " — To the first lights of dawn, Guthlac found himself in his loneliness, blessing the Savior Jesus, who had sustained him with his grace.

IV. — IT is certain circumstances, in Christian life, where Satan redoubles his efforts and exerts all his audacity to shake souls who are or who go to God.

The first is that of conversion, mainly of a brilliant conversion, which foreshadows great holiness. The Blessed Marguerite de Cortone, miraculously led in front of the rotten corpse of the accomplice of her disorders, immediately suspends her licentious life, devotes herself to tears and penance, and after having obtained from Heaven the assurance of her forgiveness, presents herself to the paternal house, where she hopes to find asylum and protection. His father, driven by a hard marâtre, refused to receive her. As she laments, and, knowing nothing but to become, implores the providence of God upon her soul, the father of lie suggests to her that such abandonment allows her to give free rein to her inclinations, and that her rare beauty will attract her all the favors of the world. When he sees her admitted in the third order of St. Francis, delivered to the most austere practices of mortification, favored by visions and ecstasy, then he shows himself to be discovered under various appearances, of a woman, of a man, of snakes, of different beasts, seeking by all the Middle Islands to frighten and deceive her, reminding her of her miseries, threatening her to tear her violently out of her cell and to drag her into hell, trying to persuade her that she is in illusion, that she will not persevere; that, by her extraordinary jeunes and macerations, she loses her body and soul?. Finally, as all these violences remain fruitless, he changes his tactics, and blows the vain glory and grievous complacency. He enters his cell one night, while she was praying, and he never ceases to tell him how great is his reputation of holiness outside, that men and women in crowds want to see and touch her by devotion, that she is now confirmed in grace and that she will enjoy in heaven an ineffable glory. But the humble penitent begins to mourn his sins, ironing them and enumerating them with shouts and sobs, soaking in a confusion that infamously hunts tempting. *

V. — He is still acting in a sensitive way to prevent the holy resolutions that must give God great glory, as it did to the venerable Mother Agnes, when she was about to arrive at this monastery in Langeac, where she was going to make the heavenly gifts of grace shine.

1 JuNcTA BEVAGN. Very often he began to enter her cell, and, transforming himself into the likenesses of various things, presented himself to her sight now in the form of a woman, now of a man, now of serpents, now of four-footed animals.

2 1bid., n. 49. What then are you doing here, wretched woman? Why, shut up in this cell, do you lose both body and soul at once?

8 Jbid., p. 314, n. 59: Cujus humilitatem superbus ille hostis ferre non valens, cellam ejus intravit nocturno tempore, dum oraret: and narrate "In the sight of Langeac, his good angel made him notice the new monastery where she was going to shut up for all her life, and said to him, "This is your house!" After this favor of the good angel, the evil angel wanted to give to our virgin the last assault. It was as she passed over a stone bridge, which was at the entrance of the city, that this unfortunate, appearing to her in a monstrous form, stopped him violently, and proposed to her this black thought that she should throw herself into the river and drown herself, rather than going to jail in a cloister where she would be captive for the rest of her days. [1 It would even appear that he wanted to rush Agnes there. His holy angel running her in this encounter, there was a battle between him and the evil spirit, which was defeated, and let the bride of the Son of God enter into peace in Langeac!"

Throughout her novitiate, she was still plagued by Satan's vexations, which made it impossible for her to stay in the cloister. A few hours before his profession, the enemy gave him his last assault, which was the harshest of all.

"The damn monster of hell, to whom God had forbidden to beat her after his profession, took that time to make him feel his fury for the last time. For more than four years, one had beaten this holy girl two or three times a week, and with a terrible repetition of rage, as has been said, at the approaches of her profession. Sometimes it had happened to Sister Agnes to stay there, all bloody with these blows. That day, feeling her power escaping from her, Satan used it so cruelly, that she fell to the ground, 'and, walking as she could, hid herself under her bed. The confessor having given communion to the sick superior, and asking what was being done.

1 DE Lantages, Life of V. Mère Agnès, 1re P., ch. 19, n. 17, t. 4, p. 260. Agnes, he was taken to his room. He was very surprised to find there lying on the floor and under the bed, in the posture of a dead person... When the hour had come, two nuns came to get her, and with her under her arms, led her into the choir. She heard a first Mass, during which she secretly made her vows, after the elevation, according to the custom which was then in the convent, before making them in public; and then she received Holy Communion. And it was at this happy moment that the inner peace and consolation were restored to her, and this terrible storm of which she had been beaten so harshly and so long was over."

VI. "When the demon presses into a soul a glorious and fruitful destiny, that he dreads from his zeal some salutary institution in the Church, his hatred of good and his jealousy do not allow him to remain in rest; and God, to add to the merits of his servants and to cleanse their virtue, seems outwardly to abandon them to his fury, while within his grace sustains them and makes them victorious. Most of the founders and restaurateurs of the religious families were subjected to these trials, from St.Antoine, the father of the cenobites, in the East, whose fighting we have told, and St.Benoît * the teacher and regulator of monastic life in the West, to St.Colette and St.Térèse, one of which reformed the order of St.Claire, and the other that of Carmel. The Blessed Marguerite-Marie Alacoque, by whom Our Lord was to reveal to the world the devotion to her sacred Heart, was warned by her divine Spouse, as she himself taught us, "that Satan had of 1 LANTAGES, Life of Ven. Mère Agnès, 1re P., ch. 7, n.2, p. 384.

2 S. Grec. M. Dialog. 1. 2, c. 1, 2, 10. Migne, Patr. lat., t. 66, col. 130 et seq.

3 Ér. DE Juuiens. BB. mart., vol. 7, pp. 571 and seg., n. 153 and seq. ordered him to test in the crucible contradictions, humiliations, temptations and derelicts, as gold in the furnace, and that he had permitted him everything, to the reserve of impureness."And the demon widely used the license given to him.

It also sometimes appears, through the effect of a special grace, to inspire the horror of sin and the salutary fear of damnation. The Blessed Villane of Florence ?, of the third order of Santo Domingo, after being adorned with much research to please the world, looks in her mirror; instead of her figure, she sees that of a horrible demon; she changes mirror, the vision remains the same. She then understands God's warning, and dedicates herself for the rest of her life to all the rigors of penance.

But it is mainly at the decisive time of death that jealous angel tries to seduce or frighten. When St. Martin died, he saw him near his bed: "What are you doing here, you cruel beast?" he said to him; "unfortunate, you will find nothing in me that belongs to you!" And when he said these words, he returned his soul to God.

VII. — Demons may appear intellectually; but then it is God who shows them rather than reveal themselves. Imaginary visions are much more common, and do not exceed the power of those fallen angels. It is warned that the appearance is of this nature, when the patient is alone to see, which he sees without the help of external senses, during sleep or in a state of exaltation that puts him out of himself.

Body visions are no less frequent. As we have said of faithful spirits, the evil take sensitive forms in relation to their perfidious purposes and their degraded nature. Suarez! observes that the former form the bodies to which they unite the finest and purest materials of the upper regions, while the latter, by punishment or depravity, go to the low, humid, filthy and infected places. Sometimes they use bodies of men and animals, and prefer to choose the bodies of the damned?: God would not allow them to touch the bodies of the blessed souls.

Saint Gilduin* or Gédouin, canon of Dol in Brittany, met one day a demon dressed in a human form, who had been put in the service of a poor boatman, in the poir of losing him. But the man had the pious habit of never starting that he would not have made the sign of the cross on himself and on his boat, and he made

And concerning this matter also, it is likely that the holy Angels draw it from purer bodies, which are found in the upper part of the air, but demons from more humid earthly places, and perhaps unclean and muddy ones, because, as punishment for their malice and depraved intention, nothing else is permitted to them. — [author's name illegible], Treatise on Confessions, Prelude 12, p. 19: The Doctors also relate that demons sometimes present themselves in the bodies of the dead, but not of the good, in whom the Holy Spirit has prepared a dwelling for himself. He immediately ordered him to be summoned. The saint... and to be brought to him... Fatere (inquite), jam cuntis audientibus, and nomen falla-. even at the beginning of all his actions, which bound the power of the evil spirit. Gilduin exposed him and forced him to declare where he had taken the body under which he was hiding. He replied that it was the one of a villain whose soul he had taken to hell. Then the saint commanded him, by the name of Jesus Christ, to immediately abandon the vile instrument of his tricks, which he did with a horrific cry. We hastened to dig a pit and sink this cursed body into it.

VIII. — Demons often borrow the traits of man; but these human appearances are usually deformed, hideous, or at least betrayed by some sign of bestiality the evil spirit that arouses them. They are hairy, have horns, claws, feet or tails of animals!. The voice is raucous and cavernous, the colour is black or dark; * which makes the authors who report these manifestations say that the demon appeared in the form of a black man, an Ethiopian, a Maure. The whole attitude breathes fury or fornication.

IX. — It is also true that Satan is transformed into an angel of light, according to the expression of the Apostle; that he knows how to put on deceptive exteriors whose beauty fascinates, whose amenity and modesty seduce; that he presents himself as Our Lord glorious or suffering, of the Blessed Virgin Mary, of angels and saints, or under others, according to the purposes and inventions of his malice. He appears in the form of the Saviour to the martyr saint Potit ‘, who, warned by his angel, invites the tempter to pray with him, but the superb spirit cannot bow or bow his knee, and is exposed to this sign. He is also trying to surprise the great Saint Martin?. He comes to him in a magnificent apparatus, all bursting with gold and stones, the diadem on the head, the serene forehead and the radiant face. The pious bishop is first surprised and remains silent: "Recognize," Satan said to him, "he who is before you; I am Christ."And as the saint always remained silent: "Martin, take up the lying spirit, why doubt when you see? Je suis le Christ. "No," replied the servant of God, who was inwardly warned of prestige; "the Lord Jesus did not announce that he should appear with purple and diadem; I will not recognize my Saviour except outside his Passion and the sacred stigmas of the cross."To these words the ghost sevanoitises; but to the infection that he left behind, it was easy to recognize the disgusting spirit.

His tricks were more successful, as Grégoire de Tours* reports, on Saint Second, deacon, companion of St Friard, honored one and the other in the diocese of Nantes, where they lived alone. [1 Also managed to deceive for five years the Blessed Catherine of Bologna, * who had unruly defied her, showing himself to her as Jesus Christ crucified and Blessed Virgin her Mother, and making complicated and impossible injunctions, who threw her into great perplexities and put her soul in great danger of being lost.

Generally, these illusions are rare among the saints, or are scarcely temporary; but they are frequent and disastrous in many presumptuous souls and eager for extraordinary emotions.

After trying vainly to interrupt or disturb the prayer of Saint Oswald!, with horrific noises and cries, with the roaring of the lion, with the whistle of the serpent, with the bereavement of the sheep, Satan transforms himself into a luminous angel in his eyes. The man of God swarms with the sign of the cross, knowing well that he will not irritate the spirit of light and that he will flee the spirit of darkness. Indeed, at this sign, the tempter sevanorates like a futile smoke.

One night, Saint John of God ? meets, lying on the public square, a poor singular, who had almost nothing of the human form. It was a monstrous mass — [the enemy], far more cunning, allowed it to assail her with the most subtle deceit, namely that it showed itself to her under the habit and form of the Virgin Mary..., under the form of Christ fastened to the cross it presented itself to her... The infernal struggle which we have related having ended, which was drawn out for about five years, etc.

But he, protected by the shield of faith, was no more terrified at the roaring of a lion or the hissing of a serpent than at the bleating of a sheep. Perceiving this, the demon vanished; but, immediately transformed into an angel of light, he appeared to the same Saint. But the man of God fortified himself with the sign of the Cross, knowing that a good angel would thereby not be provoked, while the angel of darkness would be driven off from a distance. And so it was done. For the malicious tempter, at the sight of the sign of the Cross, vanished from his eyes like smoke.

3? ANTON. One night, finding a beggar cast out in the street, he was not at all astonished by the unusual shape, which — smooth and elongated in arms and legs beyond the proportion of a human body — made it a monster; especially since an unnatural redness colored the hairless head. John made no delay: he lays him on his back, a burden light in other respects for the sake of Christ. But he had gone only a few steps with him when he could move no farther; he stood fixed in his tracks, sweat pouring from him on every side, and, "Save me," he said with a loud voice, "sweet name of Jesus!" He could not bear the power of the name he heard, he who, disguised as a beggar, had so heavily burdened John, and with a horrible shriek [revealed himself]... with disproportionately long arms and legs, a head entirely bald, and of a strange color. But nothing was able to inspire the horror of the servant of Jesus Christ, as soon as he The poor PERQNNE... He is 100 to Le tu biens answers this one, provided that one carries me on his shoulders, for I cannot stand on my feet, you see it."John does not hesitate; he charges on his back the so-called poor. But barely did he take a few steps, which he can deny more progress; he runs in sweat, he stumbles, he is as if crushed: "May the sweet name of Jesus be in my help!" he exclaims aloud. A: This blessed name, the impostor disappears by making EAIERARE a horrible pre cement. Le | ci -

Sometimes he takes the outsides of familiar people: other times, he presents himself in unknown traits, following other laws in his impostures only those that seem to him most suitable to ensure the success. One day, St.Antoine of Padua, saw him entering the church where he was preaching a demon under the appearance of a letter, which gave a letter to a lady of assistance telling him that her son had just been murdered. The saint, who knew supernaturally and the messenger and the content of the letter, satisfied this mother, saying to her: "Don't worry, your son. is alive; he who comes in is the devil.In person, he came only to disturb my preaching." The sudden disappearance of the Demon character at ‘the very moment the truth of the fact:'

The ancient enemy, entering in the guise of a courier, brought a letter to a certain lady..... and in that letter it was contained that her aforesaid son had been slain. Tunc S. Anthony, who had heard nothing of this with his bodily ears, said at once: "Do not fear, lady, for your son is alive, and is safe, and will return unharmed; and this one who just came is the devil, who did this in order to disturb the preaching." And siatim ille Bona! notes that female figures are suspicious, unless it is the Blessed Virgin Mary or some known saints; and this is especially true when this vision is addressed to men.

X. — Demons are most often manifested in beastly forms, and among animals those who inspire horror by their ferocity or abjection are the preferred instruments of these avil angels.

In the first place is the snake, whose sinuousness and venom faithfully express perfidy and malice. The fetid violence and smell of the goat deserve the same preference. The lower demons often appear in the form of swine, and also in the form of toads and frogs, as seen in the Revelation: "And I saw, said St John, from the mouth of the dragon, and from the mouth of the beast, and from the mouth of the false prophet, come out three unclean spirits, in the form of frogs; they are the Apunes of demons that make wonders."

In the end, the appearances of the perverted angel are innumerable, and all the bestial forms are permitted to him, except, say most of the mystics #, those of the dove and lamb, specially reserved for the Holy Spirit, our Lord and the saints; and again, according to some, that of the sheep, whose divine Shepherd has made the model of faithful souls; but this latter one,

Every apparition in the form of a woman is also to be held suspect, unless it be of the Blessed [Virgin]... ...of the Virgin and of the female Saints.

4 Binsrecius, De confess. malefic. The demon commonly appears also in the form of a goat...; for the goat is an animal fearsome in chin and horns, fierce-headed, and in its season quite foul-smelling — by which properties the manners of demons and of sorcerers are designated. [footnotes: Apoc. xvi, 13 and 14. — Bon., De discretione spirituum, c. 19, n. 7, p. 308. — Binsfeldius, De confessionibus maleficorum.] Prælud. 12, p. 78: Id tamen observatum is to quibusdam quod non appareat dæmones unquam effigiem ovium inducisse, cum Christo Domino placuerit se pastorem et familiam suam oves réservation is contradicted by the facts; for the demon has been presented several times in this way, especially to Saint Oswald, in the vision we have already spoken of, and to Saint Francis Romaine !.

He shows himself to St Stanislas Kotska ?, under the exterior of a horrible dog ready to sling on him; to the Blessed Christine of Stommeln, in that of a spider, for the distraction of the prayer; to St Agnes of MontePulciano *, like ravens; to St John of God, in owl; to St Elizabeth of Sconaugef, under the appearances of the dog, the bull, of a flock of goats; to the Blessed Welcome Bojani? and to St Colette f, in those of the fox, dragon, reptile, toads, ants, slugs. We saw that, to frighten Saint Anthony, the infernal legion transfigured into lions, wolves, bears, leopards, and an infinity of other beasts. Il

Seven evil spirits, envying her will united with God, came to her in the form of white sheep, showing her great gentleness, etc.

2 BREv. Rom. When she had thrice put to flight, by the sign of the cross, a demon leaping upon her in the guise of a horrible dog, etc.

In my prayer a demon always came in the guise of a spider, hindering me as much as it could.

4 RAYMOND DE CAPOUE, BB. 20 april., t. 11, p. 791, n. 6... For those evil spirits foresaw it, who at that time were putting forth the likeness of ravens.

$ ANTON. GOvEA, BB. 8 mart., t. 7, p. 842, n. 43 : In forma noctuæ visus est dæmon.

Once in the guise of a most foul dog..., it offered itself to me in the guise of a great and horrible bull.., from it came forth a most disgraceful flock of goats.

7 JEAN OF SAINTE-MARIE, the Lives of the Saints and Blessed of the Order of Saint Dominique, vol. 1, p. 263.

8 Ér. They attacked, appearing in the shapes of foxes. On a certain occasion it appeared to her in the figure of a certain evil and horrible dragon.. Among the other beasts which she found troublesome to look upon, she was more loath to behold venomous reptiles, such as serpents, toads, spiders, and the like; and for this reason the evil spirits, not unaware of such displeasure, showed themselves to her, with their accomplices, in the forms or figures of those creatures.… Hosts immundi in figuris illarum scilicet formicarum, eam frequenter pern, is not impossible that demons use live animals for their violence, which they would subject to some kind of possession; but, more generally, the appearance is purely fantastic.

In addition to the known forms, they consist of monstrous forms, which hold man, bird, beast. These kinds of metamorphoses, as Bona! notes, are suitable only for demons.

XI. — Without showing themselves to the eyes, they are still manifested by various external signs, such as words, shouts, blows, sounds of all kinds, sometimes by the external upheavals they produce, the movement and translation of certain material objects, by the projectiles they throw at those they want to molester.

Saint Roman?, founder of the monasteries of Mount Jura, and Saint Lupicin, his parent and his emulation of virtue, had withdrawn in deep loneliness, to indulge in the meditation of eternal truths. But as soon as they kneeled down to pray, the demons rained upon them a hail of stones, which caused them many and burning wounds. Still in the inexperience of age and struggle, the two solitaires took the party to distance themselves. In a nearby village where they stopped, a woman asked them where they were coming from. They replied, not without confusion, that they would abandon the wilderness where they would have settled, and told of the abuse they had suffered. Then this Christian woman, reproaching them for their pusillanimity: "Men of God," she said to them, "it was necessary to oppose more manhood and constancy to this enemy, who has been defeated so many times by the soldiers of Jesus Christ."Sorryful and shameful to be reminded of courage by a woman, he's back on the path of the desert. They have barely arrived, let the same rain of stones begin again; but, with patience and prayer, they finally got to be delivered from this cruel importunity.

If one wants to have an idea of the vacarm and the upheavals that demons can make in order to strike with terror, one must read the life of the holy priest of Ars. We shall quote only the following passage: "Ordinaryly, at midnight, three great blows against the door of the presbytery warned the priest of Ars of the presence of his enemy; and, depending on whether his sleep was deep or light, other more or less harsh blows followed each other as he approached. After having given himself the entertainment of a terrible tintamarre on the stairs, the demon entered; he took himself to the curtains and shook them furiously, as if he would have wanted to rip them off. The poor patient could not understand that he was still a torch. It often happened that the evil spirit struck like someone who wanted to enter; a moment later, without the door being opened, it was in the room, stirring the chairs, disturbing the furniture, furying everywhere, looking at the priest with a mocking voice: "Vianney! Vianney!" and adding to his name outrageous threats and qualifications: "We'll eat truffles, we'll have good, we'll have good! we'll hold you! we'll hold you!"Other times, without bothering to go up, he held him in the middle of the court, and after a long speech, he imitated a charge of cavalry or the sound of an army on the march. At once he shoved nails into the floor with great hammer strokes; at times he split wood, planed boards, sawed panelling, like a carpenter actively occupied in the house; or he would scold all night, and it seemed to M. Vianney that he was going to find his ceiling in the morning with holes; or he was beating the general on the table, on the fireplace, and mainly on the water pot, preferably looking for the most sound objects.

"Sometimes the priest of Ars heard in the lower room, below him, leaping like a great escaped horse rising up to the ceiling and falling heavily from the four irons on the tile; other times, it was as if a gendarme, wearing large boots, had made his heels sound on the slabs of the staircase; again, it was the sound of a great flock of sheep passing over his head: impossible to sleep with this monotonous trampling. Une nuit que M. Vianney was more worried than usual, he said: "My God, I willingly sacrifice you a few hours of sleep, for the conversion of sinners."At once the infernal flock went away, silence was made, and the poor priest was able to rest for a moment. We have all these details of. M. Vianney lui-même. »

XIE. — Bona ? sums up as follows the different ways in which demons manifest themselves.

"Like good angels, bad spirits often wear bodies, and more often they deceive the senses by their prestige. But what angels do for our salvation, they only undertake for our loss and damnation. The forms in which both appear are no less different. Angels usually use only human form; but demons use various forms, either of men or of beasts. They nevertheless abstain from those of the dove and lamb, both because they are mystical symbols of the Holy Spirit and of Jesus Christ, that because these animals, having no gall, are not suitable for Satan's ordinary violence. They not only resort to the resemblance of the brutes, they still feign unknown and monstrous ghosts, in order to inspire terror. It is also constant by the experience that they sometimes take dead bodies, but they are those of the reproved; for it is unbelievable that they could thus use the bodies of those on whose soul they have no power. They are also transformed into people who live; they present to the eyes or to the imagination spectators, simulacs and images of things or people; and, as the poems tell of Protée, they take all forms to deceive and lose the poor mortals. But we must firmly believe that demons, as St Augustine assures us, can only deploy their natural forces according to God's permission, most of which are hidden, but none of which is unjust." CHAPITRE XII

THE OBJECTS OF THE SURNATURE VISION

THE DAMNES The dead children in original sin. — Diverses visions de l'enfer. —

Appearances of damned to living. — The forms to which one can

les reconnaitre.

[. — Two categories of damnation are distinguished: those who die with the only original stain, and those who are reprimanded for their own and present sins.

Touching the first, Thyreus! makes this remark, reproduced by most mystics, among others by Bona!, Benedict XIV *, Schram ‘ and Scaramelli®, that, although there is no absolute repugnance in this, by the fact they never appear, and this author assigns this double

We can distinguish two kinds of damned spirits: some there are who, besides the pain of loss, also experience the pain of sense; others, such as unbaptized infants, endure only the pain of loss. That these mingle in the conversations of men has been established by no one; that they could, if He who can do all things should so command, no one doubts; yet we consider it likely that God never, or very rarely, commands this, and that they themselves never seek it, since they can gain no benefit for themselves from this, nor bring any to others except very rarely.

2 De discr. spir. c. 19, n.8, p. 310.

8 De serv. Dei Beatif., 1. 4, P.1, c. 32, n. 3, p. 236.

4 Theol. myst. 8 501, schol. 2, t. 2, p. 215.

5 Dirett. Mist. Tratt. 4, c. 2, n. 18, p. 259. reason, that they cannot receive any help from us, and that they themselves do not offer us any exciting virtue. Îl is true, we do not know active appearance from these souls; but we cite several visions where this part of hell is revealed. It is narrated from Blessed Catherine of Ricci that she descended several times to the limbs, that she saw there the multitude of dead little children with the original stain, and that in this sight her heart burst forth in witness of love and gratitude for the grace of God's baptism. Saint Francis Romaine, Blessed Peter Petron, Chartreux of Siena, and others, had similar visions.

I]. — As for the damned themselves, the theologians, following the Angel of the School, St. Thomas!, St. John of Saint Mary, the memorable Lives and deeds of the holy and blessed daughters of the first and third order of the glorious Patriarch S. Dominique, 1. 2, c. 2,1. 1, p. 529.

After this he saw one angel standing a little lower, near the entrance of hell: this angel was at the corner which is called the limbo... in which place little children who died without baptism are assigned, having no other punishment than darkness. In this place of limbo there are three dwellings, etc.

3 BARTHOLOM. SENENS. Likewise the blessed Father spoke of limbo, which children lacking sacred baptism inhabit; who, although pressed by no affliction except that they are forever deprived of the sight of God, nevertheless hear the shrieks of hell, and look down upon the dire bitterness of Tartarus. And since they are thus spared these evils, they consider that it goes very well with them, and therefore give thanks to God without end. It must be said that someone's departing from hell or from paradise can be understood in two ways: in one way, such that he simply departs from there, so that his place is no longer paradise nor hell; and in this way no one finally assigned to hell or to paradise can depart from there. In another way it can be understood that they depart from there for a time, and in this regard one must distinguish what befits them according to the law of nature, and what befits them according to the order of divine providence. According to the natural course, therefore, separated souls, assigned to their proper abodes, are entirely cut off from converse with the living. But according to the disposition of providence, souls that have gone forth separated from their receptacles are sometimes presented to the sight of men. And this too may be believed, that it sometimes happens to the damned that, for the instruction and terror of men, they are permitted to appear to the living. [French, garbled:] ...agree in recognizing that they can manifest themselves to the living. The facts, moreover, are so multiplied that it would be unreasonable to dismiss them all in doubt and question their possibility; it would also be an outrage to reason and history.

.These demonstrations are of two kinds. In some, the living see from their eyes hell and its victims; in others, the reproved themselves visit and call upon the living.

The holy souls who have had the vision of hell are in large numbers.

"As a day in oralson," says Térèse!, "I found myself in an instant, without knowing how, transported to hell. I understood that God wanted me to see the place that the demons had prepared for it, and that I had deserved by my sins. It lasted very little; but when I would still live for several years, I don't think it was ever possible for me to lose my memory.

"The entrance seemed like a long narrow alley, but without exit, or as an extremely low, dark, narrow oven. The soil was a filthy, pestilential smell, and filled with venomous reptiles. At the end of this impasse was a hollow practiced in the wall, in the way of a niche, where I saw myself closed closely. Everything that had struck my sight so far, and of which I have made only a weak painting, was delicious, in comparison to what I felt in this dungeon. No word can give any idea of this torment. I felt in my soul a fire of which, for lack of terms, I cannot describe nature, and at the same time my body was in the midst of tolerable pains. I endured very cruel suffering in my life, and, according to the doctors, the greatest pains that one could endure here below; such as the removal of all the nerves, at the time when I lost the use of my limbs, and many other evils, some of which were caused to me by the demon, as I said before, all this nevertheless is nothing, compared to what I was suffering at that time; and what was at the height of it was the sight that these torments would be endless, that they would never cease.

"But these tortures are nothing in their turn near the agony of the soul. It is a embrace, an anguish, a heartbreak so sensitive; it is at the same time so desperate and so desolating sadness, that I do not know how to express it. Saying that it is as if you were continually being taken out of your soul, it is little, for it is then another that seems to take away life; but here it is the soul itself that breaks into pieces. No, I will never be able to find expression to paint this inner fire, this despair, which fills so many pains and torments. I did not see who made me endure them, but I felt burned and like chopping in a thousand pieces; and, I do not fear to say, the torment of torments, it is this inner fire and despair. Once in such a horrible place, where all hope of consolation is banished, one cannot sit down or lie down, and the place itself lacks for it, although I was there as in a hole made in the wall, because these dreadful walls press themselves with their weight. There everything stifles you; point of light; dark thick covers everything; and yet, something incomprehensible, although there is no clarity, we see in it everything that can be the most painful in sight.

"Our Lord was not pleased to give me a greater knowledge of hell at that time; he has shown me, since then, more horrifying punishments, inflicted on certain vices, and which seemed more horrific to me in sight; THE OBJECTS OF VISION: THE DEATHS 223 but as I did not feel the pain, my fear was less than in this first vision; this divine Master wanted me to experience these torments and affliction in spirit as truly as if the body had suffered them... I was so frightened, that now again, writing this, after almost six years, my blood ices in my veins."

_ Another vision of hell, no less remarkable, is that of Saint Francis Romaine. It is too extensive for us to exhibit in its entirety: here are only the main features.

At the entrance is this inscription, which recalls the one of the Dante: "Here is hell, where there is no more hope, no more let go, no rest." L-abime is divided into three dwellings, which graduate the tortures and proportionate them to the errors committed. Everywhere darkness, stench, inexpressible torments. A horrible dragon, which spreads its monstrous folds to the bottom of the abyss, presents at the opening its blissful mouth, from which escape, as well as its eyes and ears, a dark fire and infectious vapors!

In the center sat Satan; but his head ascended to the top, and his feet descended to the last depths. He extends his arms as a sign of authority over this dark empire. His head carries, as crowns, an immense row of deer, whose numerous branches are as many as torches; his face inspires terror and casts an unclean flame away. It is bound with fiery chains to this dignominy throne and terror. The demons, his subordinates, train and rush, with the trembling of joy and anger, the unfortunate ones whom they have brought into their traps; they take some of them to his presence to be judged, and, from this horrible court, other demons lead them to the place where their eternal torment will be consumed.

Each sin has its special punishment, which the saint describes in a detail that we cannot reproduce. She has seen and is trying to tell what the blasphemers, the renegades, the magicians, the excommunicated, the homicides, the traitors, the proud, the envious, the greedy, the usurers and the thieves, the perjures and the detractors, those who have been hateful and violent, those who have given themselves to the good price, the vain adornments, the various excesses of lust, the trainings of play and dance. Then come the various conditions of life: the denatured children, the scandalous parents, the unfaithful husbands, the mad virgins, the deregulated widows, the bad judges, the preachers who alter the truth or detain it, the cowardly and interested confessors, the prevaricating pontiffs, the simoniac clerics, the religious who violate chastity, the doctors, the pharmacists, the unfaithful hoteliers to their duties; all these unfortunate ones suffer torments in relation to the prevarications they have committed! - In a vision we have already spoken of, the Blessed Osanne of Mantua ? successively runs through heaven, purgatory and hell. What she sees in these last abysses, the lamentations and howlings which in escaping1 MarTiorni, B.B. 9 mart., p. 516, n. 51-77.

3 Fr. SyLvestr. Finally she came to another place, where countless souls were held in the thickest darkness; who, raising ineffable lamentations and drawing most wretched tears from their eyes, sent up wailing even to heaven. To their misery and unhappiness was added this, that, by the work of most cruel demons, the enclosed souls underwent atrocious flames. The most compassionate girl felt great pity for them and would have wished to be able to bring some [relief]; but none [could be given] — they caused her inexpressible terror and pity.

A serious author, who carefully collected the wonders attributed to Saint Bernardin of Siena, and to whom the Bollandists "grant full claim," reports that an eleven-year-old child, named Blaise, from the land of Nocera in Italy, was led after his death, by Blessed Bernardin, through hell, limbos, purgatory and heaven; and that, after this interesting journey, his soul entered his body at the same time as the funeral ceremony was being held. Not only did he describe the various kinds of tortures he had seen of his will, but he identified by their names several people whom he had recognized in these braces, and others whom his guide had appointed him?

We overlook other visions of this kind, such as those of St. Petron, St.Obice, and St.Baront, and many particular visions, where it is only a question of one or more reproved souls that one sees plunged into the abyss, as it happens, for example, to St.Mary Magdalene of Pazzi and St.Terèse, to come to the apparitions by which the damned themselves reveal themselves to the living.

IL. — These manifestations are rarer than those of demons, angels and saints. Many, however, are cited, and they occur quite frequently, sometimes in one form, sometimes in another.

A man who had made himself a habit of violating the marital faith came one day to find the venerable Nicholas of the Rock ‘ in his loneliness, and began to question him with demonstrations of religion and piety. The holy hermit, who knew by a supernatural light the state of his soul, led him along the river, and when they were on the banks: "You shall see, he said to him, what is, in the other life, the state of those who give themselves up to unclean and adulterous loves."At the same time two terrible spectra came out of the waters, burning like iron in the furnace, and throwing around them a whirlwind of burning flames. On the surface of the waters, they rushed one to another in a furious embrace; then, rising together, they fought fiercely. But soon an invisible force rushed them into the torrent. Thus they rose up several times, pushing terrible words, and were also plunged back into the waters, until they finally disappeared altogether. This spectacle glamoured the unfortunate adultery of such fear, which he felt fainted. The solitary pious supported him and exhorted him to repair by penance the messes of his life, which he did indeed.

A brighter appearance is that which determined, it is said, the retreat of St Bruno to the desert and the foundation of the Order of the Chartreux. This fact, it is true, has been challenged by several writers of the last two sicles, in particular by Launoi, one of the most famous champions of the narrow and inconsequential Jansenist critical, who, after dogmatically suppressing the forces of nature, made himself a mission to invalidate, in practice, the wonderful grace. We refer these disputes to the Bollandist scholars, "who bring them back and discuss them hard along, and dare to conclude neither for nor against the authenticity of this account. The claim constantly given to him by the chroniclers of the Order of the Chartreux and most historians of Saint Bruno ?, allows us to reproduce it.

It is thus said that a doctor from the University of Paris, called, according to some, Raymond Diocres, who enjoyed a great reputation of doctrine and virtue, having died as a result of a short illness, the whole school, teachers and students, gathers around his coffin for the funeral ceremony. At the time when one was leaving the deceased's house to go to church, others say in the church itself and while singing the office of the

1 De S. Brunone, 16 oct., t. 51, p. 538-595. — n. ult. 4014. Meanwhile, whether this mournful story is held to have actually happened, whether publicly or within the private walls of the deceased's house, and whether it ever occurred and drove our saint into the wilderness, I leave to the studious reader to judge from all that has already been discussed at length concerning it, the reasons adduced above not being sufficient, as indeed it appears to me, for me to pronounce it either certainly true or certainly false.

2 Cf. F.-A. LEFEBvRE, S. Bruno et l'ordre des Chartreux, t. 1, p. Ga. — Paris, 1883.

In the year of the Lord's Incarnation MLXXXIL... A certain doctor of great distinction, honored above all the doctors of Paris for his life, as it seemed, his reputation, his learning and his knowledge, and remarkably held in favor, having been overtaken by a grave and final illness, without lying long abed, closed his last day... When the reverend men wished to lift the bier on which the corpse lay, to carry it to the church, suddenly, to the amazement of all, the one who seemed to be dead — and was dead — raised his head, sat up on the bier, and, in the hearing of all, cried out in a loud and terrible voice: "By the just judgment of God I am accused," and having said this, he laid down his head and lay dead as before. As before, raising his head, he thundered in a sorrowful and terrible voice: "By the just judgment of God I am judged." ... A third time he resounded with a very loud and most mournful cry: "By the just judgment of God I am condemned." Ea tempestate ibi magister Bruno, etc. deceased, the death lifted his head out of beer, and he was heard shouting with a lamentable voice: "I am accused to the righteous judgment of God!" At this unexpected cry, the assembly dispersed dismayed, and the funeral was sent back the next day. The next day, the ceremony begins again with more assistance; but, as the day before, and under the same circumstances, the deceased again raises his head, and with a more frightening voice 1 he exclaims: "I am judged by the righteous judgment of God." The fear repeats, and it is overtaken again at the funeral ceremony. The next day, we try to take it back, in the middle of an innumerable contest of people. For the third time, the dead man puts his head up in his coffin, and with a grim and resounding voice he makes these words heard: "I am condemned by the righteous judgment of God."This horrific scene cast terror in souls, and Bruno, who witnessed it, immediately took and inspired six of his friends the resolve to leave everything and sink into loneliness, to prepare for God's dreadful judgments. = Another equally frightening trait. A prelate unworthy of his character, and to whom Denis the Chartreux had sent strong but vain reverences on the disruption of his morals and his mad expenses, came to die. The religious saint, whose counsel had been so badly received, prayed, however, for the rest of his soul, when he suddenly saw that this wretched, all surrounded by flames, the bowels devoured by an anthill of serpents and toads, escorted by two great and black ghosts, who said to him, "This is your master, he for whom you pray!" We will not speak of the damned who came back to life, and who told their sentence and the beginning of their torment. These facts, moreover very rare, but of which we find some examples in the authors, among others in Saint Gregory the Great, Saint Sulpicus-Severus *, and here and there in the Bollandists *, are simple resurrections and not supernatural apparitions as we examine them here.

IV. — When God permits the reproved to manifest themselves, for the instruction or terror of the living, it is under the outside that characterizes them. The figure of beasts or monsters is only suitable for demons, says Cardinal Bona #; for damned ones, they always take a form that allows them to be recognized. They have, however, in common with the cursed angels, violence, rage and despair, roaring, grunts, squealing, shouting, tumultuous noises, unarticulated voices, blasphemies, imprecations, insults; and also, because this is their common sensible punishment, fire and flame, repulsive ugliness and fetid smell. As special signs of the damned, one can add the acts of passions and vices that have been the cause of their damnation, such as stealing money or other objects, drinking and eating with excess, displaying the license and immorality, threatening with anger. CHAPITRE XIII

THE OBJECTS OF THE SURNATURE VISION

THE LIVING Certainty and diversity of these facts. — Intellectual visions for the living. — Visions imaginaires. — Body visions: instant and successive translations. — Bilocations: Saint Francis of Assisi in the chapter of Arles. — Saint Anthony of Padua, both at the cathedral of Montpellier and in his convent. — Pérégrinations surnaturelles de sainte Lidwine. — Saint Francis Xavier at the same time on the ship and on the boat in distress. — Mysterious journeys of St Martin of Porres, without him ever leaving Lima. — Blessed Angelo d'Acri giving himself discipline in his room, while he appears to a sick person. — Saint Joseph de Copertino, without leaving his convent, witnessed the death of a friend and his own mother. — Marie d'Agréda, always present to her community, converted an Indian tribe from New Mexico through her preaching. — Appearance of Mother Agnes de Langeac to Mr. Olier, as she is seen dead in her monastery. — Saint Alphonsus of Liguori assists Pope Clement XIV dying, without ceasing to be in Arienzo. — Psychic condition during bilocations. — Explanation of the phenomenon: angelic substitution, — Body duplication and spiritual duplication, — The soul separated from the body. — Reality of the double presence in body and soul.

I. — The supernatural appearances of living to living are demonstrated facts that impose on mystics and historians. But as much as the facts are constant, so many interpretations of which they are subject are questionable. So that everything is lucid in this discussion, one of the most interesting of mystical, let us distinguish precisely the different aspects of prodigy.

Two of them are mainly important here: subjective vision and external appearance. When the vision is intellectual or imaginary, the wonderful, as we have said elsewhere, is less in perceived reality than in the seeing subject. The one of sensitive vision, on the contrary, is whole in the very object that appears. The difficulty therefore focuses on this double point of view, vision and appearance, hearing the vision of the act of knowledge that is accomplished in the subject, and the appearance of the known outer object.

I. — The cases of intellectual visions by which God shows to holy souls living persons and the current situations that interest them are in large numbers.

On the day and at the time when the Christian army, under the leadership of Don Juan d'Austria, won over the Turks the memorable naval victory of Lepante, St. Pius V' maintained business with the pontifical treasurer Bartholomew Bussotti in the presence of several prelates of his house, when all at once rose up, headed towards the window, opened it and, with eyes in heaven, remained for a few moments in the immobileness of contemplation; then turning around, and still absorbed: "Let's no longer talk about business," he said, looking at Bussotti; this is not the time! Go and give thanks to God; our army is now gaining victory over the Turks."The assistants withdrew greatly astonished, and on leaving they saw the pontiff already prostrated before his oratory, blessing God from the visible protection he had just given to Christian weapons.

Blessed Angelo, a Capuchin religious, prayed in his cell of Acri, Italy, at the time when Prince Eugene triumphed over Turks in Belgrade. He was carried in spirit on the battlefield and witnessed all the adventures of the battle. "He saw the Most Holy Virgin animating our troops, and the capital of Serbia fall into the power of Christians. Full of joy at this spectacle, he comes out of his cell shouting: "Let us rejoice, let us rejoice, my brothers; good news! Ring the bells! Prince Eugene defeated the army of the unbelievers; Belgrade is ours; rejoice us; live the holy faith!"The religious and all those who were at the convent noted the hour and the circumstances of this event; some time later, letters from Vienna came to confirm all that the blessed had announced."

It is usually through intellectual visions that God shows the state of souls, revealing sometimes their graces and holiness, sometimes their sins and their resistances, as seen in the life of Saint Philip of Neri, Saint Teresa, * Saint Mary Magdalene of Pazzi and many others.

IIT. — Imaginary visions where the living reveal themselves are no less frequent. This was probably the vision where Ezekiel, raised between heaven and earth and led in spirit to Jerusalem, saw the abominations that were committed in the temple of the Lord. We also find in Saint Francis de Sales and Saint Chantal a double and charming example. €!One morning, being in Bourbilly, she (Holy Chantal) crossed the fields on horseback, praying Our Lord to make known to him who was to lead her, because this thought was leaving her more. She passed by a great way, on the edges of a wood; suddenly she saw at the bottom of a small hill and a little distance a man whose features she had never seen, and who had the resemblance of a bishop. He had a black bra, a rock and a hat in his head. His face was angelic and breathed only from the sky. While Mme. de Chantal looked at him with all intent, she heard a voice saying to her: "This is the beloved guide of God and of men, in whose hands you must rest your conscience."She vainly sought who could be this holy character; she had not seen him anywhere. But she felt full of joy, and she doubted that she should meet him soon.

"At about that time Saint Francis de Sales, being in prayer in the castle of Sales, was delighted in ecstasy, and saw a young widow whose name he did not know and whose face he had never seen. He did not know what this vision meant, when suddenly the veil of the future arose, and he saw as the cradle of a congregation. religious whose young widow was the mother, and of whom he himself would be the teacher."

The two founding saints of the Order of the Visitation were to meet for the first time and recognize themselves two or three years later, in Dijon, DENOSRR ES the Lent that the Blessed Preached.

When the purpose of the imaginary vision is living people, it is difficult to admit, as we have done for angels and blessed ones, the personal presence of the objects represented. How do the living act on the imagination of the seeing subject? And if they were actually present, why multiply miracles and not reveal themselves in the ordinary way? Moreover, in these kinds of encounters, the living often do not know that they have been the object of a vision; there is no indication that Saint Francis of Sales and Saint Chantal suspected, before their reciprocal communications, that they had been shown one to the other in supernatural vision. However they can also be instructed, though absent, by revelation, as reported, for example, by Saint Severin, Apostle of the Norics!

In any case of knowledge, the simplest explanation is to assume that God miraculously makes this image appear in the mind; or, if one wishes, that the representation is aroused by an angel, by the angel of the person represented, by the angel of the person seen, or by another.

What is related of Saint Bruno and of Roger, Count of Sicily, confirms this interpretation. This lord, who had taken Bruno and his brothers under his protection, was to be indignantly betrayed, under the walls of Capua, of which he was sitting, by a Greek officer attached to his service with a corps of troops of his nation, when during his sleep he saw the appearance of an old venerable man, the clothes torn, the face bathed in tears, in which he seemed to recognize the features of the solitary saint of Calabria. He asked him for the cause of his weeping: "I weep, " replied the old man, "on the souls of Christians, and on yours in particular. Rise up without delay, run to arms, and with the help of God save yourselves and your soldiers."Stripped with terror, the count wakes up, takes up his arms, calls his people, builds on the traitors, who vainly attempt to take refuge in the city, and thus escapes the peril that threatens him. Shortly afterwards, he came to visit the religious in their loneliness, and told them about his vision. Bruno humbly apologized and declared that it was not he who had appeared to the Count, but the angel of God who looked after the princes in time of war!

IV. — The body vision, we have already made the remark, does not offer anything wonderful from the subject who perceives it: Balthazar saw the hand that wrote the divine sentence, by a natural exercise of the eyes of his body and in the same way that he had just seen on the feast table the sacred vases removed at the temple of Jerusalem; all the wonder here is in the outward appearance, but this wonder presents exceptional difficulties, when it staged living beings.

It is accomplished by translation or multilocation.

The translation is miraculous, when you move from one place to another without complying with the natural laws of locomotion. Elijah, carried away by the hand of God before the chariot of Ahab?, and rising up to heaven on a whirlwind of fire; the deacon Philip‘, suddenly carried by the spirit of God into the city of Azot, after he had instructed and baptized on the way from Jerusalem to Gaza the eunuch of Queen Candace, are memorable examples of these supernatural translations. At present we consider the wonderful transfer from the point of view of the apparition, i.e. as a more or less prolonged manifestation at a point in the space where it appears by miracle, and where it disappears as well.: This is how the prophet Habakkuk! was transported, by the hand of an angel, from Judea to Babylon. Daniel had been in the lions' den for six days, when, at that time, Habakkuk went to the fields to bring bread and a stew to the reapers, which he had prepared for them. The angel of the Lord said to him, "Bring this food to Daniel, who is in Babylon, in the den of lions." Habakkuk answered, "Lord, I have never seen Babylon, and I do not know where this pit is." Then the angel took him from the top of the head, and holding him by the hair, carried him with the agility of a spirit to Babylon, on the very open of the pit. And Habacuch cried aloud, "Daniel, servant of God, take the meal that he sent you." Daniel answered with this prayer, "O God, you have remembered me, and you have not forsaken those who love you." And, rising up, he ate. After that, the angel of the Lord immediately returned Habacuc to the place where he had taken him.

Saint Teresis reports that St Peter of Alcantara appeared to him, a year before his death, although they were separated from one another from a distance of several leagues; but she does not say whether it was by simple translation or by bilocation. Saint Philip of Néri* showed himself in the same way and on several occasions, during his lifetime.

St.Antoine de Padua made a one-night trip from Padua to Italy, to Lisbon, Portugal, and returned from Lisbon to Padua the following night. Voici à quelle Occasion.

Two inhabitants of Lisbon had committed each other a deadly hatred. One of them, having met his enemy's son in the square in the evening, cruelly massacred him, and, in favour of the darkness, came to bury his body in a garden next to his house, belonging to the Blessed's parents. Justice informed, made searches in the house of the murderer, and from there, passing to the surrounding places, finally discovered the body of the victim. The suspicions were about Antoine's father, who was arrested - with all his family. The saint, supernaturally instructed of everything, asked the keeper for permission to leave, and that same night he was in Lisbon. In the first light of the day, he went to the judge, and begged him to release the innocent he held in the irons. The judge replied with an absolute refusal. Then the servant of God asks for the child's corpse to be brought to him, and when he has been laid at his feet, he adjures the dead to stand up and say whether his parents have really tried his life. The child rises immediately, and declares that they are for nothing in his death. On this evidence, the accused are released. The Blessed spent the whole day with them, and the next morning he was back in Padua.

The translation is instantaneous or successive, depending on whether one moves from one place to another without touching the intermediates that separate them, or whether one crosses these media with varying speed.

_ The scholastics dispute that it is possible to go from one point to another without suffering the environments that make their distance, and therefore the possibility of translaillis fatta potestas. The man remained that whole day with his parents... [text breaks off, resuming mid-word in an unrelated passage on] instantaneous [translation]. Suarez!, dealing with the agility of glorious bodies, says that virtually all theologians agree to deny this possibility, even for glory; more importantly, under the conditions of mortality. He dares, however, to declare probable the sentiment reproved by the multitude, and it seems, by weighing the reasons by which he justifies this qualifier, that he could do it more generous. On the one hand, he took for granted enough that the Fathers, among others St Augustine, St. Lawrence Justinian, St.Anselm, attribute to the glorious bodies the power to move instantly in the manner of the spirits; and on the other hand, the instantaneity of the translation seemed to him to suppose the freeing of the distances ÿ, for this peremptory reason that the passage of the circles, if it were obligatory, would logically carry away as many successive moments as there would be points to cross. The immediate conclusion, which sees it, is that unless we renounce the common teaching of the Fathers, we must look at the present law of the milieus as a contingent condition that can be lifted by miracle in the present life, and totally suppressed in glorious life. This way of reasoning pleases us all the more, since it admirably fits in with the notion that we have of space, a simple and luminous notion, whose absence throws scholastics into inextricable difficulties, whenever they touch upon the question of extent. But nowhere is their embarrassment as great as when it comes to bilocations, as we will see by studying these kinds of appearances.

Successive translation does not give rise to any difficulty or controversy. It is enough to note that it is usually accomplished by the ministry of angels; sometimes, however, it is due to a kind of supernatural attraction: it is Jesus Christ himself who walks before and leads after him by an ineffable charm; it is still the Most Holy Virgin Mary or someone of the blessed; other times it is a luminous cross or a celestial clarity that precedes, enlightens and fascinates.

V. — There is a double or multi-location where the same person simultaneously occupies two or more places. A large number of appearances from living to living seem to be in this case. Here again, more than anywhere else, we will let historians speak.

Saint Bonaventure reports the following in his ‘legend' of St Francis.

"The Blessed could not attend in person to the chapters that were held in the provinces; but by the regulations that he had prescribed, the ardour of his prayers and the effectiveness of his blessing, he was always present in spirit. Sometimes even, by the almighty virtue of God, he appeared visibly among his children. While the excellent preacher Antoine (of Padua), the glorious confessor of Christ, spoke before his brothers gathered in chapter at Arles (1226), on this title of the cross: JESUS OF NAZARETH, KING OF JUIVES; one of them, named Monald, religious of a proven virtue, yielding to a secret inspiration. of God, looked towards the door of the hall, and he saw from the eyes of the body the Blessed Francis, hovering in the air, with his hands stretched out into the cross and blessed-. santing the assembly. The spiritual joy that filled the hearts of all the brothers was a sensitive testimony to the real presence of their father, and the fact became even more certain by the admission that St Francis himself made it.": VI. — On raconte un prodige semblable de saint Antoine de Padoue*. He preached in the cathedral of Montpellier on Easter Day 1295 when, at the beginning of his speech, he remembered that he had a ceremony to do in the church of the monastery, and that he had appointed no one to replace him. It was the practice among the religious that the great solemnities, two, among the first, sang the Alleluia at the Conventual Mass, and it was he, this time, who was to fill this office. Afflicted by the disorder that his absence would cause in the choir, the holy man interrupted immediately, covered his head with his cap, bowed as if to sleep on the pulpit's desk, and remained for a long time in this attitude, to the great astonishment of all the attendance, who believed him indisposed or in ecstasy. Meanwhile, he sang Allehuia in front of all his brothers, in the middle of the choir. Quand le chant fut terminé, il reprit ses sens, se découvrit la tête et continua le sermon qu’il avait interrompu. 4 BB. 43 jun.,t. 93, p. 218, n. 8 : Vir Dei eadem hora visus est in ecclesia Fratrum cantare Alleluia, per longam horam, corpore in pulpito coram tanta multitudine persistente.. And having diligently completed the office already begun, returning at once to himself, he excellently continued the preaching which he had begun. VIT. "Holy Lidwine!", nailed to his bed by the most extraordinary diseases, however, made wonderful pilgrimages to the Holy Land, to Rome, in various places where the relics of the saints were honored; and this, not sometimes only, but almost every night, for nearly twenty-four years. She knew a great number of churches and monasteries, religious people whom she had never seen otherwise. In order to avoid doubting that these trips were real, his body often kept irrefutable traces of them. When she kissed the cross and the wounds of the Saviour along the painful path, her lips remained ulcerated; in a slippery passage she gave herself to the right foot a sprain, of which she suffered for several days; passing through the brushes, she was injured; and upon her return she had to pull out of her hand the thorn that shoved in it. During these miraculous excursions, his body remained on his bed as dead and insensitive to all external excitement.

She got her confessor?, who admired these wonders and perhaps had some difficulty in believing it, the grace of a similar delight, and he confessed himself that he had visited the holy places with her.

VIII. — « Saint Francis Xavier returned from Japan to the

1 J. BRuGMAN. He was also carried off to various places of the world, namely to places of the Holy Land, the City of Rome, and many other holy places and monasteries, that he might visit with devout affection the relics of the Saints established there; and not only once, or twice, or three times, but for almost twenty-four years, and nearly every night, he continued in these raptures.... And while his spirit was carried off to the aforesaid places, his body remained as if dead and lifeless in the little bed, so much so that, if anyone had touched it, she would not have felt it. Sometimes, on returning from those kisses of the Lord's cross or of His wounds, she brought back certain sores imprinted on her lips.

2 J. BRuGMAN. For she obtained from the Lord, for her confessor who marveled at this, a similar grace of rapture, so that even, apart from the seal of confession, [it was attested] that she had been with him in the places... the Indies, on a Portuguese ship. On the high seas, the crew was attacked by a terrible storm, during which the boat, mounted by five Portuguese and ten Indians, both slaves and sailors, was detached from the ship. Parmi ces malheureux se trouvaient deux mahométans qui avaient refusé de se faire chrétiens. Their fate touched the admirable apostle. [He gathered in himself, implored the protection of God, and, feeling answered immediately, 1 said to the captain, Edward de Gama, who was in great sadness: "Don't be grieved, my brother; before three days, the daughter will return to find the mother."The saint did not cease, during this time, to exhort the crew to trust and to pray with admirable fervour. He spent a whole day, from seven o'clock in the morning to the lying soleil, kneeling in one of the ship's chambers, praying with sighs and tears. We went up to the moon several times to see if we could not see the unfortunate boat; but we never saw anything coming, and the pilot declared that we were waiting in vain, and that there was danger of delaying the march.

Xavier, without regard to the pilot's report, urged the master to lower the sail, to give the boat time to return to the ship. The holy man's authority prevailed over the pilot's reasons; the antenna was lowered and almost three hours stopped. But at last the passengers got tired, unable to suffer the ship's swing any more, and everyone shouted, "Sail!" The Father reproached them for their impatience, seized himself of the antenna to prevent the sailors from spreading the sails, and, leaning his head upon it, burst into sighs and sobbings, and poured out a torrent of tears. He rose up shortly afterwards, and holding his eyes fastened to heaven, still all bathed in tears: "Jesus, my Lord and my God," he said in a pathetic tone, "I adjure you, through the sufferings of your sacred Passion, to have mercy on these poor people who come to us through so many perils!"He then turned back as he was, and remained leaning on the antenna without saying a word for a while, as if he had been asleep.

Then a child, sitting at the foot of the mast, suddenly exclaimed: "Miracle! Miracle! Here's the boat!" Everyone shouted at the child, and one actually saw the boat at a musket range. It was only exclaims and shouts of Joy, as she approached the ship. Most, however, fell at Xavier's feet, and, grateful for the unworthy sinners' possession of such a holy man, asked him for forgiveness-for their unbelief. But the Father, confused about being treated like this, escaped from their hands as soon as he could, and went into a room.

Finally the boat won the ship. It was noticed that, although the waves were very moved, she came straight without being shaken, and that she stopped herself. It was also kept in mind that she had no movement until the fifteen men she was carrying were entered into the ship and that the sailors were tied behind the stern.

As soon as those men who were believed to have been lost were kissed, they wanted to know their adventure, and they were surprised to learn ‘that they had come in the midst of the most horrific storm that ever happened, without fear of death or misleading, because, they said, Father Francis was their pilot and his presence did not leave the slightest worry. As the people of the ship maintained that the Father had not left them, those of the boat, who had always seen him with them holding the rudder, could not believe what they were told. After a little contestation, some judged that the saint had been at the same time in two places; and a miracle so visible made so much impression on the spirit of the two Saracen slaves of the boat, that they abjured the mahometism.

The impatience that the fifteen men had to see the one who had led them so fortunately and who had fainted with their eyes at the time when they had joined the ship, forced Xavier to appear. They wished to greet him as their deliverer, bowing down before him; but he did not suffer him, and declared that it was the hand of the Lord and not his who had saved them from the shipwreck. At the same time he gave to God public thanksgivings for such an extraordinary favor!"

IX. — The life of Saint Martin de Porres® contains no less surprising facts.

"One day, the Blessed is accosted in the streets of Lima by a man who came back from China and speaks to him in Chinese. The Blessed answered him in this language with a purity that it would be hard to acquire while remaining in this country for a long time. The traveller spoke with him about this nation, which the saint seemed to know as well as he did. Yet he spoke to him about a servant of God whom he had met in Manila, and who was ignored by the Blessed. But a few days later, having resumed their conversation, the Blessed spoke to him in his turn of this religious with such exact details, that he had to think that he had visited him since then. The traveller was called Jean Criollo; he was from Lima itself, and the fact that I have just reported is recorded in the canonization trial.

En voici un autre non moins merveilleux. A Spaniard who had long been a slave in Algiers arrived at the convent one day. The first person he meets is the Blessed, and he exclaims when he sees him: "Here is my father!Here is my deliverer!" Then he throws himself in his arms and prints his lips on his forehead with respect and grateful tenderness. "Welcome," replied the good brother, "but excuse me, I have a matter of importance, we will meet again later." The religious who were there, surprised by the sudden departure of Brother Martin, no less than exclaims from abroad, asked him where he had known the brother, to treat him so familiarly. "But I saw him often in Algiers," he replied, "when I was a slave to the Turks. He came to see us frequently, me and my fellow chainmen, bringing us bread and money, comforting us, healing us when we were sick, encouraging us to endure our calamities Christianly and to remain firm in the faith. [He showed me a particular affection, and it was to him that I owe my deliverance."

But the Blessed was mulatto, and it was difficult for another Saint-Dominic religious to resemble him as well. Moreover, the gift of healing the sick was not very common. So this man was not wrong. But how could the Blessed have gone so frequently to Algiers, China, Japan, where many Christians were also comforted by him in their sufferings, is the secret of God and the saints. The good brother wanted to devote himself to the missions; his superiors were always refused. Our Lord, no doubt, was more generous than men, and carried him miraculously to those countries where he called the ardour of his charity. One day he escaped a word that proved his mysterious journeys. He was treating a sick person who was suffering from an eresipele, which he wanted to wash with chicken blood. The patient refused, saying that he had no confidence in the effectiveness of such a remedy: "Be certain," replied the Blessed replied, "that it will be useful to you, for I saw him practicing in the hospital of Bayonne, en. But no one had ever known that he would have left America.

X. — Blessed Angelo d'Acri, whom we have already appointed, also had to a rare extent: degree the gift of the multilocation. In particular, there are two of these: pradiges of which. the accounts appear. at the trial of his beatification.

During a mission which he preached in Amantea, he was seen, far from there, in the city of Rossane, assisting a lady to whom he had promised to be present at his death.

This is the second fact from Baron Francesco Fava's statement.

"In the year 1727, in March," said this witness, being attacked by a very dangerous disease, "I was prepared, on the advice of the doctors, to receive Saint Viatique. One morning, before the day, while I was sitting on my bed and the light was burning in my room, I saw the servant of God, Angelo d'Acri, who was preaching the squaredsimal station at Amantea, and who was staying in the house of my relative dofña Anna Camardi, wife of Don Horace Carratelli. [He took a chair from his hands and sat down by my bed, comforted me with sweet words, and exhorted me for half an hour; then he left without I could see where he had come out. In this same morning, after receiving Holy Communion, my relative came to visit me, and all joyful, told me that she had spoken in the morning. to the servant of God, that she had presented to her my two little children removed from her from my illness, praying to him to ask God for my health, that they might not become orphans. Orphans, recommendation: that she had already made others: sometimes to the holy man; and he had assured him that I was well. The fever, in fact, had not taken me back, against the forecasts of the doctors, and from then on I began to get better. I then told doña Maria that before receiving Holy Communion, Father Angelo had come to find me in my room and had inspired me with his words a lot of comfort and courage. This news fills her with astonishment and astonishment, and this, because at the very hour when I told her that the Father had come to visit me, she had heard him discipline in his room; after which she had led him to my two little children, and asked for his prayers. My surprise was no less; but, knowing the perfection of God's servant, we judged that som body had mutiped.

There was no hallucination in me when I saw him enter into my room and exhort, for I was in the midst of my senses, and I had all my presence in mind. What confirmed us in my persuasion was that at the time the Father came to visit me, the doors of my house were closed and all my servants slept. The doors were opened only when a servant went to call Don Francesco: Gracco, parish priest, to bring the saint. Viatic; what they all certified when I told them the fact."

XI. — Saint Joseph de Copertino! presents in his life two cases. of bilocation. Octave Piccino, compatriot of the Blessed, and called the Father, because of his great age, had. prayed to Joseph to assist him in his last moments. He, who was then at the convent of the Grotella, not: far from: Copertino, promised him, saying, "Yes, I would be: in Rome, I would come to assist you." This promise was a prophecy. Joseph, in fact, was in Rome when the old man reached his last hour; but he was no less faithful to his word, and he appeared to strengthen him in this supreme battle. Several people saw him, including Tertiary Sister Terèse Fatali, who, astonished to see him, said to him: "Brother Joseph, how do you find yourself 1c1? "To recommend to God the soul of the Father," he replied, and he disappeared.

By such a miracle, he witnessed his own mother. As she was about to expire, she exclaimed with a great accent of pain: "O brother Joseph, my son, I will not see you any more!" At the very moment a great light appeared that lit the whole room, and the moribund, seeing her son, exclaimed again, filled with joy: "Oh, brother Joseph, my son!"

But at the same time the Blessed was in Assisi, and went, moaning, from his cell to the church to pray. The guardian father meets him and asks him the subject of his sadness. His answer was: "My poor mother has just died."The letter which soon came for him confirmed the fact; but it was also learned that the saint had personally assisted his dying mother! All these facts have been discussed in the beatification trials, and must be held for some.

XII. — What is said about the venerable Mary of Agréda is unique. This admirable virgin kept praying and offering herself as a victim for the salvation of souls. One day, God passed before his eyes, during an ecstasy, the whole universe with all human families, and among the great multitude of unfaithful nations, those of New Mexico were shown to him as the most mature for faith. In many similar visions, she saw these lands and peoples, and she doubled her prayers for their salvation. But once she prayed in this way, she was delighted in ecstasy, and found herself carried as if by enchantment in the midst of one of these Indian peoples. She saw them, understood their language, spoke to them to preach the Gospel, and although she did so in Castilian, the Indians seemed to hear it as if she had spoken their natural language; much more, she performed miracles in confirmation of the faith she taught. Returning from her ecstasy, she found herself in her convent, from where she had not left.

And this wonder was renewed more than five hundred times.

"The servant of God," writes her historian, "had, in order to persuade herself that she was physically carried in this country, the foundations that follow... It seemed to him then to have a clear experience of these people, such as to see distinctly the kingdoms of these countries, knowing very well the names; to see from them the dwellings, distinguishing them from those of Spain, the people and their manners, their trade, their wars, the weapons used there to fight; to communicate with them, persuade them, hear them speak, consider their conversion appreciably, seeing them on their knees asking for the spiritual help they needed for the salvation of their souls; to feel climate change, and to see other things as actually present. He seemed to discover to her, as if she had passed through various countries and parts of the world, that in certain places it was night, and in other days; that in some it was raining, and in others time was serene; here, as if she had passed through a great expanse of sea, there, several different lands... Beliefing, on one of these occasions, to distribute to these Indians some rosaries which she had in her room, having returned from the. delight, she found them no more: she had put them, although she took all the care imaginable. to find them.

Notwithstanding all this, the thing being so extraordinary, she always doubted that this füt in body, and she was rather inclined to believe that the thing was going on in spirit; and even considering this event to the weight of her humility, she could not persuade herself that it was as useful as it was believed and that God would have chosen it for such an admirable work. But the confessor..., convinced that one should not limit the wonders of the Almighty, reflecting on the foundations that we have just marked, believed that she was carried body by body to these places of America, and other learned persons to whom he communicated this wonder, were also in the same sense...

The truth, as it was discovered in the future in the way I will say, was that a person, whether she is the servant of God herself or some angel in her form, performed these wonders in this country, the Indians seeing her, hearing her speak, and communicating with her. A few years earlier, in America, the vast provinces of New Mexico had been discovered, where the children of Saint Francis were constantly working to make it the spiritual conquest... These religious used with great zeal such a holy exercise, when they were approached. by a troupe of previously unknown Indians, who fervently asked them for holy baptism. The religious were very surprised; and asking these Indians for the cause of their coming, they answered them that a woman had long appeared in their kingdom, prescribing to it the law of Jesus Christ; that she was sometimes absent from it, and that they did not know where she withdrew; that she had made known to them the true God and his holy law, and had commanded them to come and bring them up to baptize them. The religious were astonished, and much more, when they wanted to educate these Indians, they found them perfectly catechized. They were anxious to know what the instrument of such a rare wonder of the Lord was, and asked them how this woman was dressed and in what form she seemed to them; but all they knew was that they had never seen a similar one: they gave only a few marks by which the religious conjectured that she was a reliDTEUSE....

These religious reflected on the wonders they saw; and, praising God in such admirable works of his right hand, they eagerly wished to know which was this servant of God, whose divine majesty used to do them... These desires were more ardent in their Custos, Father Alonse of Benavides; so that he came to Europe, willingly exposing to the fatigue of a path of more than three thousand leagues to discover the organ of this divine prodigy. He arrived in Madrid, the stay of the Catholic king, in the year 1630, the eighth after the wonders we have just spoken of. He found his minister general there, who was then of all the Order of Saint Francis, the Reverend Father Bernardin of Siena. He informed him of the main case that had brought him to Europe, telling him the details of all the wonders of which he was an eyewitness. The general, who, according to: the obligation of his office, had examined the spirit of Sister Mary of Jesus, being carried there by the smell that she had already spread of her holiness and by the singular esteem that he made. of his: admirable virtue, doubted painted only this handmaiden: of God whom the Lord used to perform his mercies. And knowing that she would not: discover it, if she were not obliged by obedience, he gave Father Benavides letters by which he constituted his commissioner in this matter, ordering it to the venerable mother, by the merit of obedience, to respond clearly to all the requests that this Father would make to her. H also gave him letters of recommendation concerning the same matter for the Provincial Father and for the confessor; and with these dispatches he sent him to Agréda.

Father Benavidès finally came to this city, where, having communicated to Father Sébastien Marzilla, a Jubilee reader and a singular reputation, which was then provincial, and to Father François-André de la Torre, who had recently confessed to the venerable mother, he went with them to the monastery of the nuns, to examine there the servant of God on this subject. And having read to him the letters of the general, where he was commanded to answer, the provincial and the confessor added to them their commandments so that she might do so with more merit, he asked him about the main article. And the servant of God, making a sacrifice of her secret to the virtue of obedience, confessed with sincerity what had happened to her on this matter, in the form that I said above, declaring with great caution the doubt that she had about the way, and manifesting, with deep humility, the time, the principle, the progress of these wonderful events and the various times that they had happened to her. Father Benavides, in order to clarify himself better, using the authority he had of the general, asked him for the particular marks of these provinces, the disposition of the country and the inhabited places, the customs, the occupations and the way of life of these Indians. And the obedient religious told her everything that happened there, using the proper names of the kingdoms and the provinces, and discovering things with circumstances as special as if she had travelled and remained in those regions for several years. And being questioned, she confessed that she had seen the same Father there with the other religious, marking him with the day, the hour, and the place where she saw him, those who were in his company, and all that distinguished them from each other."

XIII. — We shall not overlook the appearances of the venerable Mother Agnes of Jesus to M. Olier, and it is M. Olier himself who will provide us with this story!.

"One day, being (in Saint-Lazarus) in retreat where I was ready to undertake the first journey of the mission of Auvergne," he wrote, "I was in my room, in prayer, when I saw this holy soul come to me with great majesty. She held a crucifix with one hand, and a rosary with the other. Her guardian angel, perfectly beautiful, wore the end of her choir coat, and with the other hand, a handkerchief to receive the tears from which she was bathed. Showing me a penitent and grieved face, she said to me, "I weep for you."This gave me much to my heart, and filled me with holy sadness. After this apparition, this holy soul returned another time, shortly from there, to confirm me in this view, and I also presented it in mind as if I still saw it. D _ "This second visit, added the historian? of M. Olier, and probably the suit under which Mother Agnes appeared to him, made M. Olier whom the person whom he had taken first for the Mother of God was some nun of the Order of Saint-Dominique, still alive.

After several trips to Langeac, where Mr. Olier had always unnecessarily presented herself to the speaker, the Prioress (Mother Agnes) came to find him. She returned, accompanied by one of her nuns, the veil lowered on her face, according to the custom of her Order, and spoke to her first as to an ecclesiastical woman whom she seemed to know only by the noise of the works of zeal to be carried out in the land. M. Olier, wishing finally to know whether Mother Agnes was not the person who had appeared to her, asked her to please lift her veil; she immediately lifted him up, and this moment was like an opening to the most secret communications about all that was happening in these two great souls. M. Olier, struck to see again in Langeac the same person he had seen in Paris, said to him immediately: "My mother, I have seen you elsewhere."Agnès replied to him: "This is true, you have seen me twice in Paris, where I appeared to you in your retreat in Saint-Lazarus, because I had received from the Most Holy Virgin the order to pray for your conversion, God having intended you to lay the foundations of the seminars of the Kingdom of France."

"...After the procedures made for the beatification of Mother Agnes, it was by a real and bodily appearance that this great servant of God, far from more than a hundred leagues from Paris, made herself twice visible to M. Olier, in the house of Saint-Lazarus What excludes any doubt in this regard is the testimony of Mr. Olier, the testimony of twenty-four earwitnesses, among whom were the most qualified and recommendable Langeac people, and the full fame of the fact by the whole of France in the last century."

It is regrettable that the historians of Mother Agnes and Mr. Olier insisted so little on the most wonderful character of this apparition, namely: that she was operated by two-location. Voici ce que M. Palade, prêtre, neveu de M. Terrisse, who was parish priest of Langeac and confessor of the mother Agnes, testified at the beatification trial!: "In the time that Mother Agnes appeared to M. Olier, in Paris, her body remained motionless, at the place of the monastery where she was. M. Terrisse was called, as was M. Romeuf, home doctor. He maintained that the mother was dead; Mr. Terrisse prétendait le contraire. Twenty-four hours later, Mother Agnes made a great sigh and returned to herself, and M. Terrisse dit à M. Romeuf : « Eh bien! Sir, I was telling you that she was not dead!"The witness states that he holds this particular characteristic of Mr. Terrisse, son oncle !.

The life of Mother Agnes presents another act of bilocation. As it is less bright and less certain, we merely mention it by the way?.;

XIV. — Another trait whose authenticity is out of reach. It concerns the miraculous appearance of Saint Alphonsus of Liguori to the unfortunate Pope Clement XIV, whom he attends and consoles at his last moments.

This is what we read at the canonization trial of Saint Ligori.

"On September 21, 1774, the venerable servant of God, being in Arienzo, a small town in his diocese, fell into a kind of fainting. Sitting on his chair, he remained for about two days in a gentle and deep sleep. One of the servants wanted to awaken; his vicar general, Don Jean Nicolas de Rubino, ordered him to let him rest, but to keep him in sight. Being awake at last, and having immediately given a few blows of a bell, his people rang. They saw them astonished: "What is it?" he said to them. "What is it?" they replied; "It has been two days since you spoke, that you do not eat, that you give no sign of life. "You others," said the servant of God, "you believed me to be asleep; but you do not know that I went to assist the pope who had just died."We soon learned that Clement XIV! had died on September 22 at 13:00 (at about seven o'clock in the morning), that is to say at the very moment when the servant of God had waved the bell."

The lawyer for the cause of Saint Alphonsus, after having demonstrated that this prolonged state was a true ecstasy, adds: "This perfect agreement of the days when the servant of God was delighted in spirit, remaining on his half-death seat, while the sovereign pontiff was dying, and the exact propriety of the hour at which he declared to Arienzo that the sovereign pontiff had ceased to live, offers an unanswered argument that proves the truth of the admirable favor that God had bestowed on our saint and the dying pontiff?"

We could cite other examples of bilocation, attributed to several servants and servants of God, among others to St. Peter Regalat*, St. Brigid of Ireland, Anne-Catherine Emmerich*. Here we suspend these accounts, to discuss the fashion and reality of these wonders.

XV. — Generally, while, in the apparition, the living person speaks and acts, and remains in full possession of himself, at the point of departure, on the contrary, it seems aborted by ecstasy, or even in the immobileity of death. We saw that this was the case in Saint Anthony of Padua, Saint Lidwine, Mary of Agréda, Mother Agnes, Saint Alphonsus of Liguori. However, ecstasy is not an indispensable condition of bilocation, at least throughout its duration. Saint Francis Xavier spoke and waved on the ship, and at the same time drove the boat in distress. Blessed Angelo d'Acri was disciplined in the house of Anne Camardi, while he appeared at Baron Francesco Fava. It should therefore not be assumed that bilocation always leads to a psychic state that suspends the action of the senses and any conscious operation.

Note that bilocations can be executed either by instant translation or by successive translation. Mary's account of her appearances to the Indians seems to indicate that she was successively crossing the distance between Spain and America.

XVI. — The explanation of the phenomenon of bilocation has thrown the scholastic theologians into the strangest perplexities; for the fact is so well known in itself and so often repeated, that it leaves no room for doubt.

Let us indicate the various solutions that have been proposed.

The first, usually followed by the supporters of Aristotelian philosophy, is to deny, not only the reality of the bilocation, but its very possibility!, and to explain the fact of the double presence by an angelic representation at one of the two places.

But where does the performance take place? Is it at the point where the apparition occurs, or at the point where the person leaves to appear in the distance? Les avis sont partagés.

The most common feeling *? is that the subject of the apparition remains at the place where it is located, and that the angels replace it at the place where it appears. In this opinion, it was not Alphonse of Liguori who assisted Pope Clement XIV, but an angel who had taken his traits; it was not the Agnes mother of Jesus who showed herself to: M. Olier, but an angelic apparition representing the venerable prioress of Langeac.

We do not dispute that these apparitions cannot be made by representation; only, to affirm that it has been so, we need positive evidence, which. do not: meet in any of the cases we have cited. Maize, erected in principle, this interpretation is contradicted in two ways.

First of all, the characters appeared. — Saint Alphonse of Liguori, returning to him, declares that he has just assisted the pope and that he saw him die. Mother Agnes confesses: to Mr. Olier that she appeared to him twice at. Paris. It is true, Mary of Agréda! is inclined to explain her apparitions in New Mexico by the substitution of an angel; but her directors submitted these apparitions to the examination: of several theologians who were well versed in mystical theology, and. their conclusions were that the famous nun had been physically present in America;.without ceasing to be visible: in Spain.

In the second place, the physical accidents which sometimes happen to: the bilocalized person infirm more: expressly again: the theory of: the: angelic substitution. at the place. beatarum animarum in purgatorio languentium and Sanctorum in terra adhuc vittium per Angelorum fieni-ministerium, communis SS. It is the opinion of the Fathers, although some indeed also think that these are wont to occur through the person's own self, with God omnipotent assisting.

1 Jos.. XIMENÈS SaMANIÉGO,. Vie de lu: V. Maria d'Agréda, c. 12, p. 184: In the: relation: (which she wrote herself) she: said: ".Ge que je crois le: plus certain à l'ont. de la fait, est que un angele approche sous. ma figure, préchait et catechisé les Indiens, et que le seigneur montre me : ici dans l'oraison what was going on there." of the apparition. St Lidwine, returning from her miraculous journeys, kept on her body sensitive traces of what she had felt during these peregrinations, a sprain on her foot, a thorn in her hand; this is the same story of ecstatic A\Anne-Catherine Emmerich. MariedAgréda, transported to America, experiences the ardours of the climate and other peculiarities that we have spoken of.

Others reverse the interpretation and assume that the person who appears is replaced by an angel at the point of departure, while it is miraculously transferred to the point of appearance. Le P. Seraphin*® cites the example of an ecstatic still alive when he wrote (1872), who would have the privilege of seeing the angel in charge of representing her. The fact is possible, and, duly established, it cannot be revoked in doubt. But there is no obligation to generalize this explanation and to affirm that all two-locations are

1 P. SERAPHIN, Principles of Theol. myst. (Study on the Bilocation), n. 8, p. 440: In these kinds of bilocations (in body and soul), all the personality of the ecstatic is elsewhere, i.e. where God sends it; and if, during the bilocation, one sees it again where it was before the bilocation began, it is a real presence {!) doubtless, but representative {!!!; only, operated by an angel who takes the place of the person, borrows its features, position and all that concerns it, to veil his absence. If the body bilocation takes place at night, or even on the day, but there is no one around the ecstatic, in this case it often happens (what do you know?) that the angel does not take the visible form to represent it, and then the ecstatic person completely disappeared to carry out the orders of God in the distance, without leaving any trace of himself.,

2 Ibid., n. 17, p. 437: The living person we were talking about was in the same uncertainty when these two-locations began... But finally God... gave him the light necessary to get out of this uncertainty; so she now knows very clearly and most certainly whether the bilocation that she has made is purely in mind, or. well in body and soul. When the bilocation in her home is done in body el. in soul, she always sees the angel who remains in her place to represent her, and she even sees it from afar, from: the place where she is transported, when the bilocation is done in spirit, the angel is still there, but she no longer sees him busy representing her; she. then sees her own body at the place where he was, when the bilocation is started, etc. produce in this way. Who will admit, for example, that an angel was disciplined in the room of Blessed Angelo d'Acri, while he appeared at the foot of the bed of a sick man; that it was not Francis Xavier, but a heavenly spirit, who exhorted, prayed, wept on the ship, while the saint was running the boat?

XVIT. — Some authors explain the prodigy of multilocation by doubling: double the body, according to some; double the soul, according to others.

Let's talk about body duplication first.

To justify against Protestants and unbelievers the dogma of the Eucharistic multilocation of Jesus Christ, Varignon (1654-1722), who first studied theology, but owed his fame to mathematics, the oratorian of Lignac! (1710-1762) and the famous of Pressy (1712-1789); Bishop of Boulogne ?, imagined and supported with variants the theory of corporal duplication. According to these authors, the soul is subject to the laws of space only by virtue of its union with the body, and could simultaneously animate several of them. If, by the all-powerful virtue of God, which suspends the laws of nature, one forms, from the multitude of elements that make up or have successively composed the human body, several organisms, and to each one one unites the soul, the same individual will be repeated as many times and in as many forms as one has multiplied the separate organisms!

If this theory suffices to explain the multiple presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, more importantly will it suffice to explain the simple bilocations, as they meet in the saints. But we are far from adopting this way of conceiving eucharistic multiplication, because it seems to us to distort what faith teaches us from the adorable mystery in which the Saviour is present and gives himself, not as these authors claim, in part and in pieces divided to infinity, but whole, with his divinity, his soul, his body, and for all his whole body and for all the same, the very one who was hanged on the cross, deposited in the sepulchre, and who is now in glory.

Regardless of this critical grievance, the assumption that we are discussing is wrong to be free and inconsequential.

It is free, in what it presupposes without any foundation the multiplication of the human body into an infinity of equivalent parts. Whether there is enough in each body to form more than one body, it is absolutely possible to grant it; but that, in fact, this multiplication takes place is what is not shown, and what should be demonstrated.

The inconsequence of this interpretation is no less obvious. It uses the multiplicity of body forms only because it refuses to admit the possibility of multilocation for the bodies. It admits, however, that the soul can animate several distinct and distant organisms, thereby increasing its presence indefinitely. But if the soul can be found simultaneously in several distant places between them, why could the body not, especially if it is admitted, as well as Pressy's fact, that the body is an aggregate of simple elements?

Spiritual duplication is even less plausible. This opinion! distinguishes in the soul two operations, which give it two distinct and characteristic names: the operation by which it informs and animates the body, and from this point of view it is called AME (anima seu animans); and the operation that makes it live: intellectual life, and by this aspect it is called ESPRIT (mens). In the two-location, the soul remains in the body, as AAME, i.e., as it fulfils the vital functions there; but it comes out and travels according to Providence, as a spirit; which obviously assumes that the two-location takes place only in spirit and not in body.

If one means that the soul, as thinking and reasonable, can enter into an intellectual relationship with

1 P. SérapHIN, Study on the Bilocation, p. 447, n. 96: God can operate the bilocation in spirit in a soul, supernaturally attracting to him this upper part of herself, the spirit, and leading it wherever he wants, while the soul, as a soul, does not leave the body during the bilocation, and it is the only spirit (mens) that leaves and goes where God calls it. This spirit which, now in its natural state, travels everywhere and in the farthest regions, by thought alone will go by itself where God directs it, when, by divine virtue, it crosses the limits of nature and enters into this supernatural world where divine action is freer and where the: creature is more willing to feel its prodigious: distant realities, without these realities changing their space position: and without the soul deserting the body, we see no impossibility to this; but, in our opinion, there would be there simply vision and not bilocation. As for dividing the soul into two parts, one of which keeps the body, and the other one runs the world, such a supposition is inadmissible; it clearly compromises the simplicity and unity of the human soul. That the whole soul can be present in several places at the same time, just as it coexists at the same time at all points of its own body, far from contradicting it, we hold for certain the possibility of this multipresence; but that the soul, one and simple, is half on one point and half on another, it seems to us a pitiful contradiction: the soul is all where it is.

XVILL. — Another hypothesis is that the soul abandons the body it animates, with or without suspension of organic life.

When vital functions cease altogether, it is one: application of the ordinary law after which the conditions of bodily life are interrupted as soon as the soul separates. It is simply death; and the return of the soul into the organs will constitute a real resurrection.

Taken in itself, this supposition has nothing impossible; but I miracle of the resurrection is such, that it must be used only at every end. In fact, although it has sometimes been observed in the bilocalized persons the immobility and insensibility of death, as in Mother Agnes: and in St. Alphonse of Liguori, the opposite x was also observed, for example in St. Francis Xavier, who appeared. well alive and active in both places; in St. Colombe of Rieti, in whom the doctors recognize signs of life for a. pleasure of: five days and a supernatural peregrination in the Holy Land!. This generalised explanation is therefore unacceptable, all the more so as by resorting to the resurrection it requires a miracle much greater than that of real and personal bilocation.

The second situation of the body separated from the soul is that it preserves, by miracle doubtless, the movement and play of the organs essential to life. Thus the vital functions would continue in the body, while the soul is absent?. There is nothing that is absolutely impossible here, it is true; but the return of the soul will nevertheless constitute a kind of resurrection, and, to this miracle so considerable, it is necessary to join the one who maintains in the body, in the absence of the soul, the conditions or appearances of life.

That's not all, because that's only part of the problem. It remains to be explained how the appearance is done in the distance, and, to achieve this, one still has to resort to the miracle.

While the natural body remains struck with paralysis, "the soul is clothed with a body similar to its own, without knowing how; it sees this body, usually dressed in the same way, covered with the same clothes, and clothes of the same color, in the same way, that cover its true body... This solution continues Fr. Seraphin! which we quote textually, we believe likely... We are not the only ones who profess this way of thinking; others, Italians like us, eminent men by their knowledge, their virtues and their knowledge in the mystical ways, share it."

To us, on the contrary, it seems to us very unlikely, either to say with all respect that we owe to the Italian author, and to those of the same nation whose testimony he invokes. We do not understand this profusion of miracles, when only one is enough to explain everything. This unique miracle is that of body multilocation.

XIX. — We will not hide it, this last solution has all our preferences. Since the living body appears in two places at a time, it is quite simple to admit that it is actually present in one and the other, unless this double presence does not lead to contradiction. But there is no contradiction in assuming the same body simultaneously present in two places, no matter how distant they are from one another. Let the unbelievers dispute it, pass it again; but can we Christians and believers, without grossly contradicting us? Do we not immediately before the eyes, before the eyes of faith of course, have a multiplicity and permanent fact of bodily multation: Our Lord, in the Eucharist, as many times present as there are consecrated species on earth, and even as there are divisible points in each species? If the fact occurs for the body of Jesus Christ, it can be renewed in ours, which are basically of the same nature.

Whether it is extranatural under the present conditions of space, we do not disapprove of it; but these conditions, having nothing absolute or necessary, can be cha-! Study on bilocation, n. 21, p. 544. managed by a free decision of the Creator, just as they were established and persevered by an act free of his will.

What, then, does it take for the two-location to happen?

It is enough for God to lift this law freely and freely maintained, by virtue of which, to move from one point to another, one must cross the intermediate points that connect them. It will not be hard to hear this, if one makes an exact notion of presence and distance, and if one thinks that the same being can enter into immediate contact with several beings at once.

A being is present when he is or is acting on a point without any intermediary; and it is more or less distant, depending on whether the intermediaries separating them and uniting them are more or less multiplied.

Secondly, that the same being, material or spiritual, it does not matter, can establish multiple relationships of presence with several beings, it does not suffer any difficulty. The soul is present simultaneously at all parts of the body that it animates; every central point is present at the first point of each of the rays.

If therefore the quota law of the intermediaries were lifted, a being could enter, at the same time, in immediate connection or presence with a multitude of points, no matter how distant they were between them, and without that distance füt removed. The simultaneous presence of the soul to all the elements of the body does not destroy the distance between the feet of the head, the arms of one another; the increased presence of Jesus Christ as tabernacles and altars, does not prevent these tabernacles and altars from being distant from one another. Thus would explain the two-locations of the Saints. This simultaneous presence of the soul and the body at two or more points of space, distant from each other, undoubtedly constitutes a departure from the present order and a real miracle, but in no way an impossibility, as the followers of Aristotelian doctrines have claimed in so many. At the bottom, this miracle is of the same order as that of the freeing of distances by instant translation and that of the freeing of gravity, so often renewed in ecstatic ones.

This interpretation, supported by most French philosophers, supporters of Leibnizian theory on the extent and on the bodies; by Balmès!, Spain; in Italy, mata, quorum unum solum vero proximius vidtur, and quod post Leibnizium breviter sic exponitur.

Space is nothing other than the relation of presence together with distance among several irrational substances, or the action of immediate and mediate presence upon several substances. Sint v. g. substantiæ : |

A CD

Substance A acts immediately on B, and on C by means of B, and on D by means of B and C, and on F by means of B, C, and D; therefore A is present to substance B, but distant, or absent, from F by the space BCD.

But such an order, to which in fact all substances that constitute real space are subject, does not depend on the essence of things, nor is it necessary of itself. Thus substance J, by hypothesis, acts immediately on A, and is therefore present to it. But why should it not likewise act immediately on F, and be present to it as well? Since A does not act upon F except through the mediation of B, C, D, why should J necessarily be subject to the same law? Nothing indeed is necessary among contingent things: moreover, the immediate action of substance J upon A and F, while A and F are distant from one another through B, C, D, is nothing other than the presence of substance J simultaneously in two places, A and F, distant from one another; therefore it is not repugnant for the same body to be simultaneously in several places.

4 Philos. fondament., |. 3, ch. 33, n° 258, t. 2, 2e éd., p. 183. Admit a body subject to other conditions, either of reports or of scope, the assumption from which one draws the possibility, for him, of being in several places, disappears. So, if it is proved that the divine all-power can change and even destroy these relationships, we can accept without contradiction that the consequences that were to result from these relationships also lack. Tongiorgi!, le P. Pieralisi? and others, is far from new. It claims, in the past, the authority of illustrious theologians, such as Bellarmin* and Suarez. Both profess, in fact, openly the possibility, for a body, of being present in several places at the same time, and this assertion serves as a basis for the argumentation by which they justify the multipresence of Our Lord in the Eucharist. Since the situation and the difficulty are clearly identical, the principle also applies to the two-locations of the Saints.

Moreover, according to Bellarmin ÿ, the Fathers admitted or assumed this hypothesis, to explain and the eucharistic multiplication and supernatural apparitions that we are talking about here. Suarez f, though very parsimonious in applications that do not interest the Eucharist, boldly maintains the principle in favor of this mystery. He declares this almost common opinion of his time, and he cites as favorable to him several earlier theologians.

1 Inst. philosoph. Cosmol. n. 313, vol. 2, p. 370; Prop. VI. No multilocation is naturally possible for a body; but it is equally certain that multilocation, at least definitive or mixed, involves no contradiction; which seems more probably to be said also of circumscriptive multilocation.

2 La Metañfisica, n. 142, p. 79, Roma, 1878 : Non è assurdo che l ́esser medesimo sia allo stesso tempo in più luoghi. 3 De Sacram. We shall prove that it does not imply a contradiction, and therefore that it is possible for one body to be in several places.

I say, thirdly: it is not impossible for the same body to be constituted simultaneously in two distant places, and, in each, in a natural and quantitative manner.

8 Jbid., ut supra, p. 665. The third argument is drawn from the testimonies of the Fathers, who teach that one thing can be in several places at once.

More distinctly and more formally, Alexander... taught this opinion [Alexander] of Hales, Scotus, etc., and almost commonly the rest of the modern theological writers, who wrote in this period, especially against heretics. For this opinion is not only better suited to answering heretics and defending Catholic truth, but also, in my judgment, follows from it so necessarily and so evidently, that it has always seemed marvelous to me that the contrary opinion could have found favor with the most weighty theologians. He is even surprised that an interpretation so capable of reducing heretics, and which, in his opinion, results rigorously and with full evidence of the dogma of the Eucharistic multilocation, could have been ignored and fought by very serious theologians.

Our astonishment is no less; but, in addition to the authority attached to the names of Bellarmin and Suarez, the reasons that decided them seem peremptory to us; and, while separating ourselves on this point from the common traditions of the School, we believe ourselves in safety. CHAPITRE XIV

THE OBJECTS OF THE SURNATURE VISION

NON-REASONABLE CREATURES Animal Apparitions. - Germination cts flowers. — La croix et le

crucifix. — Images and statues. — Les saintes reliques. — Le soleil

d'Anna-Maria Taïgi. — The bells ringing in the same way. — Les

candles and lamps miraculously lit.

Ï. "We did not say everything about visions, and we do not claim to say everything. However, we would like to inform the reader of the general and common forms, in order to make it possible to appreciate most of the facts that arise.

After having considered God, the angel and man as terms of supernatural vision, it remains, in order to travel regularly the scale of beings, only to speak of creatures without reason. These creatures are alive or inanimate: let's share each other.

We have already seen that animals intervene in apparitions, expressing in turn the divine attributes, the purity of the blessed or the abjection of the reproved. This is sufficient in substance to make known what these symbolic representations are. The Scripture contains a large number of examples. We know the mysterious vision of the four animals of Ezekiel!, renewed with some diversity in the Apocalysis of Saint John ©. Those who led to Daniel the succession of empires are no less famous.

The prophet sees, in a first vision, four great beasts very different from one another, which elevate from the sea and dispute the empire of the world. The first was like a lioness with eagle wings. The second looked like a bear, and wore three rows of teeth in his mouth. The third, similar to the leopard, had at the same time four wings and four heads. The last, more terrible than the others, crushed everything in its passage with its large iron teeth, and had its forehead armed with ten horns. Out of the midst slew a little horn that brought down three of the little horns; and this new horn had wills as the will of a man, and a mouth that spoke great things. And it was revealed to the prophet that these four great beasts were the empires that were to succeed upon the earth.

In another vision, Daniel saw a ram that could not resist, that had two high horns, one of which exceeded the other and gradually grew. Then appears, on the west side, a goat who had only one horn in the middle of the forehead. It melts impetuously on the ram, overturns it, breaks its two horns and the crowd at its feet. He then becomes extraordinarily great; but soon his mighty horn breaks, and four horns are formed below, toward the four winds of heaven. From one of these horns comes a small horn that grows enormously and desolates the people of the saints. Gabriel thus explains the vision to the prophet: the two horned ram is the empire of the Medes and the Persians. The goat is the Greek empire, and the horn is its first king. The four lesser horns, which replace the great, are four kings who will collect the inheritance of the first. Then there will come a power that will rise up against God, wage war against the saints and succumb in turn. This is not the place to examine what this last empire will mark the end of time!.

IT. — There would be much to say about the symbolic relations of vegetative nature, plants and flowers, with mysticism. It will not be out of the special point of view that we are concerned only to report the following trait, taken in the acts of Saint Dorothy ©.

This illustrious virgin of Caesarea was in the courthouse of Saprice, governor of Cappadocia. To scare and reduce it, this fierce persecutor of Christians ordered that he lay on the easel. She let it be placed without resistance; then, calling upon the Judge with a noble intrepidity: "Why," she said to him, "do you let me wait? Do what you have to do, so that I may see the One for whom I fear neither death nor torment. "What then is the one you desire?" said Saprice. — It is Christ, the Son of God. - And where is this Christ? "By his almighty power, he is everywhere; by his humanity he is at the right hand of God his Father, in heaven, where he reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, sharing with them the same divinity. And he invites us to the paradise of his delights, where, at all times, the trees are adorned with fruit, the lilies always white, the roses always flowered, the fields and the ever green mountains, the hills always shaded, the fountains always springing out of delicious water, and the souls of the saints intoxicated with immortal joy in Christ. If you believe, Saprice, you will seek true freedom, and you will enter into this garden of the delights of God."

Saprice responded to this speech with new trials, which could not overcome the invincible constancy of the Christian virgin. Finally, he pronounced against her this sentence: "We order that Dorothy, a proud young girl, who refused to keep life by sacrificing to the immortal gods, and who absolutely wants to die for I do not know which man is called Christ, be struck with the sword." In these words, Dorothy exclaimed: "I thank you, heavenly Lovers of souls, for what you call to your paradise and invite to your nuptial bed."

As she came out of court, a lawyer named Theophile said to her by mockery: "Come, wife of Christ, send me fruit or roses from your husband's garden."Dorothy replied, "I will gladly do it."When she was about to receive the blow of death, she asked the executioner to give her a few moments to pray. When she had finished her prayer, a child suddenly appeared, carrying three of the most beautiful fruits and three roses in a cloth. She said to this child, "Wear, I pray you, this to Theophile, and tell him from me, "This is what you have asked me to send you from the garden of my husband." Immediately she was struck with the sword, and with the palm of the martyrdom she went up to Christ.

At this moment, Theophile laughed at his colleagues at Dorothy's promise, when the child stood before him, bearing the three beautiful fruits and the three roses, and said to him, "This is what, at your request, Dorothy, the most holy virgin, you & promised; she: you send him out of the garden of his Husband." And the messenger disappeared immediately.

Theophile, in receiving this present, exclaimed: "Christ is the true God, and lies are not in him." His companions ask him whether he is mad or joking. "No," he replied, "Tell me, in what month is it? — En février, répondent-ils. "Well, a cold chill reigns throughout Cappadocia, and all the trees are devoid even of their leaves; where do you think these roses and these beautiful fruits come with the foliage that accompanies them?" He then tells them how the virgin Dorothea had sent her this present through the hands of a wonderful child who could only be an angel. Declared to the fierce president, Theophile suffered torture and death for Jesus Christ, and went to heaven to join the pious virgin Dorothy.

In reality, where did these flowers and fruits come from?

The sky is the fullness of all goods, the place and time of abundance, as spring is for the earth the season of flowers; summer and autumn, that of fruit. To express the overabundance of glorious bliss, man exhausts the most vivid images of sensitive goods and pleasures, and God himself borrows this language, when he wants to make hear something of what he reserves to those who love. The flowers and fruits of which the virgin Dorothy was delighted to speak, and of which she obtained a miraculous sample at Theophile, were symbols of the heavenly bliss.

God also makes greens and flowers appear as signs of the holiness of his servants. To the translation of the relics of Saint Vandrille, abbot of Fontenelles, Saint Ausbert, archbishop of Rouen, and Saint Vulfran, archbishop of Sens, at the monastery of Blandinbert, in. the city. of Ghent in Flanders, one saw the earth flourish as. in spring, although it was then in the middle of autumn '.

God renews these wonders to cover or reveal the charity of the saints.

"Elisabeth of Hungary loved to carry herself to the poor, to steal, not only money, but also the food and other objects that she intended for them. It was thus loaded by the steep and hijacked paths which led from its castle to the city and to the cottages of the nearby valleys. One day she went down, accompanied by one of her favourite followers, by a very rough path.It is shown again, carrying bread, meat, eggs and other dishes in the strips of her coat, to distribute them to the poor, she suddenly stands in front of her husband, who came back from the hunt. Stoned to see her thus pouring under the weight of her burden, 1l said to her, "Let us see what you are wearing," and at the same time opened the coat, which she held all fear against her chest; but there were more than white and red roses, the most beautiful than he would have seen of his life; it surprised him all the more as it was not the season of flowers. Seeing Elizabeth's disorder, he wanted to reassure her with her caresses, but suddenly stopped seeing a bright image in the shape of a crucifix appear on her head. He then told him to continue his journey without worrying about him, and went up to the Wartburg, meditating with recollection on what God was doing with her, and taking with him one of those wonderful roses that he kept all his life. At the very place where this meeting took place, next to an old tree that was soon felled, he raised a column surmounted by a cross, to consecrate forever the memory of the one he had seen hovering on his wife's head."

Saint Germaine? of Pibrac shared with the poor the little food that a mischievous hand gave him at the father's house. On a winter day when she was ready to give her portion of bread to one of them, her odious marten rushes furiously upon her, and wants to know what she hides in her apron; but instead of bread she sees only flowers: God had performed this miracle to protect her faithful servant and to attest her virtue. A similar prodigy came to Blessed Jeanne or Vanne d'Orviette, * of the third order of Saint-Dominique.

"It is narrated [of the venerable Anna-Maria Taigi] that the divine Savior appeared to him in the following way: She saw a beautiful lily whose stem ended with a magnificently bloomed flower; on this flower, as on the throne of purity, Jesus showed himself to her humble handmaid in all the brightness of her superhuman beauty; while she was contemplating in the joy of ecstasy the charms of her sweet Master, she heard a voice saying to her: "I am the flower of the fields and the lily of the valleys, and I am all yours."

III. — The appearances of inanimate things are frequently repeated and in the most diverse forms.

The Scripture contains many examples. The empires that were to follow until the advent of Jesus Christ were shown at Nebuchadnezzar, in the various parts of a gigantic statue with a golden head, a silver breast and arms, a brass belly and thighs, legs of iron, and feet in part of iron and in part of clay; and the Church, this immortal empire, which is to go to the end of the centuries, was revealed to him under the figure of this stone which detachs itself from the mountain without any man's hand, comes to strike the feet of the statue and makes it fall into dust!

The prophet Zechariah saw in a vision a candlestick of gold, at the top of which a lamp was shining; seven other lamps were lit on his branches; and an angel told him that these were the Lord's seven eyes, which traveled all the earth. Further on, he saw a book of tremendous greatness gliding in the air, which contained the many and terrible curses that God threatened the earth.

Since the redemption of men by the divine Crucified, among these apparitions, that of the cross is the most common. We know that a prodigy of this kind decided on the religion and fortune of the great Constantine. At the time of coming to his hands with Maxence, whose strength was superior to his own, this prince prayed to the one and sovereign God whom his father Constance had worshiped. God replied to this by this miraculous vision which the first Christian emperor told in the wake, on the faith of the oath, to the historian Eusebius#, whose account we reproduce in substance.: On the afternoon, Constantine lives in heaven, above the sun already inclined towards the West, a cross of light with this inscription: TRIOMPHY BY THIS (Ev or even vexæ). The soldiers who followed him, in a march that they were doing together, saw like him the wonder, and all remained astonished. The following night Jesus Christ appeared to him, during his sleep, with the sign that had been shown in heaven, and commanded him to make a military standard on this model that would serve as protection in the fighting. At the point of day, Constantine rose up and shared the revelation with his confidants. Then he brought in goldsmiths, and, sitting in the midst of them, he depicted the shape of the sign, and commanded them to reproduce it in gold and stonework. It was the famous Labarum that led Constantine to victory.

All France is experiencing the appearance in this century at Migné, parish of the diocese of Poitiers.

"Sunday, December 17, 1826, the day of the closing of a continuation of religious exercises given to the parish of Migné, on the occasion of the Jubilee, by the parish priest of Saint-Porchaire and the chaplain of the Royal College (Mr. Marsault), at the time of the solemn plantation of a cross, and while the latter addressed to an audience of about three thousand souls a speech about the greatness of the Cross, in which he had just recalled the apparition that took place in the presence of the army of Constantine, one saw in the air a very regular cross and vast dimensions. No sensitive signs had preceded his manifestation; no noise, no flash of light had announced his presence. Those who first saw him showed her to their neighbors, and soon she fixed the attention of a large part of the audience, so much so that M. the parish priest of Saint Porchaire, warned by the crowd in the midst of which he had placed himself, thought he had to interrupt the preacher. Then all eyes stood towards the cross, which had first appeared exactly formed, and which was placed horizontally... No accessory seemed to hold on to this cross or accompany it; all its forms were pure and were very distinct on the sky. It did not offer the wishes a dazzling glow, but a color everywhere uniform, and such that no witness could define it in a precise way or find it an object of fair comparison. Only, it is generally agreed to give an idea with the help of an Argentinian white nuanced with a slight shade of pink !.

It certainly follows from all the statements that this cross was not at a considerable height; it is even very likely that it did not rise to two hundred feet above the ground; but it is difficult to fix anything more precise than this limit. The total length of the stem could be one hundred and forty feet; and its width, judging by the least rigorous data, could be three to four feet.

When one began to see the cross, the sun had been lying for at least half an hour, and it kept its position, its forms and all the intensity of its colour for another half an hour, until the moment when it entered the church to receive the blessing of the Blessed Sacrament. Then it was night, the stars shone with all their brightness. Those who returned the last saw the cross fade away: then, a few people who remained outside saw gradually disappearing, first by foot, and successively from near to near, so as to soon present four equal branches, without any of these parts having changed their places since the first moment of appearance, and without those who had disappeared leaving the lightest trace of their presence in the vicinity. It is said that no observer applied himself to follow this gradual fainting until its last term; but it is known that it was fully consumed when one left the church, immediately after the blessing... The impression produced by this extraordinary spectacle was so lively and profound that it was still tearing tears away from some of those who lay before us, after more than a month of interval since the event."

The appearances of the cross naturally relate to those that occur around the crucifix. These kinds of wonders do not count in the annals of the saints.

According to a tradition accepted by the Bollandists!, a crucifix before whom Saint Bernard loved to recite a touching prayer which he had composed, untied one of his arms and hugped the pious doctor with ineffable tenderness.

Blessed Catherine of Ricci? had in her room a crucifix which she greatly reverenced. One day this crucifix came to meet her and addressed these tender words to her: "My dear wife, I urge you to use, with your daughters, to appease my anger against the sinners who treat me so indignantly; and if you love me, do three processions to

1 BB. 20 Aug., vol. 38, p. 210, n. 501 : Our piissimam hanc historiam multa cum admiratione veneramur, testimonio fide dono suffultam Exordii this end." Catherine, hearing these words and seeing her crucifix moving towards her, opened her arms, and brought him back to her cell, where she was immediately taken with great delight. The nuns, instructed by the miracle, ran to their mother, still in the sweetness of her ecstasy, kissed themselves and her hands and the wonderful cross that she held in love, and all smelled a sweet smell that escaped from this sacred sign. Since then, on the 22nd of August and the following two days, the three processions were made, and after the death of the servant of God, his room was transformed into a beautiful chapel, where this crucifix was preserved dd dpi with several other relics.

Another daughter of Saint Dominique Marie la Bonnet, sister conversed at the monastery of Sainte-Marie de Zamora in Spain, prostrated in front of a cross, conjured the Lord to satisfy her with her grace. The crucifix loosed one of his arms, and smote his chest, saying to him, "Let me do it, Mary, I will satisfy you."It was the proclamation of eternal satisfaction; for at the end of three days the blessed woman died, and her soul went to heaven to enjoy the delights of holy love.

IV. — What we say about the crucifix is reproduced in the statues and images of Our Lord, the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Saints.

Saint Rose of Lima ? gets only a painting that represented the Saviour of blood, to excite to componction and love. Another image miraculously spread out her arm on Saint Good of Pisa, and blessed her at the moment when she signed herself and bowed herself before her. worshiping Jesus Christ inwardly.

Saint Gregory VII 2, being still an archdeacon of the Roman Church, came back from a legation in the course of which he had absolved a bishop of calom accusations: neous.. [He entered, according to his custom, in the basilica. of St. Peter, to pray before a certain image of the Virgin. His astonishment was immeasurable when he saw this image spreading tears and staring at him with compassion. Îl strengthened the fervor of his prayer.and. spread by a great abundance of tears to this witness of tenderness which he received from the Mother of God, without yet understanding the meaning of it. He soon understood it; for, having stood before the high pontiff, to whom had made false reports on the conduct which he had held vis-à-vis the bishop in question, he was greeted with a. severe face. and words of reproach. But Hildebrand. justified himself so well that he silenced his accusers who were there. At the end of the pontifical audience, he came to kneel again before the miraculous image, and this time he saw her smile at him as if to applaud his triumph.

When he had bowed his head in reverence, adoring Christ in it, that same image, in turn, bowing itself entirely, B... ...with hand extended, blessed her/it.

It was his habitual practice to turn aside to B... ...the icon of Mary Mother of God standing within that same basilica, and he would fall down praying before it, and weeping pour out his heart. So when on this occasion, about to do as was his custom, he had approached, he saw — a thing wondrous to relate — the image itself shedding tears, and as if signifying its sorrow over some trouble of its beloved.... Then, when according to the aforesaid custom he again approached the image, the miracle being reversed, he saw it smiling at him as at a victor.

3 J. Tuowassini,. Civitatis-Novæ Bpise.. Relatio' de Sudore imaginis.Patar served. in Padua, in the sacristy of the Fathers of the Oratory, covered itself, for several months, with a sweat that was declared,. after severe investigations several times renewed, coming from a supernatural cause.

We will not tell the details of the wonders attributed to a famous image of ‘ Saint Dominique, brought, diton, by the Blessed Virgin, on September 15, 1530, to the reli_gieux of the convent of Soriano, diocese of Mileto, Italy. The facts ? are so numerous and so constant, that the pontiffs sovereigns authorized the commemorative feast of the miraculous image, not only in the sanctuary of Soriano, but throughout the Dominican Order.

In the same sanctuary of Soriano, on September 15, 1870, a miracle of another genus, no less well demonstrated and belonging to our subject, occurred. Here it is, according to the sentence given by the bishop of Mileto, which we reproduce here almost entirely.

A statue of Saint Dominique, which should not be confused with the miraculous canvas we have just spoken of, appeared to several people to move and give signs of life and intelligence. Started the day before, the prodigy renewed itself during the night and in the morning, but had still been. noticed. by: a small number.

About noon, the: fact. being. become public, the: crowd of the inhabitants of: Soriano and that of the strangers gathered for the fair, warned by the cries: of admiration: that the prodigy aroused: in the church, came forth, and could. for more than one decoy. contemplate it: The statue moved forward and backward, and from left to right, that is, in the form of a cross, and this movement took place while the tables on which it was fixed remained still.

One sees this solid wooden statue rising to the height of a half-palm and its movement locate in the head; the right hand, which is closed, opens and shakes, say the witnesses, in the shape of a girandole. The lily, which was in the left hand, moved in all directions, as well as the aureole and the metal star placed around its head.

The face of the saint was coloured, moving from the brightest incarnate to an extreme paleness, and expressing successively indignation and placidity, as if he were alive; the forehead was wrinkled and the figure was bathed in sweat, while the wills were moving in all directions, and most often turned to Our Lady of the Rosary with an expression of sweetness and confidence, and the lips were opening like those of a man who wanted to speak.

Sixty-one witnesses were heard, and if the investigation was not carried out further, it was because it appeared to the delegates that there was an overabundance of evidence; all these witnesses disposed of sight with a perfect agreement on the substance of the facts; if some had observed better, this is explained by the more or less close position they occupied in the church, and by the time they had been able to make their observations.

"Considering," concludes the Bishop of Mileto, "that the illusion of so many people would be a wonder perhaps more difficult to explain than the one in question; that if no natural explanation of the fact can be given, the circumstances of time, of place, and the moral effects produced on the population exclude any other intervention that would not really be supernatural;

"Considering that it is to our knowledge and established by the inquiry that singular graces, even in the temporal order, have been obtained, and that the moral effects have been excellent for the people of Soriano and for the people of our diocese;

"The holy name of God invoked:

"We declare that everything is supernatural and meraculous in the movements of the state of healthy Dominic that came up on the 19th september 1870, which we just expounded. Mileto, 11 février 1871 !. »

V. — Saint Pascal Baylon has sometimes manifested his presence or rather his virtue by beatings on the images that represent him? But it is mainly in the shawls which contain its relics that these extraordinary sounds are heard, sometimes soft and harmonious, sometimes more accentuated, and sometimes resounding like a blast of bomb. It was believed from experience that peaceful and moderate movements usually succeeded happy events, and that loud and noisy agitations were the omen of some calamity. These supernatural manifestations are a source of inner suavities for some, and healthy fears for others.

It occurs around the relics of the saints of these kinds of miracles, in a thousand different forms, whose detailed enumeration would lead us too far. But we cannot ignore the wonderful apparitions that continue in the relics of Saint John of the Cross.

1 Cf. P. RouARD DE CaRD. le Miracle de Saint Dominique à Soriano, p. 70 - en D'ARTA, BB. 17 maïi, t. 17, p. 404-113, n. 40-44. Fidem, apud Let's hear what his first historian, Father Jérôme de Saint-Joseph, brings back!

"Among the miracles that Our Lord honored our blessed Father, revealing his lofty and sublime virtue, it is important not to forget the countless apparitions that were performed in the relics borrowed from his flesh. It is such a strange wonder that it renews itself so continually that it has never, until now, met or read in the history of any other saint. It is by the appearance at Medina del Campo that we must begin this relationship; not only because it is the first of this kind in the order of time, but also because it was solemnly called miraculous, lan 1615, by the illustrious and reverendissim lord Don Vigil de Quiñonès, bishop of Valladolid, in a judgment rendered adversarially, according to all the formalities of law, in the presence of the tax prosecutor and before a large assembly of theologians, jurisconsults and doctors, to which three lords of the chamber of King Don Philip II joined. All the members of the court unanimously decided that there was a miracle; then the bishop pronounced a legal sentence, and sent the documents of the trial to the sovereign pontiff Paul V. In order to understand the circumstances of this wonder, it is necessary: to take up things again: high.

Our Lord, in his infinite mercy. had. granted: insignia: favors to the venerable. François de. Yeshes, by appearing to him himself, and allowing several saints to show themselves to him. For a long time the servant of God had felt, in the secret of his heart, an ardent desire to see his brother (saint John of the. Cross), and one day that. Our Lord appeared to him. He said to him: "Lord, since you are deigning to grant me the grace to see many of your courtiers from heaven, will you not also grant me the happiness of seeing my beloved brother? "Every time," said his divine Majesty, "that thou shalt look upon a piece of thy brother's flesh in the relic which thou possessest, thou shalt see him himself."

Animated by a lively faith and certain to see the fulfillment of the divine promises, the holy man took his reliquary, and at the very moment he saw his brother as he was in his lifetime, with the only difference that his face reflected an incomparable beauty. At the same time, in the relic, he saw the Most Holy Virgin wearing the Carmelite garment, and holding between her arms the child Jesus, whose left arm surrounded his Mother's neck, while he leaned to lay his right hand on the saint's head. This vision, which first came on the day of the Epiphany in the year 1594, is a revelation of the high and fervent devotion that the Blessed Father had all his life practiced towards the Augustine Queen of heaven and his divine Son.

Francis of Jepes reported this miracle to the Father. Christophe Caro, of the illustrious company of Jesus, a man as well learned as truly apostolic, who at that time was his confessor.. This religious saint, taking this extraordinary relic, kneeled down with a great devotion, and, contemplating it, witnessed a wonderful apparition, which threw him into an unspeakable admiration. H was quite otherwise. astonished again, when, gathering several people of different ages around him to venerate this holy relic, without telling them a single word of: these apparitions, some exclaimed that they saw Our Lord Jesus Christ crucified there, others the blessed Father on his knees in front of one. crucifix, others. representations of different kinds, and finally a great number did not see anything at all. Hence the learned confessor concludes that there was a deep and admirable mystery there, and that God, in revealing himself under so many different aspects, kept hidden secrets whose effects were to occur in the souls of those to whom it was given to contemplate these wonders.

In these apparitions, God varies his action to the infinite. Our Lord often shows himself under the figure of a little child; sometimes in the arms of his Mother, other times between the arms of the Blessed Father, who, prostrated on two knees, kisses his divine feet; in other circumstances, sitting on a cloud, holding in hand a golden crown which he will lay on the saint's head; or carried on the left arm of the Father, who kisses him with love. It is not only under the figure of a child, but also in the fullness of age, that the Saviour shows himself in the relics of the Blessed Father. Some see him, with his head leaning on his hand in the attitude of meditation; others radiant with beauty and shine of light, others in the different phases of his painful Passion. At other times, it is the Holy Spirit that one sees in the form of a dove surrounded by an aureole of glory; then it is the most holy Sacrament radiating in the ostenoir, they are angels and seraphim, it is our leader, the holy prophet Elijah, our seraphic mother Teresis of Jesus, the forerunner John the Baptist, the apostle Saint Peter, Saint Catherine martyre, Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis Xavier as we see it, the eyes lifted in heaven, and a crowd of other saints. These relics have never seen any representation that was perfectly holy. The reflections of the brush are such a wonderful masterpiece, that all human industries, to the testimony of several artists to whom God has made the pleasure of seeing them, are powerless to reproduce them. It is because the colours used by the painters of this world are substances of the earth, while those that radiate in these holy images are the product of heaven.

The wonders of these countless apparitions are especially remarkable by the grace effects they have produced in the hearts by bringing them to a more perfect life.

Let us end with a prodigy approved in the trial of the canonization of our holy mother Testus of Jesus, which proves how jealous God is to see the relic of his servant surrounded by the veneration due to him. In the convent of the Reformed Carmelites in Granada, one evening Mother Marie de Saint-Paul saw, after sunset, a dazzling ray of light coming out of an image of our holy Mother who adorned a hermitage of the garden. Surprised by this phenomenon, she looked at the place where this ray stopped, ‘and saw that he was coming to expire on a small basket in which was wrapped a relic of our blessed Father, which one of the sisters, as we have known since, had dropped there. The Mother then took him, and at the very moment the light svanuited.. So great is the concern of the divine Providence, who does not want to let perish, nor to see deprived of the worship of their own, the smallest part of their bones."

VI. — The visions whose relics of St John of the Cross are the occasion and the theatre, however extraordinary, do not match in wonder those which Anna-Maria Taïgi was contemplating in a mysterious sun which was constantly under her gaze and which she consulted at her discretion.

"This sun appeared to the servant of God the first time she took discipline in her small oratory, shortly after God had been called to perfect life. From then on, he was constantly in front of his eyes until his death in the space of forty-seven years. The pious woman was seized with great fear, in the sight of such a surprising light; her confessor ordered her to ask God for the explanation of this singular phenomenon; she received for answer these words which we transcribe to the letter: "This is a miroir que je te montre, so that you may know the good news and the good news!" The confessor then ordered her to ask God to withdraw such gifts, and to impart her favors to the virgins of the cloisters, and not to a poor and married woman. The servant of God obeyed: he was told that God was free to do what he wanted, that no one should afford to probe his secrets, and that the confessor should do his duty and nothing more.

In the beginning, the light of the sun had the color of the flame, and the disc was like matt gold; as the pious woman progressed in virtue, the disc became brighter and clothed with a brighter light than that of seven suns at a time: her greatness was that of the natural sun surrounded by her rays; she assured that her light was so bright, that she would have tired the healthier and brightest wishes. The godly woman saw her with her sick eye, which she had almost completely lost, and with which she could not bear the light of the day, nor distinguish any object. The heavenly light, far from weaning it, strengthened it... the sun was in front of it at a distance of twelve palms, and three palms above its head. He always kept that position. Above the upper rays, and as at their extremity, was a large intertwined crown of thorns, which embraced the whole dimension of the sun, and overlaid it like a diadem. On both sides of the crown, two thorns descended under the disc, joining one to the other, and seemed to kiss while crossing; and their arched tips came out on both sides, in the midst of the rays. In the center was a woman sitting, with a noble majesty, the forehead raised towards the sky, in ecstatic contemplation, and shining with the brightest light; she carried two rays on the forehead, like Moses descending from the mountain; her feet rested on the lower end of the solar disk. The centre was dazzling with clarity. Images passed through the sun, as in a magic lantern, to serve us with the very expressions of God's servant.

In this mysterious sun, Anna-Maria did not only see the physical and moral things of this world, it penetrated the abyss and heights of heaven. She knew with full assurance the fate of the treacherous; she saw the objects at the greatest distance, the deepest secrets of nature and grace, the physiognomy of the people she did not know, found themselves at the ends of the world, their most secret thoughts and all their actions. The state of consciousness was manifested to her with the greatest certainty; the order of time did not exist for her, the events of the present, the past and the future were at her disposal, with all their most extensive circumstances. A glance at the sun was enough for her, and at the moment the thing that her thought was about became present, with an immediate view and full knowledge of what she wanted to know. She saw the whole world, as we see the façade of a building; in a blink of an eye she had been present in sight all the nations of the earth; she knew the messes that were going on in the midst of them and the calamities that were to strike them, the cause of their evils and the remedies that could have healed them, the dispositions of individuals, the condition of each people and the situation of the human race. Through this extraordinary grace and truly without example, AnnaMaria possessed and tasted the knowledge of all things in God, as much as one can taste it in this life.

She had the gift of the sun in a stable and continuous way, and she always had it in front of her wishes wherever she went, day and night. Objects passed continuously into the sun, sometimes naturally: letters, battles, etc.; sometimes allegorical symbols: crowns, golden chalices, precious stones, daggers, thorn beams, networks, pellets, incendiary bombs. The sun's rays opened to shed blood; sometimes they appeared thick clouds, sometimes a golden rain, and other things of all kinds. It was like a continuous movement; but if Anna-Maria looked at the sun to see a certain object there, all the allegorical signs disappeared, and the object she was looking for was clearly visible. It seemed, in a word, that the gift was subject to his will and desire, and this continually, since it was always so for forty-seven years."

We can see in the author! from whom we borrow these interesting excerpts about this wonderful sun: what we have quoted is enough for our purpose.

VII. — On this matter of appearances we will again point out, by finishing, two kinds of facts which seem to constitute real supernatural manifestations, and which thus fall within the framework which we have tried to fill. Saint Erry‘', monk of Saint Germain, tells of himself, that having travelled from his monastery to the cathedral church of Soissons, to celebrate the feast of Saint Germain, the bells rang themselves until he and his companions had crossed the threshold of the basilica, which they found completely deserted.

Four visitors came to see in his solitude Peter of Morron?, who was to be Pope Saint Celestine, and spent three days sedifying from his conversation and praying with him. During all this time, they heard the harmonious sound of many beautiful bells, although there were no bells in this place, and it was too far away from any human habitation so that no noise of this kind could naturally arrive until then. After them, several others also heard these mysterious bells, and this wonderful sound, first heard, continued to resonate in their ears, always and everywhere, except in the city and in the camps. As for the brothers who lived with the Blessed, they all enjoyed this carillon, more or less shining, according to the degree of solemnities; yet it was not the same for all, which added to the prodigy. One of them, in particular, heard a sweeter and louder bell at the time of the sacrifice when the priest raised the body of the Lord in his hands.

It is mainly at the death of God's servants and the translation of their relics that this miracle occurs, and it is incredible how often it reappears in the acts of the saints. Among other names are the names of Saint Ludger, the first bishop of Munster, Saint Conon, the monk of the Order of Saint Basil, Saint Aldebrand*, the bishop of Fossombrone, the solitaire Saint Vivald*, the Blessed Gregory, the hermit of Saint Augustine, Saint Isidore f, the plower, Saint Theobald of the Badie, Camaldule, Saint Boniface*, the archeval of Mainz, the Blessed Henry of Treviso, Saint Bernard of Arce*, honoured in the Abruzzo, and in whose office the prodigy is recalled.

VIII. — The second prodigy we want to talk about is the torches and lamps that light up or turn on miraculously.

The Blessed Elizabeth!, daughter of the King of Hungary Andrew III, and a nun of the Order of St.Dominique, spread on her bed by a mortal paralysis, and in the impossibility of making any movement, sighed, one night, after the light of day, when suddenly the lamp of her cell blazed and cast such a sharp light that the nurse who was watching the patient was awakened with a burst.

Saint Abbé Mayeul wanted, according to a laudable custom, a candle to remain constantly lit in the midst of his religious during their sleep. Now, when he was traveling with some of his brothers, the light extinguished, and the hour of mornings came, the religious did not know how to relight their torch, the home having more than ashes and the servants having withdrawn. However Mayeul began the service, and when one had come there, the brother who was to recite the lesson by heart asked for blessing. At the time the holy abbot pronounced the formula, as if a divine flame had come out of his mouth, the candle was lit.

An eyewitness, in the trial of the canonization of Saint Francis of Paul*, set the candles that were on the altar for the sacrifice, when one day the servant of God kneeled at the foot of the altar, by extending at a distance, and without any contact, a burning torch held by his hand.

These wonders often occur with the relics of the saints. The examples are endless. The sisters of Saint Hildegarde * saw several times a candle placed on his tomb light up again from himself. In the translations of the relics of the patriarch Saint Benedict, Saint Augustine's Apostle of England, Saint Gengoul? martyr of Burgundy, Saint Guiborade ÿ virgin and martyr, Saint Rictrude* abbess of Marchiennes in Flanders, and many others, this prodigy renews itself with various circumstances, but always attesting a kind of affinity and sympathy between the light of heaven and that of the earth. honor me Dei ac sanctorum ejus accensos, funditus extinxit. But before they went out through the gate of the stronghold of that monastery, both the calm weather returned, and the candles, divinely relit, in the sight of all, could not be extinguished by any gusts of wind for some distance along the way. In like manner, when, having finished the business for which they had gone, they had carried out the holy Relics from the tabernacle under which they had remained, the lamps, extinguished but relit by divine power, lost not their light through any breath of wind, until from the ground of S... ...the pledges of the Saints of Benedict might go forward.

1 GoceLIN, BB. 26 maïi, t. 49, p. 433, n. 49.

2 BB. 41 maïi, t. 45, p. 648, n. 7.

3 BEpIpanN. BB. 2 maïii, t. 44, p. 311, n. 1.

4 BB. 12 maii, t. 16, p. 105, n. 32. CHAPITRE XV

SURNATURAL PAROLES Supernatural words differ from visions. — They are not required to be understood by the hearer. — Like visions, the words are of three kinds: atrial, imaginary, intellectual. Perfection relative de ces trois espèces. — The earful words, from whom they are made, and how they are executed. — Imaginary words, their various ways of occurrence, their distinction from supernatural vocal words and purely natural inner words. — They are heard during sleep, in the night before, with or without suspension of the senses; never at the highest point of ecstasy. — Leurs causes. — Concepts of intellectual words, and the marks which distinguish them from visions of the same order. — The secret of their realization in the spirit. — The classification made by Saint John of the Cross of mystical words in succession, formal and substantial. — The successive words, both natural and supernatural. — The illusions to which they expose and the signs that distinguish true ones. — Formal words, their extension. — Substantial words; they embrace the three genres, but mainly intellectual words. I. — After the visions, we have to study the words of the mystical order. This language, whether external or internal, is always supernatural, and consequently differs from that whereby man communicates his thought or receives the confidence of a foreign thought. We will see the differences later. Words are also distinct from visions. Visions present realities or images to contemplate in the mind, while words are formulas that express affirmations or wills. In addition, visions can occur without words, and words may also not be accompanied by visions.

II. — Autre remarque. No matter what the supernatural words are, it is not absolutely required that the subject to whom they are addressed understand them. They are sometimes said in an unknown idiom, or in a statement that will only lighten up later.

At the height of his inner sorrows, Saint Chantal had a vision. Ün morning, being in bed, a little drowsy, he felt that she was in a wagon filled with travelers, and that, passing before a church, she wanted to enter it through the large door, which was open; but she felt repulsed, and she heard a distinct voice saying to her, "We must go aside, and go further. You will never enter the sacred rest of the children of God except through the gate of St.Claude."She understood nothing then to this vision, except that her sorrows would cease one day. So, when they became more lively, she said to herself, "Patience, my soul, God promised you that you would enter the sacred rest of her children through the gate of St.Claude."It was, indeed, in the church of St.Claude that, several years later, Saint Chantal began to be led by St.Francis de Sales, and that peace was restored to him. On the eve of the day when she was to undertake this pilgrimage of Saint Claude, her vision of the past returned to her mind, so clear and lively, that she could not doubt that the moment of her realization had finally come!.

III. — Among the supernatural words, some strike the external senses, others sound in the intimate of the soul, sometimes in a sensitive way, sometimes by addressing directly to the understanding; which brings back the order adopted for the visions, that is, the words are intellectual, imaginary or bodily. The latter, from the organ of the voice to the organ of hearing, are naturally called vocals and atrials.

The relative perfection of these three kinds of words is absolutely the same as that which exists in the three kinds of visions.

As in vision, intellectual speech? occupies the first rank, and atrial word * the last; hence the mystics conclude that vocal words are commonly addressed to beginnings and imperfect ones, imaginary words to those who progress, and intellectual words to the most advanced souls.

We have indicated, in dealing with visions, the foundations of this hierarchy, and we have made reservations. These reserves, we renew them here. If God almost never speaks to the imperfect through purely intellectual communication, and if he reserves this sublime way of conversing for some privileged few#, it is less

1 ALVAREZ DE Paz, De grad. contempl., 1. 5, P. 3, c. 6, n. 6, t. 6, p. 569 : Hæc locutio triplex est. Another [locution] formed by exterior words, which the ears of the body hear, and through which the understanding of the hearer is enlightened and the affection kindled. Another speech of God is not heard by the ear of the body but is conceived in the imagination, when the Lord, either by Himself or through some Angel, forms in a man's imagination those words and those meanings which He wills to be understood by him, and by which he must be instructed concerning things useful to him. A third speech of God does not sound in the ear of the body, nor is it perceived by the imagination of the head, but purely spiritually by the intellect of the mind.

2 Voss, Direct. myst. Comp. Intellectual locutions are the most perfect and most sublime of all.

Auricular locutions, although sometimes granted even to perfect persons, are nevertheless ordinarily imparted to imperfect souls who are beginning to tend toward perfection and are not yet capable of more sublime communications. For God, who works all things in number, weight, and measure, intends by sensible graces to tear such souls away from sensible things and to raise them up to heavenly and divine things.

God sometimes, by a special privilege, with perfect souls and [illegible] — purely intellectually — [illegible: 'vocal and imaginary words']. He makes them heard indistinctly to those who enter the career, to those who advance and to those who reach the top. The Bible accounts and the annals of the saints bear full witness, as we could judge from the many apparitions we have reported.

IV. — We have already said, the ear speech consists of a sensitive communication that sounds to the ears of the body, whether or not there is a corresponding vision. It can proceed from the different objects we have recognized in the vision.

The Old and the New Testament attest that God has more than once revealed his presence and wills through the word. Adam! and Eve hear his voice in the earthly paradise, and hide from fear. Samuel * awakens three times, at the sound of the voice that calls him. While Jesus Christ is baptized in the Jordan, these words are heard from heaven: "This is my Son, in whom I have put all my complacency.""The same statement struck the ears of the three apostles in the scene of the transfiguration. And a third time, the Saviour asking his Father to glorify his name by bearing witness to him before the multitude of Jews gathered in Jerusalem for the Passover feast, the voice of the heavenly Father bursts out of heaven like a thunder blow: "I will glorify him, and I will glorify him again."

Jesus Christ, since his glorious ascension, has made more than once his word heard in a sensitive way, for example, to Saint Paul and his companions on the way to Damascus, when, terrorizing the future Apostle of the Gentiles, he said to him, "Saul, Saul! why persecute me?" Likewise, to the Angelic Doctor, through the mouth of the crucifix before whom he was prostrated: "Thomas, you have written well of me; what do you want as a reward?" To which the saint replied: "Nothing other than you, Lord!" One day that Saint John of Matha*° prayed before a crucifix, in the church of Saint Victor of Paris, he heard three times a voice saying these words to him from the PROVERBES: "Apply to wisdom, my son, and you will rejoice my heart."

These sensitive manifestations have often repeated themselves, starting either from the Eucharist or from the images of the Saviour.

Angels, as we have seen, also speak to men in their bodily appearances. It even happens quite frequently that, without appearing, they make heard sensitive words. Hagar {, driven out of her master's house, wandered into the wilderness, and found no water to quench herself, she and her son Ishmael, and left the child lying under a tree, and slew away at a staves, and sat before him, saying, I will not see my child die. And there, raising her voice, she began to cry. And God listened to the voice of the child, who was crying, and his angel called Hagar from heaven, and said to him, "Agar, what are you doing here? Take courage, God has answered the child's weeping. Arise, take your son, and hold him by the hand, for I will make him the ruler of a great people."And at the same time God opened his eyes to the mother; she saw a well full of water, where she filled her ship and gave it to Ishmael to drink.

At the birth of the Saviour, a multitude of heavenly spirits fill the air with their songs of praise, to warn the shepherds of the great news, without however showing themselves to them!.

Before appearing visibly to Joan of Arc, and denouncing God's mission to save France, the archangel Saint Michael made him hear his VOIX several times.

"It was Jeanne d'Arc herself who spoke; it was her judges who had her words written in the official drafting of her proceedings. She says, "At the age of thirteen (it was postponed to 1495), she had a voice of God who called her. It was a summer day, at noon, in his father's garden. The voice was heard on the right side of the church, and great clarity appeared to her at the same place; and rarely since then did she hear the voice without her seeing that light at the same time. The first time she had great fear; but she sat down and found that the voice was worthy; and she told her judges that she was from God. At the third time, she knew that it was the voice of an angel. (was, as she later knew, St. Michael's larceny?"

Later, St. Catherine and St.Margarita will also appear at the Pucelle d'Orléans. Whether it's about the Ar or the Saints, whether she sees them or only hears them, she always calls them her Voices, because they show themselves to her only to speak to her.

What we have reported from the very healthy Virgin and the blessed, is sufficient evidence that the words are always, or almost always, mixed with the apparitions.

The souls of purgatory, we have also said, manifest themselves many times with complaining cries, calling friends whose help they seek. More often than not demons and damned ones accuse their presence by the cryers and the words they make heard.

The animals themselves sometimes speak, witness the donkey of Balaam, to whom the Lord opened his mouth, says the Scripture!, to reproach his master for the ill-treatment he made him suffer.

Comment se produisent ces sons extérieurs ?

For Our Lord and His Most Holy Mother, who have their own bodies, nothing prevents them from admitting that they naturally articulate the words they address, assuming, however, their personal presence in apparitions.

If it is about God, angels, good or bad, separated souls, one must obviously resort to another interpretation. When these words arise from real appearances, in a human or animal form, it is sufficient to assume that the organizing and driving principle of these external forms, whatever it may be, prints to the material elements of which they consist a movement similar to that of our organs in the play of speech. If there is no external vision, the sounds that strike the ears will be due to vibrations of the air, made by a supernatural cause. Spirits do not need organs to produce these purely physical movements ÿ.

There can be no doubt that demons are not the true and immediate cause of the words they make heard. More importantly, the same must be said of the faithful angels, who have greater freedom to act on nature. One can even admit the common opinion that, when God, the Savior Jesus, the blessed or suffering souls speak, it is the angels who execute the external vibrations from which the sounds result, although there is no repugnance, we have made the remark several times, that the heavenly spirits are caused only by the words spoken in their name, and that God, Jesus Christ, the saints of heaven and the souls of purgatory themselves produce the words which they speak to the living.

V. — Imaginary words make themselves heard appreciably in the soul, without there being any organic impression outside. They have reality only in the imagination, and yet they resonate in the ear of the soul more clearly than if they affected in the body the sense of the ouie.

"These are perfectly distinct words," said Térèse! "but they are not heard from the ears of the body; nevertheless, the soul hears them much more clearly than if they came to it by the senses: one would resist not to hear them, every effort is useless."

Perhaps one wonders how these sensitive and inner words can occur. We answer that they happen in the same way as imaginary visions. Everything that can affect our external senses has its corresponding representation in the imagination?, with this difference that the imagination multiplies and nuances objects at its will, while the bodily senses grasp them as they are in reality, and often only receive an imperfect and weakened impression.

Although these words are inner, they sometimes seem to come from afar, to descend from heaven, to depart from a certain place more or less close, or even to ascend from the heart of the one who hears them, though articulated by a foreign voice!: the Blessed Étiennette of Soncino heard a voice shouting from the bottom of her heart: Charity, charity, charity?!

Hence, it is a great difficulty to distinguish these supernatural communications from the truly external sounds. The rules we have drawn up for the distinction of body and representative visions come back here. When the same voice sounds to the ears of a certain number, the prodigy must be held to be outer. If, on the contrary, only one hears words that escape entirely from those who are with him, especially if these words are imposed despite the noise of the outside and the efforts that one would make to divert attention, it is then a purely internal fact, and since this fact nevertheless takes a sensitive form, it is right to the imagination.

Another pitfall must be avoided, which is to confuse the inner supernatural words with those that come from our background. Cardinal Bona thus describes the signs that allow these two kinds of words to be dismantled. "The discourses of our own understanding and imagination," said the author!, "are distinguished from the discourses of God in that, when our natural powers speak, they command and dispose of what they tell us, and it is in our power to turn away from it, when we please. But when it is God who speaks to us, our powers keep silent and listen, and cannot divert the thought from the things that have been heard or reject them. Moreover, the things that God says are far removed from human intelligence, and he makes so many things heard in such a short space of time that it would be impossible for the human mind to conceive them so quickly. It is yet a sign that God has spoken, if the things that we have heard never come out of memory, if we have not thought of them before we have received them; if we keep a faithful memory, not only of the meaning, but also of all the expressions; if they are in accordance with the Holy Scripture and the doctrine of the Church; if they enlighten the soul, strengthen it and excite it to perfection."

Saint Térèse, to whom Bona borrows all these rules, insists on the last, that of the effects, and presents it as the most decisive: "There is yet another mark, the most obvious of all," she says? "is that the words that come from understanding produce no glare, while those that come from God are words and works all together."

VE. — These supernatural conversations take place, as well as visions of the same kind, during the day before or during sleep.

In the night before, they occur with or without the suspension of the senses, in the midst of the most absorful occupations1 De discreet. spirit. c. 8, n. 3, p. 254. bantes as in the silence and the contemplation of contemplation !.

The mystics after Saint Teresus make this reservation, that the inner words cannot occur at the highest point of ecstasy, because in this state the soul is passive, and that the play of its impregnated powers, among which the imagination is placed, is suspended. But let us quote rather Saint Teresus, to which all these authors refer.

"Let it be noticed," she says, "if the soul has these visions or hears these words, it is never, in my opinion, when the delight is at its highest degree. For during this time, as I have previously explained, all the powers of the soul being completely lost in God, she cannot see, listen, or hear. It is then all in the power of others, and during this time, which is very short, it seems to me that God does not give him freedom for anything. But once this short time has passed, and the soul perseveres still in delight, it is then that visions and words can occur; for the powers, without being completely lost, nevertheless remain almost without action; they are as if absorbed, and unqualified to form any reasoning."

According to Bona #, this divine communication through the inner word is preferably realized during sleep, because of the deep calm of the soul in this state. And he claims, in support of his assertion, this passage of the NameBres!: "If there is a prophet of the Lord among you, I will appear to him in vision or speak to him in a dream;" and another of Job: "God speaks through dreams, in the visions of the night, while men are in the slumber of sleep and they rest on their beds; then he opens the ear of mortals, to make them hear his warnings."

VIE. — In order not to fall into tedious repetitions, we will not dwell on the principle of imaginary words. It is shown, through the accounts of Scripture and the continuous experience of centuries, that God makes men hear his word in the circle of their imagination. Most of the prophetic revelations in a sensitive form were thus consumed in this part of the mind where man collects and combines images of the bodies. Our Lord, the Most Holy Virgin, the angels and the blessed, usually show themselves in representative vision only to converse with men. The same can be said of the souls of purgatory, although they appear quite often without uttering any words, showing only by their sad and begging attitude that they come to interest in their fate their friends of the earth. For reproved spirits, it is also constant that they manifest themselves in words, as well as in imaginary visions.

Everything we have said about the personal character of representative apparitions applies to words of the same nature; we do not go back to these discussions.

VIIL. — Apart from the vocal and imaginary words, there are still intellectual words, which are heard in the soul without the intermediary of the external or inner senses, and by the direct way of understanding!

The faculty which understands us, bears without distinction the name of intelligence and that of understanding. It has as its object the being or the affirmed truth; but, as truth shows itself and is seen by the spirit, it produces the vision, which is the proper act of intelligence; as it affirms and formulates itself, it becomes word, and resolves itself in an act of understanding or hearing?. Every act of thought, as St Augustine says, is an inner word.

It should not, however, be concluded that there is no difference between visions and intellectual words. God gives his manifestations the form he wants: when he appears or presents things as realities upon which man sets his gaze, he offers an object of vision; when he makes statements and formulas, he makes words heard.

The word brings forth the idea of one being who reveals to another his thought. Sensitive beings come into contact with and trade in thoughts with signs consummated by their nature; pure minds are obviously freed from this condition, and their language amounts to a mere view of their reciprocal conceptions. Ainsi conversent les anges . So intellectual words raise souls

That locution is accordingly purely intellectual which occurs through words perceived only intelligibly, independently of the external sense of hearing, and of the internal sense of fantasy or imagination.

2 L. pu Ponr, Tract. 1. The intellect is at once the hearing and the sight of the soul: it is hearing insofar as it receives instruction from God and attends to what is said to it; it is sight insofar as it understands and grasps that instruction.

And even if the words do not sound aloud, he who thinks certainly speaks in his heart.

4 ALVARE DE PAZ, 1. 5, P. 3, c. 6, p. 571: Hæc autem locutio propria est Angelorum, quae merito aliquado illis animabus communictur in human beings in the state of pure spirits; or rather, God, through this spiritual language, communicates with the traveling souls in the way he talks with his angels and elected ones.

"His voice then," said Bona!, "sounds in the silence of the soul, not through the ears of the body, nor through the imagination, but through the whole spiritual virtue of understanding. God speaks to the tip of the soul by a very simple word, and the soul means by a very simple look also of his mind. He speaks to the angels and the blessed, not by any sensitive voice, but by printing in their mind the truth that he has resolved to discover to them; likewise he makes his words heard in the upper part of the soul, spreading in it an extremely clear light, within which, without fatigue or disgust, but rather with a very kind rest and a wonderful sweetness, the soul learns more in an instant than she could do by a work of several years."

IX. "For us, who mix our sensitivity to all our concepts, it is difficult for us to hear and explain how this admirable word between God and the soul works. Those who heard him barely penetrate the mystery and do not know how to express it.

"It's such a language from heaven," says Térèse?, "that no human effort can make it understood unless the Lord teaches it by experience. He puts much before in the soul's innermost mind what he wants to make him hear, and there he represents him without image or form of words, but by the same mode as the [intellectual] vision I have just spoken of... It is as if there was in our stomach a meat that we would not have eaten, without knowing how it entered into us, although some of the fact. By this kind of language, the Lord wants, I believe, to give the soul a certain knowledge of what is happening in heaven where it speaks without words. That such a tongue existed, I had always completely ignored it until the Lord was pleased to show it to me in a delight. Thus, from this world alone, that God wants to be heard from the soul, God and soul hear, without it being necessary to resort to any other artifice to express their mutual love. Here below, two people of mind who love a lot, even hear by signs, only by looking at each other. This is apparently what is going on between God and soul; but we are not given to see how these two lovers put on each other that look by which they say their mutual love, as it is said of the husband and wife in the Songs, according to the interpretation I believe I have heard of it."

The theologians, however, have tried to clarify the mystery of this divine communication, and they reproduce on this point their ways of explaining the intellectual vision.

To the common sense of the scholastics!, God, Jesus Christ, the angels and the saints throw into the spirit intelligible species that respond to their intimate thoughts, and the divine light, spreading over these species, gives full intelligence of the things they want to manifest.

Others believe that the pre-existing ideas in the mind, illuminated by divine clarity, and combined by God's supernatural operation, can absolutely suffice for the word, as well as for the intellectual vision. Cajétan and many others explain in this way the mutual language of angels!. To respond to God, his angels and his saints, the soul in turn directs his thoughts and affections to them, and not only they perceive these intimate acts, but she herself knows, with the help of divine enlightenment, that his voice is heard.

One can choose between these solutions, unless one prefers to withdraw in the silence of Saint Teresus. The simplest interpretation, in our view, is to see in the intellectual words the judgments formulated by God, angels or saints, and that they direct to the listening soul. It is admitted that, to answer them, the soul presents to their eyes the impressions it feels and the movements it produces; why could it not grasp in the same way, by a view, or rather by an immediate hearing, the words addressed to it? This direct apprehension and divine light supernaturally spread in the understanding fully justify the evidence and certainty that characterizes these kinds of communications.

Touching the nature and the different degrees of this supernatural illumination, we have nothing to add here to what we have said about intellectual vision!, all agreeing to recognize that there is no difference in this point of view between visions and words.

This light, we have made the remark, is exclusively divine; but the voice that speaks and enlightens can be that of God, of Our Lord, of the Blessed Virgin, of the faithful angels, of the saints, and even of the demons: everything that is said, everything that is affirmed, is echoed in the ear of understanding.

X. — Saint John of the Cross? distinguishes three kinds of supernatural words. He calls successively the words that the mind, gathered and concentrated, speaks to itself through the work of reasoning; formal, those that come from another; and, finally, substantial, those that have the virtue to operate what they express.

Scaramelli* applies this distribution to imaginary words only, while Schram ‘ hears it from intellectual words. The latter seems to us to interpret more faithfully the thought of St John of the Cross, as one can convince by referring to the place ® where the Doctor

1 Ch. 4, n. 8.

2 Montée du Carmel, 1. 2, c. 28, p. 140: Although there are several kinds of them, I reduce them to three, to successive words, to formal words, to substantial words.

8 Dirett. Mist. Tr. 4, ©. 13, n. 119, p. 301 : S. Giovanni della Croce, parlando di queste locuzioni internale soprannaturali, che si formano per mezzo dell的 immaginativa, distinguishes him in particular, altre successive chiama, altre formali, ed altre sostanziali.

Of how many kinds is intellectual locution? — S. John of the Cross assigns a threefold purely intellectual locution: 1° that which occurs by successive words...; 2° that which occurs by formal words...; 3° that which occurs by substantial words.

$ Montée du Carmel, 1. 2, c. 23, p. 114: I will now begin to deal with the four kinds of knowledge of the spirit, which are visions, revelations, inner words and spiritual sentiments, which I have called purely spiritual, because they are communicated to the mind, not by the way of the senses, like bodily and imaginary representations, but by a supernatural way, without any operation of the external or internal senses.

He makes a clear summary of the doctrine that he proposes to develop. —

Other authors, among others Philip of the Most Holy Trinity! and Saint Liguori?, extend this division to all supernatural words, whether vocal, imaginary or intellectual. We believe, in fact, that these three general forms each have their share in the classification of Saint John of the Cross, as we will see in the development that we will make of it.

XI. — The successive words consist in a series of reasonings, by which the soul, under the action and the light of the Holy Spirit, speaks and responds to itself, but with such promptness and ease, that it seems to him that it is another who operates and speaks to him. Let us hear Saint John of the Cross* describe this kind of inner speech. Co

"The spirit usually forms the words that we have called successively, when, having entered into itself, it applies strongly to the consideration of some truth. He absorbs himself entirely there; he then makes very correct reasonings on his subject, with ease, with clarity, with distinction; he discovers things he did not know before. It seems to him that it is not himself who operates, but that it is another who speaks to him, who answers him, who instructs him internally. And, truly, it is necessary to think about it and even to believe it; for he speaks himself with himself, and he answers himself as if a man were with another man. And, indeed, it happens in him in this way, because it is still the spirit itself that makes these effects, nevertheless the Holy Spirit often gives him the help of his grace to form thoughts, reasonings and words consistent with the truth that he meditates. Hence he has spoken these words and said them to himself, as if it were a separate word. For the understanding being united with the truth of the object which he contemplates, being also joined to the divine spirit which helps him, he successively represents the truths which are necessary followers of the object which he considers; but it does so only with the assistance of the Holy Spirit who gives him the opening, who enlightens and teaches him. And this is one of the ways he uses to educate understanding. So that we can apply these words of Genesis here!: "This voice is to the truth the voice of Jacob, but these hands are Esau's hands." Likewise this operation is to the truth the operation of understanding; but this light is the light of the divine spirit. Never can understanding persuade himself that what he does comes from himself, but he will always believe that it is the work of another person. For he does not understand how he can form words that express the thoughts and truths that another communicates to him."

These words are called precisely successive, as the operations of the reasoning of which they are the fruit.

These inner words are therefore both natural and supernatural: the natural consists in the work of reasoning; the supernatural, in the light that the Holy Spirit casts upon the soul to enlighten and lead it into this work of deduction. The covenant of the divine element with human activity absorbed by reflection presupposes, we understand, the calm of solitude and the silence of prayer. *

1 Gen. xxvx, 22.

2 RicHarp SainT-Vicror, De grad. charit. c. 4. Migne, Patr. lat., 6, The starting point of this wonderful deduction can be an intimate word that God makes heard, and from which the supernaturally illuminated soul brings forth, with ease that comes from the evidence, a series of new thoughts and words; or a divine truth considered first by faith, upon which the Holy Spirit spreads such bright clarity, that the soul not only hears this truth, but also perceives by a deductive look a greater or lesser number of other truths that flow from or attach to it. The deduced truths are all new statements which seem to the soul affirmed by a voice distinct from itself.

These kinds of concepts or words do not obviously belong to imagination, but to understanding, as the reasoning itself that produces them, and must be seen as intellectual operations.

XIT. — One is very exposed to misunderstand! in successive inner words, and to consider as divine what is only the fruit of human activity without any guarantee other than the rational light that accompanies the natural exercise of the mind. From there, miscounts must be: imputed not to God, but to man. This is how this illusion occurs.

When the soul deduces from a first truth, by means of reasoning and the assistance of divine light, other truths related to it, it leads to certain and truly supernatural statements, if not in itself, at least by the mode that obtains them. But it may happen that the spirit comes out of the ray enlightened by God and returns, without his knowledge, under the simple conditions of natural deduction. Therefore, not only do these operations no longer have any mystical character, but they are also subject to human infirmity failures, illusion and error. It would seem that the deductions obtained form the continuation of a first divine word or a truth considered first supernaturally, in the brightness and abundance of the light of the Holy Spirit; in reality, we are no more than purely human conceptions, which may be just, but may also be wrong.

On this so important doctrine, which allows us to explain how sincere souls, and others who imprudently aspire to extraordinary favors!, can abuse in matters of revelations, we must hear Saint John of the Cross?, who, the first, highlighted it.

"Although there is no lie or deceit in this communication and in this light of mind considered in themselves, he can nevertheless find it, and indeed he often finds it in the words and reasonings which the understanding forms on this knowledge. For, as the light that he receives from above is sometimes so subtle and so spiritual that he does not know it perfectly, and as it is he himself who reason from his own background, his reasonings are sometimes false and sometimes plausible, and always defective, because having begun with contemplation of the solid and certain truth, and using himself to operate on his ability, or rather his rudeness and lowness, it is easy for him to take the change and invent many things, as if it were another who talked. . . . . . .

"There are spirits so vivid and so penetrating that as soon as they gather to meditate on a truth, they naturally reason with great ease; they form incontinent inner words and very vivid expressions of their thoughts, which, however, they attribute to God, persuading themselves that they come from him, although, indeed, it is only the work of understanding. For when understanding has come out in some way of the operation of the senses, it can do all things by natural light alone, and without any extraordinary help. What often happens to many, who abuse themselves by believing that they are raised to a sublime prayer and great communication with God, and who even write or cause to write everything that comes to their mind, although, for ordinary, these so-called wonders do not contain any solid virtue, and are good only to nourish pride and vanity."

The way to discern whether successive words come from God, or whether they are purely natural, is to examine whether the soul is complacent in this intellectual work, and especially

D if she's attached to it. God's gifts go to charity rather than to the satisfactions of the spirit. Intimate disturbances, pride uprisings, or too much vanity concerns would accuse a hidden intervention of the demon. The effects that follow these inner words are the surest marks of God's action!.

Lee SA Sainte Terèse! adds that the soul that will experience divine words will not confuse them with purely human conceptions: "For there is a great difference between one and the other. When it is understanding that forms these words, whatever subülity he puts in them, he sees that it is he who arranges them and who utters them. There is as much difference as between composing a speech and hearing it from another. The understanding will see that he does not listen, but that he acts; and the words he forms have something deaf, fantastic, and lack the clarity that accompanies God's words. So we can distract ourselves then, as we are free to remain silent when we speak; but when God speaks, it is not in our power."

XIII. — Formal words do not proceed, as the successive ones do, from the subject which listens and speaks to himself, but from another person. They are called formal because they are expressly formulated out of the mind that hears, instead of that the successive words are the very work of the spirit. Not being the result of a subjective and mental work, these kinds of words do not require the concentration of soul and can be heard in the silence of prayer, as in the midst of the agitation of business. per conoscere Quanto the debt word successive vengono da Dio, quando dalla luce dell的 intelletto umano, e quando dal demonio, pospono essere i seguenti. Se i predetti concetti e parole interne vadano congiunte con un amore umile e rivente, e con un intimo raccogliamento quieto e pacifico, sarà segno che quello procedono dallo spirito di Dio : perche sono caratteri da cui sono sempere accompanied the visit of the Signore. Quando poi tali parole risulteranno dalla vivacità dell’ intelletto, non porteranno seco il predetto amore, ma al più al più un certo amore naturale, non cosi intimo, non cosi umile, non cosi ossequioso, ad alla fine lascerianno l’anima in una certa indifferenza, non inclinata nè al bene, nè al male... Finalise his word avranno tratta dal demonio la loro origine, dovranno lasciar l'anima poco quieta, tutta arida, e fabatto indisposita al pene: We still borrow these notions and remarks to the mystical Doctor, Saint John of the Cross.

"The inner words of the second kind," he says, "are those we call formal. They are supernaturally reborn in spirit, without the operation of the bodily senses, either that the spirit is gathered, or that it is not gathered. I have said that these words are formal, because the mind formally realizes that they are spoken by another, without it contributing on its part. It is for this reason that they are different from those we have just mentioned. But this is not the only difference that finds itself in it; there is yet another, which is that the spirit is struck with these words when he has no recollection, and even when he does not think about it; instead of the contrary happens in successive words; for they always have as their object the things that one considers in meditation."

These words are more or less distinct, more or less multiplied. Sometimes it's a single word, sometimes several times, and even a real conversation between the soul who hears and questions, and the inner voice who speaks and answers.

"Now the words we are talking about now," continues Saint John of the Cross? "are sometimes very distinctly formed, sometimes much less; they are often in the mind as thoughts by which something is said to him, sometimes by speaking to him, sometimes by answering him. Sometimes one hears only one word, sometimes two, and sometimes several that follow one another. For this conversation sometimes lasts a long time, either by instructing the soul, or by imparting with it some matter; nevertheless, so that the mind does not act, and all these words are heard, as if one person spoke to another. It was as Daniel once experienced, as he himself said (1x, 22), that the angel Gabriel spoke to him; for he uttered words formally and successively in the spirit of this prophet, and he taught him what was to happen in a few years."

These words are formulated in a jet, or successively, in the human way. In any case, it is God's proper to say many things in a few words. "The divine words, " says Saint Teresis, "express in a few words such profound, admirable meanings that we would need a great deal of time, only to put them in order, which shows to the point that such words are divine, not human."

Although St John of the Cross considers formal words only those which are addressed to understanding, while Scaramelli sees, on the contrary, that imaginary words, it seems to us that this statement embraces all the words, either internal or external, which come from an extrinsic cause. The soul receives from these kinds of supernatural communications through the bodily senses, as we have said above. Imagination, under the influence of an external principle that illuminates and coordinates mental images, can also produce these formal discourses, and, which is no less obvious, understanding is even more able to grasp such statements. When these words are inner, the way to recognize whether they are expressed in the imagination, or if they are due to a simple intellectual apprehension, is to consider whether these formulas take on a sensitive form, or whether they present themselves only by the aspect of truth. In the first case, one feels; in the second, one only makes known. In practice, this discernment sometimes presents great difficulties, as a result of the mixture of sensitive and intelligible in human knowledge.

XIV. — The distinctiveness of substantial words is to achieve what they state. This effectiveness can be suitable for all kinds of words that we have spoken, successively and formally, intellectually, imaginaryly and atrially; for all these various words can accomplish at the moment what they express, and therefore they are substantial. Thus, when Our Lord said to the paralytic, "Arise, and walk!" he spoke a substantial word. The same applies to all miraculous formulas, whether internal or external, followed by their effect.

"Even though any substantial word is formal, does St John of the Cross teach?, nevertheless any formal word is not substantial, only that it is substantial that really and truly prints in the soul what it means, as it would happen, for example, if Our Lord formally said to the soul: "Be good," and as soon as the soul became good; as if he said again, "Love me," and that at the very moment she had in herself and felt the substance of love, that is, the true love of God; or if, being appalled with fear, he said, "Do not fear," and that she is now filled with courage, confidence and peace. The reason is that, as the Wise says, "the word of God is almighty;" that is why it actually does in the soul what it expresses. The prophet king had the same feeling when he said, ‘He gave virtue, strength, power to his voice.' Indeed, God behaved in this way with Abraham; for when he said to him, ‘Walk in my presence and be perfect,' this great patriarch was at that very hour brought to perfection; and since that time he kept respectfully in the presence of his Creator. This power erupts in the words of Jesus Christ, since, according to the report of the evangelists, he had only to say a word to heal the sick and to raise the dead. When God speaks of these substantial words to certain people, they act in their souls with the effects of such a great consequence and of such a great value, that they make all the life, all the virtue, all the strength and all the good of these people; for one word of this nature is much more useful than all that they have done in the course of their natural life." _ Holy Teresis expresses the same, and expressly attributes the substantial effectiveness to the voice, imaginary and intellectual.

"What do these words come from within, from the upper part of the soul or from the outside, they can all proceed from God, and among the marks to which it can be recognized that they are of him, the first and most certain is the power and the empire that they carry with them to operate what they express." Je m’explique davantage. A soul is in sorrow and in this inner trouble which I have spoken of above, in the darkness of the spirit and drought; and this few words: "Do not grieve," put it in calm, fill it with light, and dissipate all its sorrows, of which she had not believed, the moment before, that all the most learned men of the world together were able to deliver it. May a person be in affliction and agitated with a thousand fears, because his confessor or some other told him that what is happening in it comes from the demon, with

1 Gen. xvu, 1. — ? Chdt. int., 6th Dem., c. 3. these few words: "C'est me, don't be afraid," everything is dissipated, and she remains so comforted, that no one would be able to persuade her anything else. Is she worried about the success of some important case: that she hears saying, "Be in rest, all will succeed," she is completely and reassured and without any pain. The same happens on several other occasions."

Substantial words, by the effect that accompanies them, therefore carry with them the certainty that it is God who spoke. That is why this efficiency is especially suited to intellectual words whose own is to persuade the soul. The other words, even those that come from God, do not always act instantly; sometimes they bow only and communicate a great ease to act according to what they state: repugnants, if any, are only momentary, and these intimate words give the strength to overcome them.

The effectiveness of substantial words is a sufficient indication that God is the principle. The soul can therefore give up without fear to this divine influence.

"As far as these words are concerned," said St John of the Cross! "the soul has nothing to do with itself and must not flourish to act; but it must humble itself and abandon itself to the conduct of God by freely giving her consent. It must also not refuse God's impressions, nor fear them, nor work to accomplish what is presented to it. God himself does all this in her... These substantial words advance much soul, and help to unite with God; and the more inner they are, the more substantial they are and the more useful they are. Oh, how blessed is the soul to whom God spoke of CHAPTER XVI

OF REVELATIONS Concept and classification. — Revelations are made by vision, by words or by instinct. — They are public or private: the mystic only deals with the second species. — Existence des révélations particulières. — Scope of the approvals that the Church sometimes gives them. — Do these revelations impose faith on those who receive them, and on others who come to know them? — Danger des révélations privées. — Hence he follows that these kinds of favors should not be desired or requested. — Even less should it be made the rule of its conduct outside the control of the authority. — Prophecy: its two elements: vision and expression. — The inner illumination it implies and its degrees. — Prophecy can be fulfilled with or without ecstasy, corn always with calm and dignity. — The value of the prophecy taken in itself. — Difficulties in hearing it well: memorable examples and causes of these misinterpretations. — Le discernement des esprits. — Its forms and degrees. — Revelations can have as their organs sinners and imperfectes; in general they are the sharing of holiness. — These donations are not permanent,

I. Revelations are supernatural manifestations of hidden truths or unknown facts. " It does not matter whether these truths and facts are accessible or inaccessible to reason; it suffices, for there to be revelation, that their knowledge should be carried out by an extranatural way.

We must now study this new aspect of God's communications. To know and classify the 1 Paper. À SS. Tran. Sum. Theol. myst. P. 2, Tr. 3, D. 4, a. 4,t. 2, D. 413: Dicimus quod revelatio est declaratio alicujus veritatis occultæ sive manifestitio alicujus arcani vel mysterii. different forms, one must place oneself in the triple point of view of fashion, destination and object.

II. — We have little to say about fashion, if we do not want to repeat ourselves. Revelations are accomplished in one of these three ways: by vision, by words, or by instinct. Ce sont autant d'espèces.

The instinctive revelations are a form of prophecy that we will talk about later.

What we have said about supernatural visions and words is enough to make us hear how they can be revealing sources. The purpose of visions and words is to reveal something hidden, and it is under one or the other of these two ways that most revelations are realized. However we have just pointed out a form that does not understand vision or speech; and the visions and words themselves may learn nothing by producing only things already known: by which one sees the relationships and differences that exist between visions and words on the one hand, and revelations on the other. It seems superfluous to repeat what concerns the classification of visions and words into organic, representative and intellectual, and to repeat that supernatural manifestations are addressed to the outside senses, to the imagination, or, without any intermediary, to the understanding.

HT. — From the point of view of its destination, revelation is public or private: public, if it is imposed on all and looks at the common utility of the Church; private, when it is made for the instruction and conduct of particular persons.

Dogmatic theology tells of public revelation, especially in the treatises of revealed Religion, theological places and the Faith. Mystical theology did not have to redo or control this work. But particular revelations are expressly part of his domain, and are, therefore, the only ones that must occupy us. LE |

IV. — First of all, we cannot question private revelations. "It is evident, both by Scripture and by approved stories," says Bona!, "that there have always been particular revelations, in all ages and in all states of men, from Adam to us." Scripture and history, indeed, attest in concert to the existence of many such revelations, and Christian tradition is as unanimous in recognizing them as it is in respecting them.

Scripture is only a series of revelations, most of which, if not all, were deprived before becoming public. In the old law, the prophets exercised a regular public ministry, not only for the conduct and general interests of the nation, but also for the service and utility of ordinary individuals. Saul ? turns to Samuel to find his lost donkeys; Jeroboam's wife uses the prophet Achiasÿ to know what will be the outcome of his son's illness; and so many others.

Saint Paul # attests that the gift of prophecy perseveres in the Church, even after the public revelation is closed, and shows it to us in exercise in the assemblies of the faithful 5. The book of Acts mentions, on several occasions, prophets to whom God revealed the future and the hidden things; it points out in the Antioch Church of

On the discernment of spirits, c. 90, n. 1, p. 313: That private [revelations], of which we are treating here, have always existed in every age and in every condition of men, from our first parent down to us, is evident both from sacred Scripture and from approved histories.

2 L Reg. 1x, 18-90. — 8 [IL Reg. xv, 5. — 4 L Cor. x1v, 1. 6 Ibid., 3-39. Prophets and doctors, some by their names; further on, it is spoken of the four daughters of the deacon Philip, all prophesies; and in the same place? there is a Jew called Agabus, a prophet himself, who binds his feet with Paul's belt, saying, "The man to whom this belt belongs shall be bound by the Jews in Jerusalem and delivered into the hands of the Gentiles."

The annals of the Church are even richer in such accounts. Among the most famous revelations are those of St Hildegarde, St Elizabeth of Sconauge, St Lutgarde, St Gertrude, Blessed Angel of Foligno, St Brigitte, St Catherine of Siena, St Francis Romane, St Catherine of Bologna, Blessed Osanne of Mantua, St Teresus, St Rose of Lima, St Madeleine of Pazzi, St Catherine of Ricci, Blessed Marguerite-Marie Alacoque, Venerable Mary of Agréda. It would be easy, by going through the series of holy souls in the order of time, to show that the prophecy or grace of revelations is never interrupted in the Church. This permanence, Saint Justin * in the second century, the Angelic Doctor * in the thirteenth, and in his wake the whole School, also affirmed it; and regardless of the facts that are guaranteed, this doctrine continued to us with the same unanimity.

The Church gives the sanction of her authority to these revelations, discussing them and approving them in the trials of canonization, without however imposing them or covering them with the seal of her infallibility. It is on the revelations made to Blessed Julienne!, Prioress of Mount Cornillon, near Liège, that Pope Urban IV instituted, in 12692, the feast of the Most Holy Sacrament. For a long time, this saint had a vision that no one could explain to her. She never used to go to prayer without seeing the moon in its fullness, with a slight breach. God finally made him know that the moon meant the militant Church, and that the echancture marked the defect of a special solemnity in honor of the divine Eucharist. The devotion, today universal, to the sacred Heart is due to the admirable manifestations of the Savior to the Blessed Marguerite - Mary.

Let us also note the implicit declaration of the Council of Trent in favor of particular revelations, when it fulminates thema against anyone who dares to claim absolute and infallible certainty on his predestination, unless, adds the Holy Council, of a special revelation, recognizing by the way that God can reveal this secret to a soul.

Y. — However, if the Church takes private revelations under her protection, she does not assume responsibility for the facts and doctrines that they state. By approving, for example, the revelations of Saint Hildegarde, Saint Brigitte, Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Teresus, she does not pretend to impose them; she only wants to recommend them to the respect of the faithful, and authorize their disclosure and reading. Turrecremata!, indicating the scope of the approval granted to the revelations of Saint Brigitte, declares that there was nothing found contrary to the doctrine of Scripture and the Fathers, and that they can therefore be read as the books of other doctors, the stories and legends of the saints are read. Benedict XIV ?, whose authority in these matters is not exceeded, sees in these kinds of approvals only a licence to propose these revelations as probable and worthy of the pious claim of the faithful. And, generalizing the question, Cardinal Bona * says that, for things that are believed to have been written by spiritual persons, they should not be believed to be so approved as to be bound by a certainty of faith, but only to be accepted as probable.

It is clear from all the above that there are particular revelations worthy of respect, and we can conclude, with the learned and pious Louis de Blois*, that reject them all indiscriminately, as if

1 Revel. S. Brigit. Prolog. D. If they are understood well and diligently and with pious study, as the sayings of the Saints are wont to be read and examined, they contain nothing whose sense is contrary to sacred Scripture, or to the doctrine of the holy Doctors approved by the Church; nor anything so foreign to the examples of the Saints as to be able to offend pious ears.

2 De servor. It must be understood that this approbation is nothing other than permission that they be published for the instruction and benefit of the faithful after mature examination; since, although for such revelations thus approved the assent of catholic faith is neither owed nor can be given, nevertheless the assent of human faith is owed, according to the rules of prudence, according to which indeed such revelations are probable and piously credible.

But those things which are circulated, written by holy men and women, are not therefore considered approved, such that we should assent to them with the certitude of faith, but that we should receive them as probable.

% Monile spirituale. Præf., p. 586: Præmonendus reader est, not perverde vaines rèveries, would be showing little spirituality and humility; it would be unaware of the brightness and usefulness of the Church. This severe reproach of presumptiveness and lack of Christian spirit can only be mitigated by attributing these prejudices and denials to ignorance and lightness.

VI. — After the question of existence comes the question of authority. Do private revelations, assuming they are well established, command faith, and to what extent?

First, it cannot be doubted that they do not impose upon those who receive them, as soon as they have recognized with certainty their divine character.' It is an intolerable disorder that God deigns to speak to the creature, and that the creature refuses to hear his word or to adhere to it. Moreover, as we have already observed, the public revelations themselves begin by being personal; if he who receives divine confidence can at his will give him or deny him his faith, much more so.It will be dispensed from promulgating it, and it will therefore be necessary for God to use thunder to speak to men.

Do these particular claims belong to the formal object of faith, and is adherence given to them an exercise of this virtue? On this point, there is sharing among theologians?. The most common opinion, which Suarez calls true, affirms that by giving his assent to these revelations, one makes an act of theological virtue of faith, just as when one adheres to Catholic dogmas.

The condition of those who know the particular revelations through human testimony is not absolutely the same. In general, they are not required to inform themselves of the value of these revelations; and as long as their spirit floats in uncertainty, they must not and cannot make an act of faith. The greatest number thus escapes the obligation to believe. Several theologians even believe that this obligation never exists, or that very rarely, among others, Lugo* who nevertheless excludes those to whom God would make express wills signify on his part, with sufficient grounds of credibility. This grave author adds {that, if it is permitted not to give his faith, it is never to contradict without reason, and that doing so would be guilty of serious irreverence towards the word of God. The second, more common opinion now teaches that every revelation of God sufficiently proposed pertains to the object of our faith, whether it be private or publicly proposed by the Church.

1 De Fide. Disp. 3. This opinion seems to me altogether true.

2 SuAREZ, De Fide. Disp. 3. Sect. 10, n. 7, p. 93 : Respectu vero aliorum, rara est obligatio; non est tamen impossibilis.

3 De virt. Fidei div. Disp. 1. On this point a distinction seems necessary: for we can speak either of the very person to whom the revelation is made immediately, or of others to whom knowledge of it is afterward passed on. Speaking, then, not of the person himself but of others, I believe that, generally speaking, they are never, or very rarely, obliged to believe positively the revelation or the revealed object, so long as it remains within the bounds of private revelation and is not proposed by the Church. Hence we are not now speaking of a revelation made immediately to someone for the purpose that he should announce it, on God's part, privately to another as well: for in that case, when sufficient motives occur, even the one to whom that charge or message was brought would be bound to believe it positively, since God would then be speaking to him, at least through the messenger, and would require faith of him.

% Ibid., n. 231, p. 58: Quamvis autem ii strong non-binding positive ad assensum, obligant tamen ad non dissentiendum, quia dissensus More commonly, it is recognized that particular revelations, sufficiently guaranteed by witness or miracle, are binding on anyone who knows them with certainty; and it is still the most common feeling? that this adherence becomes an act of theological and divine faith. The reason seems to us simple and decisive. Faith is the assent that we give to the word of God by the motive of its sovereign truthfulness; but this double condition is fulfilled both in private revelations and in public revelations; in one and the other case, God speaks, and man adheres to this word because it comes from God.

VII. — If the particular revelations are precious, they are no less full of peril. Regardless of the grievous complacencies that they can raise in the soul, they are dangerous by the surprises to which they expose and by the difficulty of hearing them in their true sense.

The disappointments are easy and multiplied in fact by revelations, and in general in all these extraordinary ways. They can come from the deceptive mind or even be natural illusions, and it is often very difficult to discern the true source of these facts. The wise and many rules drawn up by the spiritual authors to demere the divine of the evil and of the human, do not prevent hesitations or contempts; and the directors of souls here must exercise extreme caution, for the number of questionable and suspicious revelations far outweighs, according to St.Liguori!, that of the real and certain.

The divine origin of the revelations would be well known, but it remains to interpret them well; and it often happens that it is lost by false interpretations. The Scripture presents more than one example of these kinds of errors. Thus Our Lord, speaking to his disciples about the death of Lazarus, said to them: "Lazarus, our friend, sleeps; but I will awaken him from his sleep. "If he sleeps, answer the disciples, he is saved." Jesus spoke of the sleep of his death, and they heard natural sleep. Then the Saviour openly said to them, "Lazarus is dead." On another occasion, the Jews asking him for a sign of his mission, Jesus Christ answered them, showing them his body, the most august of the shrines: "Destruct this temple, and I will build it in three days."* What the Jews interpreted from the material temple, and they made it one of the subjects of accusation in the court of Caiaphas {.

VIT. — From these difficulties inherent in revelations, mystical authors draw practical conclusions which it is important to gather.

The first is that we should neither wish nor ask for these kinds of graces. All the masters and saints agree on this point. The safest way, according to Saint

Let him himself always proceed most cautiously, indeed let him make use of the counsel of wiser men, since, for the most part, such revelations are doubtful and suspect.

2 Joan. x1, 11-14. — $ Joan. n, 8-11. = + Maith. xxvi, 61.

Bona[ventura], De discretione spirituum, c. 20, n. 2, p. 314: Therefore wise men exhort with one consent that no one devoted to the practice of prayer should ask for or desire revelations from God, but rather reject them, following the example of the Saints, whom we read to have said that they were unworthy of visions, that their sins plainly sufficed for them... [Bonaventure]: is not to seek out these favors, and not to accept them except with distrust. Alvarez de Paz? says that the desire for the apparitions, revelations and all these extraordinary things is greatly reckless and guilty, because it comes commonly from pride, curiosity or a lack of faith. We have already pointed out this important rule, dealing with contemplation, and we will have to go back to it in the third part, when we examine the sources of the supernatural phenomena of mysticism. But there is one point that needs to be stressed here.

According to St John of the Cross and many others, it is not permissible to ask God, either directly or through another, for supernatural knowledge that can only be obtained by miracle. "Although the search for delights and sensitive tastes is doimmageable to the soul," he says, "I nevertheless believe that the will to know things by a supernatural way is much more pernicious to him; and when she arrived at the state of perfection, and that she desires this knowledge for good ends, I do not see how she can be excused for sin, at least venial, nor the director who orders her to apply to acquire these lights, or who consents that she is working there."It should not be concluded, that God sometimes hears these indiscrest requests, let him approve them. According to St John of the Cross! Again, it is out of condescendence for the weakness of these souls that he responds to their desires. After quoting the example of Saul evoking Samuel, the same author adds: "These examples, and many others that I leave, prove that God sometimes condescends with our desires, with indignation against us; that it is nothing more dangerous than to use these means with him, and that confusion and sorrow fall upon those who hold this pernicious method. That if someone still mentions these things, his experience will finally force him to confess that I am right in fighting them."

IX. — A second practical conclusion of even greater importance is that it is not necessary to behave after the particular revelations, unless they have been under control and have received the approval of legitimate authority. - This was the conduct of all the saints, and this is the unanimous teaching of the doctors. Saint Térèse, in particular, urged his daughters never to depart from this rule.

"If the words you hear," she said to them*, "have the marks I have spoken of, we can make sure that they come from God. However, if it is an important thing for you or something of interest to others, not only do nothing, but do not even stop at the thought of doing nothing without the advice of a learned, prudent and virtuous confessor; and that, although you heard the same words several times and it is clear to you that they come from God. For this is the will of Our Lord; and this is not lacking in what she commands us, since he told us to look at our confessor as holding his place and speaking to us in his name. Thus we will have more courage to overcome the difficulties, if any, and Our Lord will inspire the confessor the same assurance and firm conviction, when he judges it appropriate, that these words come from his spirit. If anything else happens, we don't have to do anything more. But doing something other than what I have just said and referring to his own feeling is, in my opinion, a very perilous conduct, and I warn you, my sisters, from Our Lord that this never happens to you. "

More importantly, we must refrain from following, without resorting to those who govern in the Church, revelations that tend to dispense with a vow or a serious obligation; and, in general, directors and doctors will act wisely by proving themselves difficult for the practical applications of particular revelations.

Cardinal Bona drew up precise and strict rules in this regard, which he justified by the monstrous excesses of illuminism in the different ages of the Church. "It is indeed to be desired," he said, "that all learn by these examples, but mainly those who have undertaken the conduct of souls, to close the entrance to private revelations and not to be easy to approve them, unless they are confirmed by miracles or by testimonies of Holy Scripture, according to the rule that Innocent III has given on this subject. Above all, these require special attention, which is said to contain an exemption from any law or vow. For although God may change the laws of which he is the author, as does St Bernard?, and he has indeed changed some of them, as when he commanded the Jews to take away the remains from the Egyptians; whom he commanded Abraham! to immolate his son; whom he inspired a prophet * to force another prophet to strike him and to hurt him; or, which he instructed Hosef to take a woman undefiled in order to have children; where there are so many dispensations on which the interpreters of Scripture tell loudly along; nevertheless, if particular revelations seem to authorize similar things, there should be no added faith, unless one knew very clearly by the gift of discernment of the spirits that it is God himself who speaks and reveals, and this was confirmed by the divine testimony of true and approved miracles. Since the duty to keep the law is very certain, a clear certainty of the exemption is required in order to exempt it.

"We must then, in accordance with the rules which the holy Fathers have transmitted to us on this matter, submit the case to the pastors of souls, and, in more or less serious circumstances, resort to the sovereign pontiff, to whom Jesus Christ has given the supreme power to bind, to deer, to dispense when there is a just cause of dispensation. And no one should easily add debt to these kinds of dispensations, or use them, unless they come from a legitimate authority; otherwise, as Cajétan notes very well, it is opening the way to disobedience, to dissolute4 Cape. [Chapter] Ex injuncto, On Heretics.

2 De Præcepto et Dispens. c. 3,t.1, D. 423. — 8 Exod. xu, 35, 36. — à Gen. XXI ; 22 — SI Reg. XX, 35, 37. 6 Os. +, 2:tions and other excesses, those who would allow themselves such disorders to maintain that they are driven there by divine revelation. In the law of grace, we do not read that no revelation has been made to exempt anyone from the common law, regardless of the prelates of the Church, to whom Our Lord has entrusted the power to dispense."

X. — From the point of view of the supernaturally revealed object, revelation includes the prophecy and discernment of the spirits.

The prophecy embraces a twofold element: a supernatural knowledge and the manifestation of this connaissence!. As they discover by the inner glance of hidden things, the prophets are called voyanTs!; as they declare to others what they see, they are PROPHETES, a word which means to speak in advance®, because their revelations usually concern the future.

The expression of prophecy can be done by words or deeds. The first mode is the most ordinary. When the manifestation takes action, it is necessary for the word to intervene in order to reveal this figurative meaning, unless God substitutes for it by an inner revelation. We would not have known that Jonah in the belly of the whale announced Our Lord in his sepulchre, if Our Lord had not taught us. Who would have seen, without the express indication of the Evangelist, in the legal circumstance of the Passover Lamb whose bones were not to be broken, the prophecy of the Victim of Calvary, to whom the one would not break his legs as to the others?

Prophecy can be formulated at the very moment when intimate revelation is fulfilled ‘, as is seen more than once in the predictions of Scripture; but this simultaneity is not necessary; when revelation takes place during sleep or in ecstasy, most often then the expression takes place only after one has returned to normal state.'

Considered as revelation and taken in its generality, prophecy extends to all knowledge beyond the natural reach of man and embraces the universality of things. His field is the same as that of the divine light, which penetrates all of his rays, God.

1 SuAREz, De Gralia. This experience shows, for the Prophets remembered the things they had prophesied, and after they had preached them by word, they were able to write them down. Indeed, at times, before they uttered those things in words, they received the revelation of them, and after some time declared them.

2 S. The manifestation which occurs through some light can extend to all those things which are subject to that light... But prophetic knowledge is through the divine light, by which all things can be known, both divine and human, both spiritual and corporeal, and therefore prophetic revelation extends to all things of this kind. It must be considered, however, that since prophecy concerns those things which are far from our knowledge, the more something pertains to prophecy, the further it stands from human knowledge. Of these, however, there is a threefold degree. Now one of these is of things which are far from the knowledge of this particular man, whether according to sense or according to intellect, but not from the knowledge of all men. The second degree, however, is of those things which universally exceed the knowledge of all men, not because in themselves they are not knowable, but on account of a defect of human knowledge, as the mystery of the Trinity… The last degree, however, is of those things which are far from the knowledge of all men, because in themselves they are not knowable, as future contingents, whose truth is not determined. And because that which is universal and in itself is prior to that which is particular and through another, therefore the revelation of future events belongs most properly to prophecy; whence also the name "prophecy" is taken [from this] — and creatures, the world of spirits and the world of bodies, all the successions of time and all the points of space.

Because of the difficulty, a gradation can be established in this supernatural knowledge. To the lowest degree come those which man is able to acquire by his own forces, but to which, in fact, he arrives only by miracle. Thus, when Pope Saint Pius V learned by revelation, in Rome, the famous victory of Lepante, at the very moment when God granted this success to Christian weapons, Don Juan and his soldiers saw with their eyes what the absent pontiff could only know by supernatural illumination. The second degree includes the truths that surpass all human intelligence, such as the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation. But, above all, are the unrealized things, which exist only in the thought and decrees of God. And the more distant one thing is from the human knowledge, as Bona says, ‘after the Angelic Doctor, the more it belongs to prophecy in its own right; that is why this denomination is especially suited to the knowledge of the future contingents, who are completely out of the reach of our mind, both because of their darkness and because these things are not determined, neither in themselves nor in the next causes from which they must arise.

Thus, according to the remark of Saint Gregory, prophecy, in its generality, embraces the three times: the past, the present and the future; but it loses its etymology at two of these times, being thus called only because it predicts the future. This name, when it speaks of the past and the present, no longer has its raison d'être.

XI. — Whether it is taken in all its scope or in its own narrow sense, the prophecy presupposes an inner enlightenment ‘ that shows or makes heard the things naturally hidden, at least enough to be uttered. To raise the look of the spirit to the divine things that are the object of prophecy, one must obviously have a light in connection with this object, as St. Thomas expressly teaches.

Prophetic enlightenment is a measure of the very knowledge of the things that it discovers. The prophet hears more or less the things he announces: the greater the intelligence he has, the greater the enlightenment that the product is excellent. When he sees, speaks ow works with a full understanding of his vision, his words, his actions, the prophecy is then perfect. [an isolated, illegible fragment precedes: "if he does not understand..."] ...prophecy is so called because it foretells future things; when it speaks of the past or the present, it loses the reason for its name, since it does not disclose what is to come, but either recalls things that are past, or things that are [present]. Tnomas, Sum. 2. 2. q. 171, à. 1, ad 4. In prophecy it is required that the mind's intention be raised up to perceive divine things... This elevation of intention, however, comes about through the moving of the Holy Spirit. After, however, the mind's intention has been raised to things above, it perceives divine things. Thus, therefore, prophecy requires inspiration as regards the elevation of the mind, according to that word of Job (30:9): The inspiration of the Almighty giveth understanding; and revelation as regards the very perception of divine things, in which prophecy is perfected, and by which the veil of obscurity and ignorance is removed.

2 Jbid., a. 2. It must be said that, as the Apostle says (Eph. 5:13): Everything that is made manifest is light — namely, because just as the manifestation of bodily vision comes about through bodily light, so too the manifestation of intellectual vision comes about through intellectual light. It is necessary, therefore, that the manifestation be proportioned to the light through which it comes about, just as an effect is proportioned to its cause. Cum ergo prophetia pertineat ad cognitionem, quae supra naturalem rationem existit, consequens est quodiad prophetiam En quoddam. lumen intellectual point what he sees, says or represents, but that he nevertheless feels under the supernatural action of the Holy Spirit, enlightenment, and consequently prophecy, are less perfect. The last degree is to act or to speak prophetically without even knowing that it gives way to supernatural excitation. This is what theologians call prophetic instinct.

The word is from St Augustine, * who applies it in part to the unconscious prophecy of Caiaphas, and in another place to the predictions of astrologers, which sometimes find themselves true; from where he concludes that men are sometimes driven by a secret instinct to state, without their knowledge, facts and truths that they do not know. Thus the prophets can ignore what they predict and even predict; but then the prophecy is imperfect: it is even higher, LL is accompanied by more light.

XII. — It can be seen how much Montan and his followers were "abusing themselves by claiming that the act of prophecy takes away from them

1 S. Tomas, Sum. 2. 2. q. 173, a. 4. When, therefore, someone knows himself to be moved by the Holy Spirit to judge or signify something by word or deed, this properly pertains to prophecy; but when he is moved, yet does not know it, it is not perfect prophecy, but a certain prophetic instinct.

? De Genes. ad lit. 1. 12, c. 22, p. 606. We know too that to those who are awake, afflicted by no illness nor driven by frenzy, thoughts are instilled by a certain hidden instinct, which by uttering they would divine — not only while doing something else, as the high priest Caiaphas prophesied (John 11:51), since his intention had no will to prophesy, but also undertaking it in such a way as to say something after the manner of divination.

Therefore it must be confessed that, when true things are said by such persons, they are said by a certain most hidden instinct, which human minds undergo without knowing it.

# S. Hxerox., In Isaiam. Prol. Migne, t. 24, col. 19. Nor indeed, as Montanus dreams along with his insane women, did the Prophets speak in ecstasy so as not to know what they were saying, and, while instructing others, themselves be ignorant of what they said.

Hence let the ravings of Montanus fall silent, who thought that the Prophets spoke of things to come in ecstasy and derangement of heart; for they could not see what they did not know. [French fragment, disconnected from what precedes:] "...to prophets, the calm of the spirit, the use of reason, and complete awareness of what they announce." According to them, one could only prophesy in insanity and fury, which they decorated with the name of ecstasy; gross error that Tertullian ‘, a supporter of montanist heresy, tried to temper, hearing this dementia of ecstasy itself. The holy doctors have constantly contradicted this false and bizarre assertion, relying on the data of faith, reason and experience, and they have looked at mind disorder, violence and fury as signs of evil and false prediction?. True and divine prophecy excludes such disorders, and offers nothing but worthy and suitable ÿ.

However, it can be accomplished with or without the suspension of the senses. In external and intellectual visions and words, ecstasy rarely accompanies prophetic revelation. When Moses 5 saw the burning bush and heard the voice of the Lord, when Isaiah made Ahaz the

For we call this force ecstasy, an excess of sense, and something like derangement. Carysosr. In 1 Cor. hom. 29, n. 1. Migne, t. 61, col. 241. If anyone were seized by an unclean spirit and prophesied, as one carried off, so he was dragged along, bound by the spirit, knowing nothing of what he said. For this is proper to the diviner, that he go out of his mind, suffer violence, be driven, be dragged as if in a frenzy; but the Prophet is not so, but with a watchful mind, with a well-tempered constitution, knowing the things he says, speaks all things. Thus, even before the event, one may from this distinguish the soothsayer from the prophet.

3 S. Taomas, Sum. 2. 2. q. 173, a. 3. For such alienation from the senses does not occur in the prophets with any disorder of nature, as in those who are seized [by frenzy] or in madmen, but through some ordered cause, whether natural, as through sleep, or spiritual, as through contemplation...; or by the ravishing of divine power, according to that [word] (Ezekiel 1:3): The hand of the Lord was upon him. — Suarez, De Fide. It must be noted that we do not deny that prophets sometimes receive prophetic revelations in ecstasy and alienation from the senses...; but we say that those who are true prophets, even if they are illumined in ecstasy, nevertheless truly understand what is revealed to them; otherwise they would not be truly illumined by God, but would be as dead instruments.

5 Exod. m, 2-4. — 6 Is, vn, 14. prediction of the Virgin Mother; that Joseph! explained to Pharaoh the dream of the seven cows and the seven ears; that Daniel interpreted the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar? and the vision of Balthasar ÿ, there is no indication that these servants of God were delighted out of themselves. Imaginary prophecy alone usually takes away the suspension of meanings, to this extent at least as much as at the same time of the inner vision or hearing, the soul was abstracting external things to attach itself to the object manifested to the imagination. *

However Cardinal Bona* points out that the perfect judgment of a prophetic vision is not made during the transport of the soul, because then the senses, which play such an important role in our thinking, are not actionable; it is when man is awakened from sleep or ecstasy that he knows and discerns what he has seen before in the light.

XIII. — To appreciate the value of prophecy, one must distinguish between the prophecy itself and its interpretation.

The prophecy, taken in itself and supposedly divine, cannot be false. God, who reveals and affirms, is immune from error in his knowledge and word. La ques1 Gen. x11, 25-32. — 2 Dan. n, 28-45; 1V, 16-24. — 3 Jbid., v, 25-99.

4 S. When prophetic revelation occurs through imaginary forms, it is necessary that an abstraction from the senses take place, so that such an appearance of phantasms may not be referred to those things which are perceived externally. But abstraction from the senses sometimes occurs perfectly, that is, so that the man perceives nothing by the senses; and sometimes imperfectly, that is, so that he does perceive by the senses, yet does not fully discern those things which he perceives externally from those which he sees in imagination.

The perfect judgment of prophetic vision, however, does not occur in the abstraction itself, since then the sense — which is the principle of our knowledge — is bound; but when the man is roused from sleep or from ecstasy, being illumined by the supernal light, he understands and discerns what he had seen before.

6 S, Taomas, Sum. 2. 2. q. 171, a. 6. Prophetia est quædam cognitio intellectui prophetæ impressa ex revelatione divina, per modum cujusdam dotion: est de prononcer s’il y a ou non intervention surnaturelle. |

When the prophecy is perfect, that is, accompanied by the consciousness that it is divine, there is no difficulty. But, if there is only a prophetic instinct, which may be at the bottom of only a natural inner movement, it becomes extremely difficult to decide whether it is God who speaks or whether it is man who dreams and imagines.

Holy Gregory the Great observes that sometimes the holy prophets themselves, believing themselves, by the effect of habit, under divine action, sever by affirming in the name of heaven inspirations that arise naturally from their minds. This Father adds that God, for their holiness, does not delay in showing them their error, so that they may hasten to repair it? He supports his assertion of Nathan's example. This prophet first approves as pleasing to Jehovah the purpose communicated to him by David to raise a tet igitur eamdem esse yeritatem prophetiae cognitionis and enuntiationis, quae est cognitionis divinæ, cui impassibile est subesse falsum. Whence falsehood cannot underlie prophecy,

This too must be observed at this point: that the mind of the prophet is instructed by God in two ways — either through express revelation, or through hidden instinct. Now there is a notable difference between the two modes. For when the prophet speaks from divine revelation, it can always be discerned what he says through the prophetic spirit and what through his own, since indeed he knows with the greatest certainty that the revelation is from God, even if it comes through a dream, recognizing afterward the truth of the matter, [and] no longer relies on the voice of the dream...; but when he speaks from instinct, it can sometimes happen that it is the suggestion of his own spirit, which he judges to be God's.

? Hom. in Ezech. |. 1, kom. 1, n.16 et 17. It must also be known that sometimes holy prophets, when consulted, out of great habituation to prophesying, utter certain things from their own spirit, and suppose themselves to be saying these things from the spirit of prophecy; but, because they are holy, being swiftly corrected by the Holy Spirit, they hear from him what is true, and reproach themselves for having spoken falsely... In this matter there is this difference between true and false prophets: that true prophets, if they ever say something by their own spirit, more quickly correct it among the minds of hearers who have been instructed by the Holy Spirit. But false prophets both announce false things, and, being strangers to the Holy Spirit, persist in their falsity.

$ IL Reg. vn, 2-13. temple to his glory; but the following night the Lord made known that the temple: was not to be built by David, whose hands were defiled with blood, but by his son, will he go peaceably.

Is God always obliged to correct these involuntary missteps in those whom he once honoured with the gift of prophecy? It would be difficult to demonstrate this absolutely. Cardinal Bona adds to Nathan's knowledge, divinely warned of his contempt, other examples in which it seems that. God did not intervene to correct the error. "Perhaps it was in this same way," says 1st, "that a few women, though holy and worthy of all respect, were deceived, to whom they were attributed opposite revelations; which is only explained by admitting that they wrote these things with their own spirit, by imagining that it was by the spirit of God, unless, however, these writings were falsely imputed to them."By drawing closer, ‘in fact, to one another the revelations which were received with the most favor in the Church, there are accounts and assertions very difficult to reconcile and sometimes in full disagreement? In short, in fact particular prophecies, the only decisive guarantees are: the miracle before the event or the event itself.

XIV. — The main cause of the hesitations in the face of prophecy is the frequent disregards that result from a misinterpretation. "H is constant, according to: Saint John: of the Cross*, that we can surely not rely on divine revelations, since it is easy to deceive ourselves, attributing them a sense far from God's purposes. His words are blemishes that we cannot deepen, and want them to tighten in the

1 To say. spir. ce. 17, n. 2, p. 293.

ScuRAm., Theol. myst. S$ 548, sch. 5, t. 2, D. 275. smallness of our mind, is to want to contain in our hands the air and the atoms, which faint at the moment we try to take them."

Examples abound in Scripture and history. The Jews, who heard in a temporal sense the glory and triumph of the Messiah, did not know how to recognize him in the person of Jesus Christ. Jonas, unaware that the prediction of the ruin of Nineveh was only comminatory and conditional, irritates not to see it come true!. Jeremiah also complained to the Lord of what he made him predict events that did not happen, and thus exposed him to the ridicule of the multitude?; obviously the prophet misunderstood the meaning of divine words. Jesus Christ proclaims by the same formulas the ruin of Jerusalem and that of the world, and this is why, after the fall of Jerusalem, the first Christians looked as imminent the end of all things.

Among the facts of this kind told in large numbers in the history of the Church, we will mention only the following two.

Saint Bernard preaches, by the pope's express order, the second crusade, promising, in the name of God, that it will succeed; and God seems to accredit these assurances by multiphing miracles on the steps of the saint abbot. However, as everyone knows, this undertaking had, humanly speaking, the most disastrous outcome. From which one must conclude, Cardinal Bona* notes that another was the thought of men, and another of God. On the command and will of God, attested by miracles, a great army was gathered: the men, who love the things of the earth, had in view the glory, the riches and the recovery of the kingdom of Jerusalem; but God had offered himself the eternal salvation of those who died for faith and for the Church in this expedition.

Here is the second fact, quite otherwise prodigious!. His author is Saint Vincent Ferrier, the apostle and the thaumaturge of his century. The Saviour appeared to this Blessed while he was seriously ill in the convent of the Preachers Brothers of Avignon, to give him the mission to preach penance to men and to warn them that his judgment was near. Then, with his right hand, he touched his cheek in the form of a caress, and commanded him to stand up. Vincent se leva aussitôt, parfaitement guéri, et se mit en devoir de commencer son apostolat. He traveled north of Italy, most of the provinces of France and Spain, announcing everywhere that time was nearing completion and that God was going to judge the world.

Now one day when he spoke to Salamanca in front of an innumerable crowd, 1} quoted this passage from Revelation, where St John saw in spirit an angel flying in the midst of heaven, evangelizing all nations, tongues, and tribes, and making the earth sound with this wonderful cry:

1 RANZANE, BB. 5 apr., t. 10, p. 489, n. 4. Ei visus est Jesus Christus, mirabili claritate coruscans..; his verbis eum allocutus est. Be steadfast, my servant Vincent...; for I have chosen you as a singular herald of my Gospel, and I will that, preaching through all the regions of Gaul and Spain, you go about in humility and poverty. But among the other things which you shall preach, I will that you announce to the peoples that the last day of judgment will soon be at hand, rebuking the sins of the peoples without fear. Go; I will still wait for you, before the end of the world comes. Saying these things, the cheeks of B... Vincentii leniter tetigit, tanquam videlicet ei signum singularis familiaritatis "Fear the Lord and honor him, because the hour of his judgment approaches;" then Vincent added that the angel prophesied by Saint John, it was himself. As soon as a murmur was heard among the doctors and students, who had come to hear the sermon only in a spirit of criticism. «« Calm down,» said the saint, «and do not be so quick to scandalize you; you: go see clearly whether or not I am the angel of Revelation. At the Saint Paul gate, you will find a dead woman; bring her here, and in proof of what I am going forward, I will raise her up." ‘They ran to the designated place; indeed, they found there the corpse of a woman whom they were carrying in the ground, and they hastened to lay him at the feet of the preacher, before this avid and eager multitude of people who were eager to know what was about to happen. "Woman," exclaimed the saint, "I command, in the name of God, to rise again!" At the same time this woman returned to life and stood on her coffin. "Now that you can speak," continued the thaumaturge, "say whether I am or not the angel of Revelation, having a mission to preach to all judgment? "Yes, Father," replied this woman, "you are this angel."After receiving this testimony, Vincent asked her if she preferred to die or live. She replied that she liked to live better. So she lived for several years, attesting at all times to the wonder and circumstances of her resurrection. _

The background of this account seems authentic, and the last and recent historian! of St Vincent Ferrier does not hesitate to reproduce it without any reservations. Moreover, it is no doubt that the saint we are talking about was convinced that the end of the world was not near, as one can convince by reading the letter? which he wrote on this subject to the pope of Avignon, Benedict XIII, or that the ordinary theme

1 Cf. A. Bayze, Vie de S. Vincent Ferrier, 1755, p. 193 et seqq.

2 BAYLE, Append., p. 385. of his preaching was the approach to the final judgment, and that his word was not confirmed by innumerable wonders.

How can we reconcile these prophetic assertions that events are not justified, with those miracles that seemed to guarantee them?

* Saint Antonin claims that prophecy was not absolute, but comminatory; the condition that was to suspend the sentence was that the people should convert to the preaching of St. Vincent. Most of his historians have explained his prophecy of the particular judgment, which follows death, and which is, for each of us, what the general judgment will be. "For each of us," said St Augustine?, "the day of death is the last day of the world."

1 BAYLE, Append., p. 196: It is easy to notice how much the words of Revelation, to which St.Vincent referred, relate exactly to the mission that God had entrusted to him. He is an angel both by the purity of his life and by his evangelical mission; he is sent to the peoples by Jesus Christ himself, as a messenger of peace and salvation: he steals from the midst of heaven, that is, through the Church, which is the kingdom of God; he prays on every side the Gospel, whose truths are eternal and lead us to a blessed eternity; he proclaims the good news to those who sit on earth, that is to say to those who lead an earthly and creeping life, who rest in their disorders, similar to those whom Saint Paul said: "Rise up, O you who sleep." — "These words: sedentibus in terram, said a historian of St Vincent, can also be understood by the Mohammedans, to whom the apostle has so often prayed, and who are always seated on the earth, working, eating, sitting on the ground, what the other peoples do not do. He evangelized the Gentiles and the idolaters, gentem, that is to say, people so rude, that they ignored the truths of faith as much as the pagans, that they even worshiped creatures, like those of the diocese of Lausanne who worshipped the sun. He prayed to the tribes which are the Jews properly, of which he has converted more than twenty thousand; to the nations of different language, linguam, because he has travelled most of the kingdoms of Europe; to the people, ef populum, that is to say, to the small as well as to the great, the poor, the ignorant as well as the learned. He preached to all the nearness of judgment, because the particular judgment that follows death is for everyone what the universal judgment will be; so he could say in all truth: The hour of judgment of God is approaching."

The last day will be the end of ur... As for us, it is sufficient to note that, if there has been a prophecy, there has been a mistake in its interpretation.

These misinterpretations are attributable to different causes.

The first is the darkness that usually veils prophetic statements. God is not required to be more explicit in particular predictions than in public revelation, and those who have read the greats and small prophets of the Bible know what shadows are often wrapped in their words. Hence Saint John of the Cross! concludes that "souls are often mistaken in interpreting the divine revelations according to the strength of the words that declare them, and not according to God's intentions, which are usually hidden, which makes them understood only with difficulty".

The second comes from assigning an edit scope to a prediction that is only conditional?. God frequently reveals purposes that he subordinates to conditions that he does not declare. These implied conditions can easily be conjectured, if it is a threat of damnation, by the reason that God never refuses to forgive the repentant sinner. But one must take in an absolute sense the proclamation of all things concerning the final state, because the conditions that God formulates or underlies look at freedom and merit, and that the finished test, the meritorious free acts are suspended 5. In most other cases, it is the event alone that decides. I do not want you to say: When will this be? It will be far off for the human race, but near for each individual man, because for everyone the last day is the day of his death.

1 Montée du Carmel, 1. 2, c. 19, p. 91.

2 SuAREZ, De Fide. The Fathers distinguish a twofold prophecy: one absolute and simple, the other comminatory (threatening), which in the sense in which it is made is entirely certain, but as it sounds outwardly sometimes seems to fail.

3 JIbid., n. 9, p. 233. At quomodo, quaeso, intelligent prophetiam esse A third cause of aberration is that each one interprets divine words according to his tastes, character and interests.

The practical conclusion that arises from all this is that it is necessary to be very reserved when it comes to determining the value and meaning of a prophecy, and that the most secure and simple solution is in the event that realizes it.

XV. "We have said that prophecy, generally considered, embraces all hidden things, placed out of man's natural reach, both present and past and future. When this supernatural knowledge has as its object the secret thoughts and movements of the soul, and the principle that inspires them, it takes the discernment name of the spirits. The discernment of the spirits therefore differs from the prophecy, as the species differs from the genus.

"It consists, after Bona," reproducing Suarez?, in a special motion of the Holy Spirit, which makes discerning the various inner movements and recognizing if they proceed from a good or bad mind, whether these movements relate to morals or doctrine, whether they are comminatoriam and conditionalem, vel potius absolutam? The answer, briefly, is drawn first from the matter of the prophecy: for whenever there is a threat of a punishment pertaining to the state of this life, or one made to a man living in this life, it can be understood as comminatory, unless the outcome shows otherwise. For since we know that God is ready to remit sins and eternal punishment to those who do penance, therefore whenever it is said of a wayfarer that he will be damned — as the Gospel often speaks of the Jews — this is often understood, by the force of the words, as comminatory. I say, by the force of the words. For sometimes the outcome can show that the prediction is founded on foreknowledge of future things. But when the threat concerns temporal punishments, it can be understood either comminatorily or absolutely, since even if the man amends, God nevertheless often inflicts such punishment; but how it is to be understood can be gathered with certainty only from the outcome, though probably from the words and conjectures. But since the condition which is understood within these threats presupposes the state of the wayfarer, and a free will still flexible toward the good, therefore the threats made concerning the punishments pertaining to the state of the damned have an absolute sense.

1 De discret. spir. c. 2, n. 2, p. 226. © 4 De gratia. Prol. 3, c. 5, n. 38 and 41, t. 7, pp. 162 and 163. the effect of an inner and invisible touch, or whether they are excited by the teachings and advice that men give outside, or by angels appearing and speaking in a sensitive way. It is this grace of discernment that the Apostle marks the seventh among those who are called in the school freely given; thanks to that the Holy Spirit does not grant to all, but to whom he wills and when he wills, that those who receive it may be able to discern the various spirits, not only in themselves, but also in others, for the common utility of the Church."

XVI. — This knowledge of internal provisions may be carried out in different ways and to varying degrees. In its fullness, it shows the intimateness of souls, the intentions that animate them, the good or bad movements that agitate them. Saint Philippe de Néri!, saint Joseph de Copertino?, M. Olier*, et une infinité

In penetrating the feelings of souls, Philip so excelled that if anything good or evil had been done or thought by those whose confessions he was accustomed to hear, he understood it perfectly... This indeed was so common and familiar among them that whoever was conscious of evil in himself could not bear to stand in his presence, while whoever was of good conscience seemed in some way to perceive for himself the joys of paradise. Pasrroviccar, BB. 18 sept., t. 45, p. 1030, n.. 73-76. To the heavenly light of wisdom, by which he penetrated most deeply the hidden mysteries of our faith, there was added another light, by which he clearly knew the thoughts of others, and secret and hidden things. Nor were there any thoughts, however most hidden and enclosed within the mind, which the servant of God, by his great light, did not penetrate.

8 FAILLON, Vie de M. Olier,. L. 40, t. 3, p. 501: "I cannot write, says M. de Bretonvilliers, all the things of this nature that have happened; but I can assure before God, and take him to witness, that an infinite number of times, so to speak, during the space: fourteen years, M. Olier discovered to me the most secret thoughts of my soul: that which was not for me a little consolation... One day I accompanied him, he met a person in the Rue des Canettes who, starting to talk to him, was hiding something from him: Mr. Olier knew it immediately and discovered it as it was. Then I asked him how he could have known such a hidden peculiarity; he answered me, "It is in God of others," had this privilege to read in souls. In particular, St. Rose of Lima, had this gift to one eminent degree, and, as a child, she listed to her confessor the marks that distinguish God's spirit from the evil spirit.

When the sight of souls is made with this evidence, it is due to a supernatural illumination that reveals in the eyes of the mind these secret depths and the principle that moves them. "The discernment, says Saint John Climaque * indicating the increasing proportions of this gift according to the different degrees of virtue, is, in those who begin, a true knowledge of their interior; in those who progress, a clear view that makes them safely distinguish the true good from that which is only natural or contrary; in the perfect, it is an all divine light that spreads upon them its clarity and makes them capable of dispelling darkness in others; in a word, it is a certain knowledge of the will of God, in: at all times, in every place, in every encounter, that those alone possess, which have the purity of the heart, body and lips." The gift is more restricted when it is reduced to an inner instinct which warns of the dispositions of souls and the spirit which animates them; and then it takes away, it is understood, less certain than in the case of an intellectual and direct perception, although it suffices, combined with the rules of sound doctrine and Christian prudence?

This instinct, when it comes to self, sometimes takes the form of an inner taste * that makes approve or disapprove, of an experimental flavor, which is only the feeling of divine action.

Finally, one can be led to the knowledge of intimate thoughts by the external aspect of the physiognomy, by the sensitive expression of the face, the accent of the voice, the maintenance of the body. These inductions are in themselves purely human, the effect of natural sagacity or the result of experience; but they can also come from a supernatural light and inspiration, which are one of the forms of discernment of spirits; and it is mainly in this form that it meets in the spiritual directors who implore divine light, without neglecting the

The discernment of a true revelation from a false one, subsequently in the very person to whom it occurs, can be made through a certain instinct... In the absence of discernment of spirits through the light of infallible judgment, for discerning a true revelation in others, a certain instinct of a lower kind can sometimes suffice. For just as someone can be instructed by God concerning himself, so too concerning another, for that other's direction.

Although this discernment by instinct alone is not, as regards its motive, infallible, as is that which occurs prophetically, but only from signs weighed by moral prudence together with a special light, this nevertheless suffices so that, in a case where moral certainty does not fail, it may truly be held for a divine instinct, especially if the fallibility of the motive is aided by doctrinal discernment.

For he discerns his own movements by a certain taste and by the tranquility or disquiet of the mind, through interior inspiration.

Another manner is found through intimate inspiration, or an inner savor, whether through a certain experiential sweetness, or through an illumination flowing from the eternal mountains — human means proper to give the knowledge of souls.

It is evident that the inner impulse communicated by the Holy Spirit is, of its nature, infallible; but as man does not have the consciousness of this divine action, it follows that neither did he in these encounters the absolute certainty of the judgments he pronounces?.

XVII. — In assuming them divine, revelations generally address holy souls; depraved life is a sign that one is rather Satan's organ than that of God. However, like most graces freely given, they can meet in imperfect souls and even in sinners?, as well as one's

1 Suarez, De gratia. When the spirit does not manifestly disagree with the rule of faith and right reason, but the matter is doubtful and involved, then what Anselm said earlier holds true — that this discernment is most difficult; nevertheless, even then diligence must be applied on the part of the person, so that he may test the spirits and internal movements, or external counsels, as to whether they are from God. Nor is a special grace freely given always to be expected, for God has not promised this to all, nor does he always grant it, but to whom and when he wills; and nevertheless all can, with moral and practical certainty, prudently judge and discern between these spirits. By such freely given grace, discernment of spirits never occurs without reasoning from the general principles of the faith, applied with great diligence and circumspection to all the circumstances, while also invoking the direction and impulse of the Holy Spirit, as is clear from experience and from what experienced and learned men have handed down concerning this testing of spirits.

2 Suarez, De gratia. Proleg. 3, c. 5, n. 45, p. 165. Whenever discernment actually occurs through freely given grace, the judgment, on the part of the moving principle, is infallible and thus materially certain; although it never renders the man himself simply certain, since he never attains or knows with full certainty that the judgment proceeds from the direction and movement of the Holy Spirit.

3 S. THomas, Sum. 2. 2. q. 172, à. 4. Whatever can exist without charity can exist without sanctifying grace, and consequently without moral goodness. But prophecy can exist without charity, which appears from two things: first, from the act of each, for prophecy pertains to the intellect, whose act precedes the act of the will, which charity perfects... Second, from the end of each: for prophecy is given for the benefit of the Church, as are the other freely given graces... It is not, however, directly ordered to this, that the affections of the prophet himself be joined to God, to which charity is ordered. And therefore prophecy can exist without goodness of morals, as regards the proper root of this goodness — as is seen in the covetous Balaam, as is reported of the Sibyls, and as Our Lord declares of many who will have prophesied in his name and whom he will not know. "I am well," said the loving Saint Francis de Sales, "that since we can have charity without being ravy and without prophesying, so we can be ravy and prophesy without having charity."God can even use the ordinary organs of demons to reveal his purposes to men.

It is no less true, as St Thomas teaches, that prophecy requires the calmness of the soul and the silence of passions ÿ; it is only transiently and by exception that this gift is not attached to inner grace and holiness.

Bonaf sums up this whole doctrine: "Moral goodness is not necessary for prophecy, if one looks at the inner root of this goodness, sanctifying grace. The reason for this is first of all that prophecy is given for the benefit of the Church, like the other graces of this nature, instead of the purpose of charity to unite the soul to God, and so that these two graces can be separated from one another; secondly, prophecy belongs to understanding, whose operations precede those of the will, which receives its perfection from charity. Mais . 1 Num, xxn.

2 Matth. vn, 22, 23.

3. Prophets of demons do not always speak from the revelation of demons, but sometimes from divine revelation, as is clearly read concerning Balaam, of whom it is said that the Lord spoke to him (Num. 22), although he was a prophet of demons: because God makes use even of evil men for the benefit of the good... Hence even the Sibyls foretold many true things about Christ.

But if we consider moral goodness according to the passions of the soul and external actions, in this respect a man is impeded from prophecy by wickedness of morals. For prophecy requires the greatest elevation of the mind to spiritual contemplation, which indeed is impeded by the vehemence of the passions, and by the inordinate preoccupation with external things...

6 De discr. spir. c. 17, n. 5, p. 298. especially since, in order to prophesy, it is required that the soul be exceedingly elevated to the contemplation of spiritual things, and that the disruption of life is an obstacle to this elevation, God. makes, for the ordinary, this gift only to holy souls, and one: it is customary to see there a very certain proof of holiness... It is good, therefore, to despise the predictions of vicious people."

What we say about prophecy is particularly true of the discernment of spirits, which is almost never granted to souls troubled by passions and bound by sin.

Let us again listen to the pious Bonat: "The effusion of supernatural light, necessary to exercise this discernment, demands the tranquillity of the soul and inner peace, which cannot be met in a man abandoned to vices and shaken by earthly affections. That is why this light is usually granted only to righteous souls and pure hearts, to whom are promised the vision of God and the contemplation of divine things."

According to Suarez?, not only is this grace not given to sinners, if not by very rare exception, but, as a general rule, it is not even granted to the mediocre virtue; it is the almost exclusive sharing of holiness. However, the exception is possible.

XVIII. — Let us finish this chapter with a remark which naturally appears here, but which will appear more general in the third part, when we deal with the graces called by the School for free given; that is that prophetic illumination! and that of discernment? do not meet in man in a constant and usual way: each of these supernatural acts prevails, therefore, a new revelation; Our Lord is the only in which these gifts have been permanent.

1 S. But the prophetic light is not present in the prophet's intellect after the manner of a permanent form; otherwise it would be necessary that the faculty of prophesying should always be present to the prophet, which is clearly false... It remains, therefore, that the prophetic light is present in the soul of the prophet after the manner of a certain passion or transient impression. And hence it is that, just as the air always needs new illumination, so the mind of the prophet always needs new illumination, like a disciple who has not yet grasped the principles of an art, and needs to be instructed concerning each particular.

There are those who think that this grace is infused after the manner of a habit; for we read of certain saints that by a kind of habitual power they discerned the thoughts of others at will, indeed even knew, as it were from the very sight of them, whether someone was in a state of grace or of damnation — a grace greater than that of seeing hidden thoughts... I do not believe, however, that it was in their power to see all the thoughts of all men as often as they wished: for this grace, like the other gratuitously given graces, existed after the manner of a habit in Christ alone, as the concordant opinion of theologians teaches; to others it is given after the manner of an act or transient motion — to some more rarely, to others more frequently — as divine grace inspires, when and how...

LES APTITUDES INTELLECTUELLES INFUSES

SCIENCE Different species and varying degrees of these abilities. — Miraculous introduction to the first elements of education. — Transitional aid for special needs. - Science infused in Adam and Solomon. — Two other examples of universal science: Gregory Lopez and Marie d'Agréda. — Partial infusions: philosophy and natural sciences. — La médecine. — The supernatural knowledge, mainly mystical theology. — Dogmatic and moral theology. — Science of the Divine Scriptures granted to a large number of holy women, — to several illustrious doctors: Saint Gregory the Great, Rupert, Saint Thomas of Aquinas. . . — To the visions and words that bring to man divine revelations, we must join another intellectual form of mystical life, certain supernatural aptitudes- * ment infuse, some of which concern knowledge and of which others have more relation to art.

This chapter deals with gifts of the first species.

It occurs in two degrees: in one, it is a wonderful facility to learn, which usually manifests itself in the double form of a quick and deep penetration, and a powerful memory. The other is higher, and consists in the very infusion of science, without any work on the part of man. In each of these degrees, the measure can be varied, constituting a transient state or relief. We will not distinguish between these degrees and measures, and we will merely indicate the different applications of these intellectual skills that surpass and surprise nature.

IL. — Sometimes it is a miraculous initiation to the first elements of instruction.

It is said of Saint Lunaire!, bishop of Brittany, that, led by his parents to school from the age of five, they in three days took what the other children took years to learn; on the first day he learned all the letters; the second, how to unite them; and the third, writing.

Saint Catherine of Siena ? wanted to know how to read, in order to be able to recite the divine office; but she had not finished learning only the alphabet that one of her companions had transcribed to her. Regretting the time she was losing in this fruitless work, she addressed Our Lord and asked her to teach her to read, if it was her good pleasure, so that she could sing psalmology and celebrate her praises. She immediately obtained what she asked; from that moment she was able to read as fluently as the most skillful. And what is most wonderful is that she was unable to spell out, and hardly knew the letters, as well as her confessor, Blessed Raymond of Capua, who brings it back to us, sssura himself. Later, she received still miraculously from her divine husband

Divine power granted to blessed Leonorius so great a grace that on the first day he learned the names of all the letters, on the second their combinations, and on the third the knowledge of writing.

2 RAYM. A marvelous thing, and a manifest sign of divine power! Before she rose from prayer, she was so divinely taught that after she rose from it she knew how to read every letter, as swiftly and readily as anyone most learned. Quod ego ipse dum fled expertus, stupeham; potissime propter hoc, quod inveni, quia cum velocissime legeret, si jubebatur syllabicare, in nullo sawbat aliquid dicere: imo vix litteras cognoscebai.: the ease of writing, so, she says! in a letter to her director, that she could relieve her heart from her ecstasy. _ The emule of the virgin of Siena, Rose de Lima ?, taught every child to read and write, in the same way. Her mother, after teaching her to distinguish the letters, used to combine them together, and at the same time she had given him a model of big writing, which she had to reproduce. But the little girl seemed unattentional to these lessons, absorbed that she was by her attraction for prayer. His mother, attributing this indifference to the ordinary disgust of the children for work, insinuated the confessor of Rose to reproach him, in his presence, on this subject; to which he willingly lent himself. The next day, the holy child prayed, then came to her mother, read this time very commonly in the book presented to her and showed an admirably written page with her own hand: Our Lord had made himself his master and had taught him all these things in an instant. The same facts are repeated, with different circumstances, in many others, especially in three daughters of Saint-Dominique: the Blessed Osanne of Mantua ÿ, the Blessed Agathe of the Cross ‘, the Blessed Hope Lopez‘. III. — Several holy souls were also taught by miracles: some, formulas of the Rosary, such as Blessed Catherine of Ricci!; others, such as Blessed Véronique of Binasco?, canonial hours and how to recite them; others, Ida of Leuven, for example, the meaning of liturgical prayers and the words of Holy Scripture.

The scattered and transitory facts are innumerable; we shall mention only the following two.

A schoolboy, to whom the games of his age had made forget and the lessons and threats of the master, fled, at the hour of class, to the tomb of St.Erkonwald #, bishop of London, urging the Blessed to help him. The ruthless teacher pursues him in this retreat and the sum of recite his lesson, ready to strike that she learned to read, to write, to say his office and to hear it by miracle, without any master of this world.

1 Jbid., 1.2, c. 1, p. 525. As soon as the use of reason had been granted, his good angel Luy appeared and taught him the visions of heaven, including devotion to the Queen of Angels, by means of the Holy Rosary whom he pleased to recite.

2 IsiDORE DE IsoLANIS, BB. 13 jan., t. 2, p. 181, n. 29. The Angel of the Lord, coming resplendent with great light, over the space of eight days taught the Virgin the whole office of the Roman Curia, and the various customs of religious who follow the Roman Curia in rendering the divine praises.

Although in her whole life she had never learned letters or the rudiments of schooling, and could not have read, uttered, or expressed these without any understanding of them, nevertheless most often, by the inspiring grace of the Holy Spirit, she understood the things that were sung or read by the nuns, especially in Lent, when the holy Gospels were recited.

A certain boy of tender age, led astray by the slipperiness [of youth] and the play of his companions, forgot both his teacher's threat and his own lesson... Oh, unhappy the boy now, unless he soon have the most merciful Erkonwald as his deliverer!... And so, by the prayers and merits of the illustrious teacher Erkonwald, wisdom came to the boy's aid. For when the boy was compelled to recite the lesson without the book, not only did he render, without hindrance or diminishment, what his master had taught him, but also, to his master's astonishment, he recited from memory and at length that which his teacher had been about to teach. Then indeed the teacher, his heart at last relenting, let go his anger and granted the boy pardon for his flight — as many blows as he would have counted faults. Feeling under powerful protection, the child begins to debunk with perfect assurance not only what he should know, but much more than he had been taught; what brought down, we understand, the anger of the master, and saved for this time at least the poor and pious schoolboy.

On the aid that writers can receive from Heaven, here is a charming trait that the historian of Saint Euthymus and Saint Sabas, the monk Cyrille!, tells us as happened to himself. After collecting a great deal of material to write the lives of these two great anachorets, he had only to put his hand to work; but on several occasions he had taken the pen in vain; he did not know how to approach his account. To his lonely humble efforts was prayer and tears. One day, when he was moaning with his helplessness, he fell asleep. During his sleep, the two saints whom he wanted to tell the virtues appeared to him in the outside that they had in their lifetime; they seemed to confer together, and the venerable Sabas said to the great Euthymus: "You see your Cyril all willing to write, and yet, after much care and sorrow, he could not yet begin. "How could he be," Euthymus replied, "if he was helped with relief from above? "Give him this grace, Holy Father," said Sabas. Then Euthymus removed from his bosom a custode of silver filled with heavenly honey, and three times he put it in the mouth of the pious historian, who found himself flooded with inexpressible suavity and, upon his awakening, full of holy ardour to celebrate the memory of Euthymus and Sabas.

IV. — Science was given by infusion to our first parents in the earthly paradise. "God poured out upon them," said the Ecclesiastical, "the light of understanding; he created in them the knowledge of the spirit; he filled their hearts with meaning, and showed them goods and evils; he made his eye shine upon their hearts, to reveal to them the greatness of his works, and to excite them to bless his name, to glorify his wisdom, to publish his magnificence."

Adam tried out the science he had of nature by imposing on all the animals that God brought before him the name that was right for them ©. Saint Augustine therefore concluded, against Julien d'Eclane, the perfection of our first father, and he quoted in this regard the word of the wise Pythagoras whom he had had to be the most learned of men, who first had given every thing his name. "The Scripture, substantial and short in its expressions, tells us, says Bossuet #, the fine knowledge given to man, since he could not have named the animals without knowing their nature and differences, and then give them suitable names, according to the roots of the language that God had taught him."

Solomon offers another example of this infuse science. By giving him wisdom, God threw in his mind admirable treasures of knowledge and a magnitude of intelligence that applied, according to Scripture®, to as many things as there are grains of sand on the shores of the sea. He wrote about everything: trees and plants, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that believes on the wall; animals, birds, reptiles and fish. Corneille

1 Eccli. xxn, 5-8. — 3 Gen. n, 19.

Nor do you consider, according to the Christian faith, what manner of man Adam was made, who imposed names on all the kinds of living souls — which we read, even in secular literature, to have been a sign of the most excellent wisdom; for Pythagoras himself, from whom the name of philosophy arose, is reported to have said that he was the wisest of all who first gave names to things.

4 High on myst., 3° sem., {relev. — 5 II Reg. 1v, 29-33. Peter! hears these words of the PARALIPOMENS: "The wisdom and knowledge were given to him," of the very universality of knowledge, either natural or supernatural, and he believes that Solomon speaks of his own knowledge in this place where the Wise says of himself?: "The Lord has given me to speak with meaning and to have thoughts fit for my dignity; for he himself is the guide of wisdom, and he is the one who straightens the wise. We are in his hand, we and our speeches, as well as all prudence, the science of works and the rule of morality. He himself has given me the true knowledge of what is, he has made known the organization of the world, the virtue of the elements, the beginning, the end and the middle of the times, the atmospheric variations, the vicissitude of the seasons, the revolutions of the years, the dispositions of the stars, the nature of the animals, the strength of the winds, the thoughts of men, the variety of plants and the properties of their roots. I learned everything that was hidden and not yet discovered, because Wisdom itself, which did everything, taught me."

V.—The solitaire Gregory Lopez, who from Spain, the place of his birth, passed, about the year 1562, at the age of twenty, in America, where he died in 1596, presents a

By which understand first Ethics and Politics, for governing both oneself and the people; this Solomon especially sought. Secondly, Physics, Medicine, Logic, Rhetoric, Poetics, Mathematics, Architecture (for he needed this for building the temple), and all the natural sciences and arts. For these are called Wisdom by the Hebrews, as is clear from Exodus 30:3. For concerning these things the Wise One himself says, [Wisdom] 7:17. Thirdly, supernatural Wisdom and Prudence of the mysteries of faith, indeed even the gift of prophecy. For that Solomon was an outstanding theologian is clear from his Proverbs and Wisdom. Therefore Solomon received on this night infused knowledge of all these things, in so intense a degree that he could not forget them.

2 Sap. vn, 15-27.

3 La Vie de Grégoire. Lapez in New Spain, composed in Spanish by François Losa, prestre, dismissed, and once parish priest of Hs admirable example of infuse science almost to all its degrees. He learned to read and write; but it is a well-established thing that he did not do any further studies, from which it is necessary to infer, with his historian, that God alone was his master in the natural and divine knowledge which he possessed to such a prodigious degree! He read with extraordinary ease and speed, and what would have cost a month to any other, he traveled through it in ten hours. It was enough for him to see only the titles and summaries of the chapters, to penetrate the bottom of them; what did not take place only, as his historian notes?, for the books of the common, but for the very ones who contained a sublime doctrine. In twenty hours he read the works of Saint Teresus, and he possessed the substance and the details perfectly.

Although he had not studied Latin, he read Holy Scripture in the VuLGATE, and translated it into a vulgar language, as if he had spent his life studying Latin letters and theology. He knew by heart the whole continuation of the Bible, and recited, without missing a syllable, the gospels of St Matthew and St John, and of the others, all that completes the first two; moreover, the epistles of St Paul and the Apocalypse? Finally, he knew so well all the sacred pages, that he could indicate to which place the texts which were quoted to him, and if they were false, declare it immediately; so many preachers said that they did not need to wear Concordance when they preached where Grégoire was. He interpreted in a luminous and exalted way the darkest passages of the divine Scriptures, to the point of amazement of the most doctic men. Dominique de Salazar, of the Order of the Prechurs Brothers, who died Archbishop of the Philippines, said of him, in the presence of three important religious of the same order: "What does it mean, my Fathers, that we, together with all that we have studied in our lives, did not know half of what this young man knows?" He was also versed in the principles of spiritual life and in the knowledge of souls.

His knowledge of holy and ecclesiastical history was wonderful. "He knew, as much as one can learn from Holy Scripture and other historians, what happened from the creation of the world to Noah, counting all generations of the children of God and the first patriarchs, so distinctly that, without a book, he described all the lines, degrees and alliances, with the difference of times and ages, whatever was so difficult to develop, even to the most doctes. He had no less knowledge of everything that affected men of that time, and he brought up precisely and clearly the customs and inventions of that time. He did the same for everything that happened from Noah to Our Lord, speaking of the people who lived then, as if they had been present to him. He so perfectly deciphered all that is of the people of God, that he knew of them, the ins and outs, the bounds and the boundaries, making history of the least things and the smallest peculiarities that he related to the times, the successes and the events of this nation. He had not only the intelligence of the wars and other accidents that came among this chosen people; but even among the Gentiles, until the coming of Our Lord.... He said remarkable peculiarities of birth, childhood,

1 The Life of Gregory Lopez in New Spain, p. 103. — Adolescence and Youth of the Saviour, and even of his preaching and death, and of all other mysteries, and of the advantages that the law of grace has over the law of nature and over the written law. It would have been said that he had before his eyes the life and preaching of the holy apostles and disciples of Jesus Christ, those of the most illustrious martyrs, with the lives and actions of the most memorable confessors who appeared from St. Sylvestre to Clement VIIT, under whose pontificate he died. He also brought back the names, times and customs of the founders of religions and authors of hermitic life. He also made heresiarchs, rebutting their mistakes and alleging the sacred councils that condemned them, marking the time of their birth and decadence."

That's not all.

Gregory did not only know the Holy Scripture, the moral and spiritual things, which formed his main study, but he still knew, assures his biographer!, astrology, cosmography and geography. He had contrived a sphere and drawn a map of the world that made the admirers admire. He also heard anatomy, medicine, pharmacy, and he composed a collection of simple and inexpensive recipes for the poor, who used them successfully. Finally, he was an expert in agriculture, and had a wonderful knowledge of plants and their various properties.

Such an assemblage of gifts in a man without letters was due to an usual and sublime elevation of his spirit in God; for as he was asked if he was not embarrassed in the multitude of his occupations and knowledge, he replied, "I find God in all things, in the smallest as well as in the greatest." This was the secret of this prodigious science.

The venerable Mary of Agréda is no less a remarkable example of this universal science. His main historian wrote: *

"The Tres-Haut poured into his soul the priceless treasure of his science. He discovered to him the secrets and mysteries of his wisdom, in the following way. He communicated to him a very clear knowledge of all that is created, from the top of heaven to the centre of the earth, by making him penetrate very distinctly all the parts, all that he created for man's foreign service and to recreate his senses; making him distinguish all the inhabitants of the earth, their various qualities and their naturalness. Then he gave him a higher knowledge of all the militant Church, of its treasures and wonders, of the order of grace and of all the gifts that God gives to mortals in this valley of tears. And this science extended to all political states and to all kinds of temporal governments, not only the children of the Church, but also to all those who are out of her womb; so that this science contained all the states of the universe. She then received a more eminent knowledge of the triumphant Church, of the order of the angels and saints of human nature, of their hierarchies and choirs, of the reward God gives them in essential glory and accidental glory. She also received a great and rare understanding of the Holy Scriptures.

"In addition to these great lights, the Almighty communicated to him a very high view of his divine Majesty. He purified his powers again, raised his mind, and he

1 The Life of Gregory of Lopez in New Spain, ch. 17, manifested his Divine Being in the trinity of his people and the unity of his essence, infinite perfections and attributes.

"All this science was then present, distinct and deep to penetrate all these objects. The one who looked at the creatures of the three orders mentioned above, of nature, grace and glory, was habitual and permanent; she could use them easily when she wanted, not only in knowledge of the conclusions, but also in her deduction by the principles. She had such a light of Holy Scripture in a manner of habit, that when she said the divine office, she entered several mysteries contained in the Psalms and the lessons; and applying to the intelligence of any text that it was, she interpreted it with admirable clarity, according to the literal sense and spiritual meaning, as the superiors several times experienced, wanting to experience this wonder. The Lord gave him great ease to hear the Latin language, but not to speak it; so that, by reading or hearing Latin, she understood it perfectly; the translations that were not faithful were painful to him; and when the opportunity arose to translate some text of Scripture, when ordered to write, she did so in the most perfect way, and according to all the rules of translation. Apart from having an exact notion of the Castilian language, which was natural to her, she received the gift of an elegant and majestic style, and of admirable discernment of the terms most proper to the scholastic and mystical theology; what very learned people could acquire with all their application.

She never used this science out of curiosity or ostentation; on the contrary, she tried to hide it in all sorts of occasions. She used it outside only when she could not avoid it, as if to write what the Lord and his superiors commanded her, to inform her confessors of what was going on in her interior, to satisfy those who had the right to examine it, wanting to ensure her spiritual conduct, or when others did so by their command, to be persuaded of this wonder of God. This is where one admired the sublimitity of this divine secret."

VI. — In general, these kinds of supernatural infusions are only partial. One can consider as a divine gift the knowledge of philosophy to the degree that it erupted in Saint Catherine of Alexandria; or at least admit, with Baronius!, that it was assisted by the Holy Spirit in the victorious struggle which she supported in the presence of Emperor Maximin against fifty sophists, who converted to the Christian faith.

If one believes a legend told in the annals of the Preachers Brothers, the natural sciences, understood at that time under the generic name of philosophy, were granted, by a free outpouring of grace, to Blessed Albert the Great. He who had to immortalize his name by his immense knowledge, it is said, would have experienced in his early days an extreme difficulty to learn, and in the displeasure that he felt it, the thought had just left his novice's habit and returned to the century. While he was in the grip of these gloomy worries, he had a mysterious dream during his sleep that made him peace. It seemed to him that he was about to climb the walls of the monastery, when four virgins of beautiful beauty appeared to him and prevented him from carrying out his purpose. And one girl, who was the Virgin Mary, asked her where her disenchantments came from and what her desires were. The young man to answer that the object of all his vows was the knowledge of philosophy."Let it be done to you as you desire," said the Mother of God; "you shall surpass in this knowledge all that have preceded you, and I will watch over you that your faith may not be affected through the traps of the sophists. But, so that it may be known that this gift comes from my goodness, and also because you have preferred the science of men to the science of my Son, it will wipe away from your mind upon the end of your life."

The historical character of this account is contested, however, reported in various terms by most biographers of Blessed Albert, and mentioned by those who see it as a fable?. At least we agree enough on how this great man ends up. About three years before his death, one day he was in the pulpit and gave his lecon to a large assembly, the memory suddenly failed him, and in an instant he lost his immense knowledge. According to several historians, the illustrious master warned his listeners that the Blessed Virgin had predicted this event to him and had given it to him as a sign of his coming end.

VII. — Medicine, which according to Scripture is a creation of God and a blessing of his goodness, has met in several saints in the state of supernatural gift. Saint Hildegarde possessed it to such a high degree that the sick

1 S. Razz, Lives of Saints and Saints of the Order of Saint Dominique, rep., p. 149, 4 Joacu. SienarT, Albert the Great, ©. 2, 1862, p. 93, n. 3: This legend is not very old. It is found only in Flaminius, Léandre, Jammy and the posterior biographers. So it is only a fable; but it is too charming to be completely omitted.Come and consult it in crowd; and its remedies provided relief to almost all. It is true that she often sent them back healed by her only blessing; but it cannot be said in doubt that she did not really take care of the art of healing, since we have a work ?, to the truth not lucid, on minerals, plants, animals and their healing virtues. His $ Visions also contain aphorisms about the various infirmities of the soul and body, and, according to the remark of Trithema, this mixture of human science and mystical science indicates enough that the source was in God.

Although there is more than one example of this infuse ability for medical art,5 most often it is less of a science itself, than the gift of miracles for the relief of the bodies; several servants of God, among them the two brothers Como and Damien, and Saint Sampson of Constantinople, operated, under the cover of the medicine of which they worked, healings that were the effect of their prayers and holiness. — The knowledge of supernatural order is more

4 TueoneriC, Vita S. Hildegardis, c. 1, n. 19. Very many received counsel from her concerning the bodily necessities they were suffering; some also were relieved of their infirmities by her blessings.

Book of the Subtleties of the Diverse Natures of Creatures, and likewise of many other good things. Migne, t. 197, col. 1125-1352. |

Scivias, or the three books of visions and revelations. Migne, t. 197, col. 383.

In her medical books she relates many marvels and secrets of nature with subtle exposition in a mystical sense, such that a woman could not have known such things except from the Holy Spirit.

$ Cf. Gorars, the Divine Mystery, 1. 3, c. 18, t. 1, D. 454.

6 S. GRéG. DE Tours, Lib. mirac. de glor. martyr. ©. 98. Migne, t. 74, col. 791. Duo vero gemini, Cosmas scilicet et Damianus, arte medici, postquam Christiani effecti sunt, solo virtutum merito et orationum interventu, infirmitates languentium depellebant. 7 BB. 27 jun., t. 27, p. 238, n. 2 : Tanquam gratiæ velamento arte utenfréquemment accordées et avec une admirable profusion. God is truth and light; so when he comes into us, he brings to it clearness unknown to reason; and as he spreads his reign, he makes rise in the intimate depths a day more and more resplendent. Holiness, above all, is an incomparable focus of supernatural enlightenment. A pure soul, who has been exalted by sacrifice to the heights of perfect life, often knows, sees more than theologians about God, his nature and works, his reign in souls, the secrets of his mercy and justice; she knows, she sees more about Jesus Christ, his divine person and his sacred humanity, about the mysteries of his life that is punishable and glorious, the grandeur, the splendor, the pains of his holy soul; about his life in the Church, in the Eucharist and in glory; about the angelic hierarchies and the blessed of heaven; about the virtues and ingratitudes of the earth, the sufferings of purgatory, the horrors of hell.

Mystical theology, which embraces this body of knowledge and brings together all these claritys, as they consist of free and extranatural communications, is the work of the saints. Not only do they draw from their intimate visions materials, but they receive similar lights to interpret these facts and organize them into a body of doctrine; they are the first masters and vulgarizers of this divine science. Named St. Denis the Areopagit, St. Bonaventure, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Térèse, St. John of the Cross, is to point out the most illustrious doctors of mystical theology, and it is an easy demonstration, that their science was less the result of human work than that of divinely infuse lights. The facts that we have produced, and those that we will still produce, go in large numbers to this conclusion, which exempts us from insisting here. Nevertheless, we will report the symbolic way in which Saint Ephrem, nicknamed by tradition the prophet of the Syrians and the harp of the Holy Spirit!, received the gift of science, to the testimony of Saint Gregory of Nyssa, his contemporary and probably his friend.

A truly spiritual man, says this holy doctor?, said he had the following appearance. He had seen a troupe of angels coming down from heaven, carrying in their hands a volume rolled in the way of the elders, and writing inside and outside. And these heavenly spirits said to each other: What is the most worthy of receiving this book? Some named one character, others named another, among the most prominent men of that time. After a long discussion, all agreed to award to Ephrem the Syrian, they hastened to leave him among his dwarves. He who came to see this spectacle rose up in the middle of the night and ran to Ephrem, who was at this time at the church, absorbed in sublime contemplation; he learned from his mouth what this vision meant: it was the gift of wisdom united with that of the eloquence, which God gave to his servant; such magnificent gifts, continues Gregory of Nyssa, that the word of Ephrem, though abundant and easy, could not suffice to express all that was Jaillar of the heavenly light of his mind; the depth of his doctrine cast him into a painful impotence to speak, and made him exclaim: "Enough light, Lord; but grant to my lips the grace to spread it."

IX. — These inner illuminations, which are like the development of God in souls, project more or less radiant over all parts of sacred science. It is not only the Mystic that feeds, builds up and lights up at this luminous foyer; dogmatic theology and exegesis receive admirable radiation.

The most learned men used Saint Hildegarde ‘to find a solution to their difficulties with the Religion and its mysteries. Saint Joseph of Copertino?, whose entire education had been limited to learning to ire, clarified to scholars the most arduous points of dogma and morals. Saint Colette* answered the highest and most subtle questions addressed to him by clergymen, masters in theology, and others in BB. 17 Sept., vol. 45, p. 655, n. 114. Although we cannot but marvel that the Saint was consulted on hidden and secret matters by so many men distinguished in rank and learning, I am compelled to be still more astonished when I observe that the most subtle questions of theology, and the most difficult questions of sacred literature, were brought before an unlettered woman, wholly untrained in any study of learning, and that she did not hesitate to give theological and scriptural answers — although at times, to questions more curious than useful, she did not give a full response.

There are three things which shone forth in him in a singular way... The first is his wisdom, received from God, by which he — although, as we said above, he was scarcely versed in letters and of a rather slow mind — was an object of admiration to men outstanding in learning.

3 STATUS OF Juuwrs, BB. 6 mart., vol. 7, p. #69, n. 138: Aliquoties multi clerici et in theologia magistri, pariter et alii sapientes mundani, preres ab ea difficile queestiones seiseitabantur, et de subtibilibus materiis.. and clare dilucidabat, quod omnes ambimaudautur et magis ædificabantur, assertants struites, when she felt in herself that curiosity was not the reason for these questions; and all assure that the highest mysteries and secrets of divine science were revealed to her by the Holy Spirit.

The Blessed Ursuline of Parma! spoke of the Trinity, of the incarnation and nativity of the Word, of the angels, of the glory of heaven, and in general of the revealed truths, with a lucidity that dispelled all doubts, and an elegance of language that delighted with admiration.

X. — The Holy Scriptures containing all of God's revelations to man, the souls illuminated by the heavenly light have a special grace to interpret its formulas well; the divine word that resonates within themselves predisposes them to recognize and hear this same word in its external and human form. In an infinity of cases, God communicates a more special gift that reveals the deep and hidden senses under the letter, with more ease than others have to read the letter itself. These kinds of examples are innumerable; we will only mention a few.

We have seen how much great understanding of the divine Scriptures God had given to the venerable Mary of Agreda and to the solitaire of Mexico, Gregory Lopez. Saint Hildegarde, of which we have also spoken, and who was a true prodigy by the wonderful abundance of these free gifts of science, heard the meaning of the books of the Old and the New Testament, although she was unable to account for the reading of the text, not knowing the meaning of the words, nor the laws of grammar, nor even those of the organization of the syllables, as she herself declares at the beginning of her Scivias! or revelations®, written in Latin, if not under her dictation, at least on her narratives, by Godefroy her confessor, monk of the monastery of Saint Disibode.

Blessed Christine, nicknamed the Admirable, had received, without any human instruction and by the only way of divine infusion, a full understanding of the Latin text of the Vulgate; but, by humility, she rarely consented to explain it, saying that it was not suitable for a woman, and that this role was reserved for priests and clergy.

Saint Angèle de Mérici also possessed to a prodigious degree the infuse science of divine things, and especially that of our holy books. "Having never learned even the alphabet," Nazari says in an authentic report*, "having never studied Latin or any other science,

1 This word means: THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE WAYS OF THE LORD, by abbreviation of the Latin sentence: Scire vias Domini.

2 Scivias, sive visionum ac revelationum, 1. 1, Præf. This came to pass in the eleven hundred and forty-first year of the incarnation of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, when I was forty-two years and seven months old: a fiery light of the greatest brightness, coming with heaven opened, poured through my whole brain, and inflamed my whole heart and my whole breast, as it were a flame not burning but warming — as the sun warms a thing upon which it casts its rays. And suddenly I possessed the understanding of the exposition of the books — namely of the Psalter, the Gospels, and the other Catholic volumes of both the Old and New Testament — yet I did not know the interpretation of the words of their text, nor was I skilled in the division of syllables, nor the division of cases or tenses.

3 TRITHÈME, Chronic. spanh., ad ann. 1179.

She understood all of Latin, and knew the sense of divine Scripture most fully, although from birth she was wholly ignorant of letters; and its most obscure questions, when asked by certain spiritual friends, she resolved with the utmost clarity. Yet she was most unwilling and did this only very rarely, saying that the exposition of the holy Scriptures belonged properly to clerics, and that such a ministry did not pertain to her.

8 Cf. SazvaTtoRI, Life of Saint Angèle de Mérici, translated from Italian by Allibert, canon of Lyon, 1847, p. 159. Not only did she read the spiritual books of all kinds, written in one and the other language, but she also had such a knowledge of Holy Scripture, and her reputation was so extensive in this regard that she was often used by distinguished religious, and especially preachers, great theologians and great masters in divine things, to consult her orally or by letters on the meaning of several passages of the most obscure and difficult of the Psalms, the Prophets, the Revelation, and all the Old and the New Testament, and to obtain the solution of the doubts they offered her."

We could cite a large number of other saints whose memory is famous by the supernatural knowledge that they had mysteries of God and his sacred word. If women seem privileged in these divine enlightenments, it is that in reality they participate in greater abundance in the extraordinary effusions of mystical life, for the reasons we have indicated, ct also because being naturally less able to science, the prodigy of these gifts seems in them with more brightness and evidence.

XI. — However, men are not deprived: to the names of Gregory Lopez and Joseph de Copertino, we can add many more illustrious ones.

While St Gregory the Great! dictated to the deacon Peter his comment on the last vision of Ezekiel, from time to time he stopped for more or less long intervals. Intrigued by these intermittents, the secretary discreetly penetrated his style the veil that separated him from his master, and began to look through the opening. He saw, resting on his head, a dove whiter than snow, which held its beak for a long time applied to his mouth, as if to lay on it heavenly food, and as soon as it withdrew, the saint resumed his dictation, which the minister collected on tablets of wax. Then silence came again, and the deacon, looking again, saw the pontiff with his eyes and hands lifted up in heaven until the mysterious dove, attracted by prayer, had brought inspiration back to his lips. However Gregory, warned inwardly that his secretary had seized the secret of his divine communications, conceived an extreme sadness, and he instructed him, by apostolic authority, never to speak to anyone during his lifetime. To which the Blessed Deacon showed himself faithful; and it was only after the death of the Holy Doctor that a miracle so glorious was experienced in his memory.

The pious Rupert ‘, Abbé de Tux, also owed his brilliant and unctuous knowledge of the divine Scriptures to a special grace of the Holy Spirit. It is said that, when he entered the monastery of St. Lawrence in Oesbourg very young, he spares neither watches nor application to advance in the study of the holy letters; but it was first with so little success, that he despaired of ever being able to learn anything. He addressed the Blessed Virgin, for whom he professed the most tender devotion, and the Mother of God, responding to her prayer, appeared to her and assured her that her vows were fulfilled. Since that day, indeed, he had a wonderful opening for all the sacred sciences, mainly for the understanding of Scripture. Recognition and love for her

1 JOHANNES SPANHEIMENSIS, Orat. in laudem Ruperti. Migne, Op. Rupert. Since she was as yet less learned both in secular letters and in the divine Scriptures, by continual praying and reading she asked of God, with Solomon, the gift of Wisdom; nor did she cease from the prayer once begun, until, the Holy Spirit inspiring her through a vision, she received most abundantly, beyond all her contemporaries, that which she had desired. He was a most ardent lover of the Blessed Mary, ever Virgin, by whose intercession he is believed to have obtained so great a gift of wisdom. Ad cujus laudem posted, did not ingratus proud and divine Maitress, whom he considered to be the sacred bride par excellence, made him surpass himself in his seven books on the SONG OF SONGS, a true monument of faith, admiration and light.

Saint Thomas of Aquinas, the great figure in whom Christian theology seems to have been personified, received from nature a genius able to penetrate all parts of science and probe its depths. Nevertheless, considering how short was the life of this great man, who died at the age of fifty, the prodigious number of works which he wrote in about twenty years, the admirable perfection of these writings, the way in which he composed them, never undertaking any study that after being prepared there by prayer and tears ÿ, jeünant, weeping, and repeating his prayers to have the solution of difficulties, then dictating to three, to four copyists at once, on different subjects, without any hesitation or contempt; sometimes even, to the relationship of one of his secretaries ", continuing to dictate on the subject begun, after having fallen asleep by the effect of fatigue; all this weighed, it is impossible not to see in the science of the angelic Doctor a miracle of divine infusion.

Brother Renaud, who for a long time was Thomas' companion, assured the other religious that his knowledge did not come from his genius or study, but that he was a free gift from God. Among other wonderful facts, he told them that, when the Blessed wrote his comment on Isaiah, he came to a passage that he could not hear fully. For several days he began to fast and pray, asking God to give him the understanding of these words. At some time, one night, Brother Renaud heard him speaking, without being able to distinguish whether it was with several or with one; and, the finished interview, Thomas called his companion, prayed to him to light his torch and to take his leaves on Isaiah. It was to dictate to him the explanation of the passage that had first stopped him. When he had finished, he dismissed Brother Renaud, saying to him, "Now, my son, go and take your rest."But he fell at his feet, crying, and urged him, by the name of God, to tell him with whom he had spoken that very night, before calling him. Out of respect for the name of God which the brother invoked, Thomas, casting in tears, revealed to him that the Lord had pityed him, and had sent to him the blessed apostles Peter and Paul to instruct him about this passage of Isaiah which he could not understand; "But, he added, I command you, from God, not to speak of this as long as I live."

Thus God, the very principle of enlightenment, as is expressed in the Areopagitus, radiates in the souls of his saints, puts their eyes on them and gives them rays to see things invisible to every mortal eye, according to the beautiful expression of the poet Milton!, is an inexhaustible source of universal light.

We will tell later how these supernatural claritys are derived from the extraordinary outpouring of three gifts of the Holy Spirit: intelligence, wisdom and science, and the graces that the School calls free of charge, mainly those that bear the same names of wisdom and science. CHAPITRE XVIII

LES APTITUDES INTELLECTUELLES INFUSES

ARTS Reflects supernatural life on organs. — Poetry in the Bible, —

and in the annals of salvation. — Music: the inspirations it inspires

receives religion and piety. — The inspired songs spoken of

in I Scripture, and the melodies of the saints. — Painting and what it is

doit à la mystique. — La Sculpture et l'Architecture. — L'Éloquence

sacred, with its various supernatural forms.

I. — Art is the realization of beauty by the sensitive. I] speaks to the soul through the two intellectual senses of sight and ouie; but each of these senses receives the impression of beauty in various forms. The architecture, sculpture and painting are for the eyes; the music is for the ear; the eloquence strikes both senses at once: the eye by the action of the body, the ear by the accent of the voice.

We do not have to make here an art treatise; we only want to indicate the influences that mystical life exerts on artistic faculties.

By themselves, Christian faith and life are sympathetic to art, to the manifestation of the beautiful ideal by the sensitive. "When we hear that Christianity is the enemy of the arts," wrote Chateaubriand!, "we are mute astonishment.""What the Christian spirit has especially penetrated from its blessed influence," says another contemporary apologist!, "what he has completely renewed in several senses and brought to the highest degree of perfection is art. "All religions feed the soul," wrote Canova to Napoleon, "but none does so to the extent of the aforesaid."If art is the expression of the ideal, its manifestation in a bodily form, a revelation of the divine; if it is the infinite appearing in the finite, the heavenly in the earthly, then it can be said that in terms of the wealth and the elevation of ideas, the depth and the warmth of the feeling, Christianity has opened up to the soul a world all the more newer, as its doctrine on God and man the infinitely prevails over the doctrines that existed before. Christianity puts before the eyes of the spirit an order of things superior to the senses and to the earth; it shows him the eternal ideas of God represented in a holy and sublime way in the visible figures of Christ and his saints; it is a whole inner world that he creates in his soul and for her, with the purest and most powerful motives that move and shake the human heart, from the feeling that a sinner has of his fault and the pain that it causes him, to the enthusiasm that delights out of themselves the souls delivered to grace. This is what Christianity has done, and by all this it has closely united with the religion of art, which owes to this union its most beautiful triumphs."

Thus, the Christian life itself goes to this radiance of the invisible through the sensitive. Sometimes this power of expression has such proportions, that it is impossible not to see there a special and miraculous infusion of grace. Without going as far as the obvious miracle, mystical life can still betray its influence; the vibrating soul under divine action, the result in artists is ease and vigour which project on the body by a natural and spontaneous reflection. Piousness, without even exceeding the limits of active and common life, much more so in the brilliance of passivity and contemplation, produces in the depths of the being claritys and visions, emotions and attractions that tend to radiate outside, through all the ways that allow the soul to make shine upon the outside world its intimate life of light and love. Most often, it is true, it becomes impossible to unravel where and how far the supernatural influence extends; but it remains certain that it is exercised and that it has its part, more or less great, in the conceptions and works of art.

IT. — Poetry, of all the noblest arts, is also the one that received the most divine inspiration.

Two things do poetry: the rhythm and the liveliness of the images. One and the other are born of an exaltation of the soul under the charm of the beautiful. The beautiful, indeed, according to the remarkable etymology of the Greek word! which means to call, attracts, subjugates the being on which it radiates, the fact flourishes in harmonious and measured forms that form the rhythm of poetry, provokes in it a keen need of expression, and puts it in motion to seek in the human language the sensitive signs most capable of translating . the lovely vision that lukewarms. This powerful action of the ideal on man, which pushes him to express it by the color of the images and the rhythm of the sentences, constitutes natural inspiration.

If we assume a supernatural radiance of invisible beauty on the soul, there will occur in it an even greater exaltation, a more imperative instinct to translate outside into living and harmonious signs the intellectual view that delights her. Hence a kind of poetic inspiration of supernatural order. Under this fascination exercised over her by the ideal enlarged and looked at more closely, the soul vibrates everything, instinctively unfolds its entire empire over the body that it animates, and makes Jaillir, so to speak, out of herself, through the senses, in vivid, brilliant, impetuous words, the feelings that carry her.

Poetry occupies a place of honor in the Bible, which is par excellence the book of inspiration! Besides Job's poem, which the competent critics regard as the masterpiece of the epic genre, besides the collection of the Psalms of David, of such varied, so brilliant, often sublime poetry; and the Song of the Songs, of which nothing equals the vivacity and boldness of the figures, if not the depth of the mysteries that they represent, the Scripture contains a great number of hymns, such as those of Moses, Debora, Judith, magnificent productions of the breath of God in the language of man; and, as one of our first masters remarked in the art of thinking and saying, "all Scripture is full of poetry, even in places where there is no trace of versification."

II. — The annals of the saints abound in edifying features

1 W. Jones, Memories published by Lord Teignmouth. Extr. of the Mercury of France, 93 Sept. 1809. I have read with great attention the Holy Gracious Scripture which attests that Christian poetry has not ceased to inspire God's sources.

Saint Walten or Walëne!, abbot of Scotland, received in a vision a wonderful ease of improvising elegant and pathetic verses on pious subjects taken from Holy Scripture, from the history of Saints, or from religious teaching.

This gift is even more striking in Joseph*?, nicknamed the Hymnograph because of the abundance and beauty of the religious poetry of which he was author. This holy figure, who was treasurer of the Church of St. Sophia of Constantinople, honoured a special cult of St. Bartholomew, whose special favors he received. He had a great desire to celebrate to the glorious apostle; but, fearing not to do so with dignity, he called upon the saint and venerated his relics with the most tender devotion. His vows and prayers were not barren. Saint Bartholomew appeared to him on the eve of his feast, and put on his chest the book of the Gospels, saying, "Let the hand of God pour out upon you his blessings; let the waves of heavenly wisdom flow through your mouth; let your heart become the seat of the Holy Spirit; let your songs rejoice all the earth; let the sublimitity of thoughts and the grace of words be to all a delicious and salutary charm."In these words the vision svanuitous, but she had sent down into the soul of the devout servant of ineffable treasures of poetry, and had communicated to him a prodigious fruitfulness to compose suave hymns which the people sang with admirable edification. The hymnographer celebrated in pious transports the Blessed Virgin Mary, the saints whom the Church honors every day, and mainly the glorious apostle her protector.

The love which overflowed in the soul of the Seraphic Francis of Assisi! erupted more than once into passion songs- . born, where one feels rather the breath of divine life than that of natural inspiration. His song in the Sun, in which he invites all creatures to bless the Lord, and the fiery hymn which he sang after his glorious stigmatization, preludes the graceful and pious songs of Franciscan poets.

His historian and the greatest of his disciples, Saint Bonaventure, left us, among his theological and mystical works, poems of a nonparil charm?. Among his poetic compositions, we will mention in particular his poem entitled PRILOMÈLE?, his praise of the Cross and his songs in honor of Mary.

Dr. 1IRE is from another minor brother, Thomas de Celano. But the most illustrious of these Franciscan poets is Blessed Jacopone of Todi. Le STABAT suffirait seul

1 OzanAM, of the Franciscan Poets, 3rd edition, p. 70. When the name of the Savior Jesus came upon his lips, he could not pass over and his voice altered, according to the admirable expression of Saint Bonaventure, as if he had heard an inner melody from which he would have wanted to recollect the notes. It was necessary, however, that this melody from which he was pursued would eventually burst into a new song, and this is, indeed, what historians report, etc.

2 Cf. BERTHAUMIER, Hist. de S. Borientire p. 321.

3 Philomela, t. 14, p. 162-166.

4 Laudismus de sancta Cruce, t. 14, p. 172-174.

$ Laus B. Virginis Mariæ, t. 14, p. 181-188. — Psallerium minus B. Mariæ Virginis, t. 14, D. 189-195. — Carmina per Cantic. SALVE à sa gloire. He composed on the same measure, according to the same order of ideas, but giving them a joyful form, the STABAT of the crèche, a naive poem and graceful as the mystery that he celebrates. The contempt of the world, the apotheosis of penance and poverty, above all all the most ardent and tender love for the divine Crucified, form the substance of these songs full of verve and originality. It is necessary to read about this strange man, to whom faith and love had inspired, as to his father the poor beggar of Assisi, the holy madness of the cross, the kind and famous Frédéric Ozanam, in his interesting study on Franciscan poets !.

IV. — Music is the sister of poetry, and although the harmony of sounds can be conceived and exist without the rhythm of words, it is true, however, that it realizes all its virtue only by putting itself at the service of this form of art which it carries, through its union, to its highest power. Read the Dies IRÆ, and then sing it; unless you lack a sense, you will see how much the song enlarges the speech. In music, inner exaltation is usually more intense than in poetry. A body resonates under a percussion which puts its molecules in motion; thus the soul, powerfully excited by a sudden revelation of the ideal, precipitates its momentum towards the object that attracts, and its vibrations extending to the organs, the result is the singing, faithful echo of intimate concussions.

There is only love that sings; but love does not cease to sing: it sings its desires, its joys, its sorrows, its hopes. This is why the Religion, which is the seal of love between God and man, has always sang. Christianity, in which all religious harmonies are concentrated, is not only the friend of musical art, it can be said that he is the creator of it. Is it surprising that piety, which is divine love in its finest delicacy and with its most intoxicating emotions, has often been its most fruitful inspiration? And when Christian love takes in the soul an exceptional intensity, more importantly it must print vibrations that reach and animate the human voice, the instrument par excellence of the ideal and living expression.

V. — More than once musical inspiration was infuse and miraculous. The psalms were sung by the people in public ceremonies, and the holy king David, to whom most of these sacred odes are attributed, had also invented * musical instruments and composed new tunes: is it not natural to think that the divine inspiration of the words was not without some rejailing on their expression by singing? Still, it is mainly from David that the performers hear these words from ECCLESIASTIC*: "Islands have reported their skill in the chords of music, and they have left us the songs of the Scriptures."

The venerable Bede!, reports a charming trait reproduced by the Bollandists?, and closer to us by Montalembert, where one sees at the same time the infusion of poetry and that of music.

"Neither the kings nor the princes who went to consult the great abbess (Hilda) on her maritime promontory," writes the illustrious author of the D-OccIDENT Monks, "not the bishops nor the saints who were even trained in her school, "do not occupy in the annals of the human spirit or in the scholarly researches of our contemporaries a place comparable to that of an old bouvier, who lived in one of the domains of Hilda, and whose memory is inseparable from his. It is on the lips of this bouvier that the Anglo-Saxon language bursts into poetry, and nothing in the history of European literature is more original or more religious than this beginning of the English muse. He was called Céadmon; he had already reached an advanced age, always keeping his cattle, without learning the music, without being able to mix his voice with the joyful choruses which held such a great place in the meals and meetings of the people, as nobles and rich, in the Anglo-Saxons as in the Celtic. When, in a feast, his turn had just singed, and it was passed by the harp, he went out of the table and went to his home. One night he had gone away like this, he entered his stable

sleeps there next to his oxen. During his sleep, he heard a voice calling him by his name and said to him, "Sing me something." To which he replied, "I'm sorry.

1 Histor. ecclesiast. 1. 4, c. 24. Someone stood by him in a dream, and greeting him, and calling him by his name, said: Cædmon, sing me something. But he answering said: I do not know how to sing. But he said: Sing the beginning of created things, etc.

24 1 febr., t. 5, p. 552 : De S. Cædmono, monacho, cantore theodidaeto. don't know how to sing, and that's why I left dinner and came here. "Singing, however," answered the voice. — Mais quoi donc ? "Sing the beginning of the world, the creation." And immediately he began to sing verses of which he had previously no knowledge, but which celebrated the glory and power of the Creator, the eternal God, the author of every miracle, the father of the human race, who had given the sons of man the heaven for a roof and the earth for a dwelling. When he woke up, he remembered all that he had sung in his dream, and he went to tell the farmer of which he was the valet.

"Informed of the fact, L'abbasse Hilda was brought in Céadmon, and asked him in the presence of all the educated men whom she could gather around her. He was told his vision and repeated his songs, and then was explained various features of holy history and points of doctrine, committing him to put them in verse. He went on until the next morning, and began to recite all that had been drawn to him in verses which were found excellent. The gift of improvisation of the verses in his mother tongue was suddenly provided. Hilda and his learned assessors did not hesitate to recognize a special grace of God, worthy of all respect and tender care. She began by combining with all her family with Whitby's monastic family, and then admired him among the religious whom she governed, and carefully translated all Scripture into Anglo-Saxon. As he was thus told the holy history and the gospel, he took away these accounts, ruminating them, said Bede, as a very pure animal, and Islands turned into such sweet songs, that all his listeners remained delighted with them.

"This Northumbrian bouvier, now Whitby's monk, was the first known poet of Germanic race, and therefore the precursor of so many geniuses admired by the world, from Chaucer to Byron, and from the unknown author of the Wibelungen to Uhland and Henri Heine. He sang before the abbess Hilda the revolt of Satan and the lost paradise, a thousand years before Milton, in pages that are still admired next to the immortal poem of the British Homer."

Blessed Hermann Joseph of Steinfeldt!, of the order of the Premonstrates, professed a tender and enthusiastic cult for Saint Ursule and his companions; he wanted to show them his love by a new song about their glorious martyrdom. As soon as he began to compose, one of these virgins appeared to him, and, standing before him, communicated to him with the sweetest familiarity what he was to write. At the same time a beautiful dove, which he recognized to be another of the virgins, rested on the shoulder, and applied its beak to the ear of the dictating one. That's why in this hymn, and always in the sequel, he calls them the dear little doves of Christ. At these verses it was necessary to find a melody. While he was looking for her with great difficulty, the choir of the virgins, flying in the air above his head, sang a delicious song, which he hastened to write; and when he was hesitant or imperfectly notifying, the heavenly singers repeated these passages until finally he had faithfully returned.

Another fact of the same order, albeit in a different fashion.: Saint Catherine of Bologna, during a disease which was thought to be fatal, lost the use of her senses, but it was to be delighted in spirit and driven in a beautiful meadow of a delicious freshness. In the middle was the Saviour, MajJestuously sitting on a shining throne, surrounded by a crowd of angels and having on his right his Blessed Mother. In front of him stood someone who played with infinite charm, on a stringed instrument, this text of Isaiah: "It is in you that one will see his glory."Then the Lord stretched out his hand, and taking that of the virgin, his wife, 1 He said to him: "My daughter, notice this song well, and understand what these words mean." And as she remained silent with admiration and astonishment in the presence of such a great majesty, he told her that she would rise from this disease, and disappeared. Coming back soon from her vision, Catherine began to repeat, with an indescribable accent, the words she had just heard: ÊT GLORIA EJUS IN TE VIDEBITUR. It was necessary to bring her an instrument, on which she reproduced immediately, although she had never learned to use it, the celestial melody whose only memory made her fall into ecstasy. His sisters could only admire the most, the beauty of this song or the transportation in which he threw this blessed woman; for more than once they believed that she would expire in the excess of her jubilation.

VI. — Painting has also had its supernatural inspirations, and the miracle mixes more than once in its history. It is reported from the painter Saint Lazarus?, priest and religious of Constantinople, that after having had the hands completely calcined under fiery blades by the order of the iconoclast emperor Theophilus, 11 still painted an image of Saint John the Baptist, which was long preserved and which performed miracles. Metaphrast tells that Saint Cornelius {the centurion, baptized by the prince of the apostles and ministered by him on the church of Caesarea in Palestine, appeared, from the midst of glory, to a painter who wanted to reproduce his image after nature on the walls of a temple consecrated in his honor.

"It is in the lives of the saints, as the historian observes? of Christian Art, that one must seek proof of these interesting relations between religion and art... Just as speculative theology, raised to its highest power, leads to mystical theology, so also religious peimture, aiding certain means and tending towards a certain purpose, takes the qualification of mystical painting, which objectively implies the highest form of the ideal, and subjectively the most sublime rise of the faculties of the soul."In whatever form it is realized, the ideal is divine; holiness, by bringing it closer to God, thus brings it closer to the primary source of all inspiration.

In painting as in other fine arts, besides the common and natural radiance, there are the privileged ones of grace. Au premier rang parmi ces favoris se place Fra Angelico de Fiésole. Vasari, his biographer, although not in favour of the Christian expression of art, exalts with admiration the mystical paintings of this truly angelic man, and declares "that such a superior and extraordinary talent could and should only be the sharing of the highest holiness, and that, in order to succeed in the representation of religious and holy subjects, the artist had to be religious and holy himself!"

His two subjects of preference were Annunciation and Crucification. The beauty and purity of the figures that his palette drew were a reflection of his intimate visions and the subhima elevation of his soul. The Saviour's type, _ always identical in the variety of situations, breathes greatness, benignness and incomparable serenity. The Virgin's is the most perfect expression of grace in a pure, gentle and majestic light.

"The componction of the heart, its impulses towards God, the ecstatic delight, the foretaste of heavenly bliss, all this order of deep and exalted emotions, which no artist can render without having previously tried them, is what was the mysterious cycle that Fra Angelico's genius liked to travel, and which he started again with the same love when he had finished it. In this genre, 1l seems to have exhausted all the combinations and all the nuances, at least with regard to the quality and quantity of the expression, and if we look closely at some paintings where a certain monotony seems to reign, we will discover there a prodigious variety that embraces all the degrees of poetry that human physiognomy can express. It is above all in the coronation of the Blessed Virgin in the midst of angels and the heavenly hierarchy, in the representation of the last judgment, at least as regards the elect, and in that of paradise, the supreme limit of all imitation arts; it is in these mystical subjects, so perfectly in harmony with the vague but infallible impressions of his soul, that he has profusionally deployed the inexhaustible riches of his imagination. It can be said of him that painting was nothing other than his favorite formula for acts of faith, hope and love; that his task might not be unworthy of the One for whom he undertook it, he would never put his hand to work without imploring the blessing of Heaven; and, when the inner voice told him that his prayer had been answered, he no longer believed himself entitled to change anything to the product of inspiration which had come to him from above, convinced that in this as in all else it was only the instrument of God's will. Every time he painted Jesus Christ on the cross, tears flowed from his eyes with as much abundance as if he had witnessed this last scene of the Passion on Calvary, and it was to this sympathy so real and so deep that it was necessary to attribute the pathetic expression that he was able to give to the various characters who witnessed the crucification or descent of the cross, or the deposition in the tomb."

VIT. — The Bible presents us with a memorable fact of the concession, by supernatural infusion, of the art of sculpture and chiseling, in the person of Beselel and Ooliab, charged by God himself with the construction of the tabernacle and the arch of covenant. They were given extraordinary skill and skill in making the meticulous and symbolic decorations of this portable temple, especially the gift of sculpting marble and wood, chiseling metals, cutting precious stones. "By his name I called Beselel the son of Huri," said the Lord to Moses! "and I filled him with my spirit of wisdom, understanding, and knowledge for all kinds of works, to invent all that art can do with gold, silver, brass, marble, stonework, and wood of all kinds. I gave him Ooliab, the son of Ahisamech, as a companion, and I poured out wisdom in all the skilled craftsmen who must help them in this work which I myself have prescribed."

The great place of the temple in Christian worship suggests that more than once the design and execution of these monuments have had God's particular inspirations. The legends that favor this belief are numerous. What is the cathedral that had at its origin some artistic revelation that enhances the merit of the work and consecrates its beauty?

Whatever these legends may be, we cannot contest the example of Scripture that we have just told us. By showing him the plan of the Tabernacle, God declares to Moses that he chose for the realization of this architectural work Beselel and Ooliab that he will fill, to this end, with his spirit; the temple of Solomon, one of the wonders of the world, will be only the enlarged reproduction of the Tabernacle.

VIIL. — We will not finish this chapter without speaking of the eloquence and influences that it receives from mystical life.

Eloquence is the art of moving and persuading by the word. It comes from poetry through the elevation of thoughts and the richness of images; from music, through the variety of tones, the nuances and emotions of the voice; from painting and sculpture, through the vivacity and the nobility of attitudes: all these aspects of art undergoing a radiance of divine life passed in the soul by grace, it would be surprising that eloquence would not have its part here.

This part is beautiful and glorious. Can man, said the Wise, speaking of another object, hide fire in his bosom without his clothes being consumed? When the love of God, of Jesus Christ and of souls ignites the heart, it is difficult for the body envelope not to feel the ardour and for this divine fire to be betrayed by the bursts of the word, the movements of the limbs, by all the reflections of the human physiognomy.

But sometimes this grace of expression takes on miraculous proportions. This was the case with the apostles!, suddenly transformed, on the day of Pentecost, by the tongues of fire, symbols of the eloquence communicated to them in fullness. These wonders were frequently renewed at the origin of the Church because of the obstacles that the Gospel had to overcome. If they become rarer in the future, they are still found in various measures, from the ease of speech to the gift of the most brilliant languages.

Blessed Ambroise Autpert?, abbot of Saint Vincent on the Volturn in Italy, who had some difficulty in speaking, asked the Most Holy Virgin to untie her tongue, and the Mother of God immediately appeared to her with a joyful and resplendent face, touched the lips of her servant, ordered her to celebrate her greatness and praise with fidelity from now on, and promised her to assist her always. Taken from Joy, the religious saint rose up and began his hymns of love to the Gkorieuse Queen of Angels.

Saint Bernardin of Siena*, whose devotion to the Blessed Virgin is known, also obtained through his intercession of being delivered from a hoarseness that prevented him from preaching. Our Lord and his divine Mother invisiblely brought down a globe of fire from the sky into his throat, and he was immediately healed of his voice. .

The Christian speakers, whose eloquence can be constituted as a special gift of God, are in large numbers; in the multitude, what is enough for us to recall the names of Bernard!, Norbert?, Francis d'Assisi?, Antoine de Padua‘, François Régis 5.

More than once, early signs have announced this glorious predestination. A swarm of bees rested on the lips and filled the mouth of Ambrose 6, who was barely born and slept in his cradle. A similar prodigy is found in the life of St.Dominic. It is even said that, still carrying him in his bosom, his mother saw in dream a dog with in his mouth a torch escaping from his bowels and burning the universe: happy omens of the waves of light and disloque that the zeal of Dominique and his children had to spread throughout the world &,

1 GaurRID, BB. 20 aug., t. 38, p. 297, n. 158.

2 BB. 6 jun., t. 21, p. 815, n. 24.

5 BB. 4 oct., t. 50, p. 579, n. 182.

4 BB. 13 jun., t. 23, p. 200, n. 10.

$ P. DauBenTon, da Vie de S. François Régis, 1. 3, p. 101.

6 PauzmUus, Vita B. Ambros. Migne, Patr. lal., t. 14, col. 28, n. 3. Natus is Ambrosius: who infans in area prætorii in cuna positus, cum sommetet From the point of view of eloquence and its effectiveness, the most illustrious of the Brothers Preachers seems to us to be Saint Vincent Ferrier, who deserves a special mention here. Nature had fortunately gifted him, but his power came from the grace of the Holy Spirit and the virtue of miracles. As we have already said, he had received from Jesus Christ even the mission to preach to men the great truths of salvation. As soon as it was announced, the crowds rushed to meet him, and, at the hour of his preaching, the craftsmen abandoned their work, the teachers and the doctors interrupted their lessons; everywhere the enemies reconciled, the fornicators, the robbers, the blasphemers, the usurers hated their disorders, suspended their violence and repaired their injustices. It is estimated that more than one hundred thousand public sinners were brought back to penance, and it is claimed that he converted to true faith more than twenty-five thousand Jews and eight thousand Mohammedans. More often than not, the multitude of people on all sides were so large, even in simple villages, that he was forced to speak in the open air; and, amazingly, although the number of his listeners was often more than fifty thousand, the farthest heard as distinctly as those who were closest.

He spoke the Catalan or Lemosine language, and he was understood by the peoples of Lombardy and Savoy, England, Scotland and Ireland, Languedoc, Provence, Dauphiné, Burgundy, Flanders, Picardie, Normandy and Brittany. The Greeks, Germans and Hungarians also heard his word, as if he had spoken to each one his own idiom. When he preached about the judgment, the hell, or the passion of Our Lord, the lamentations and sobs of the crowd often forced him to stop. He himself was interrupted more than once by his emotion, tears or ecstasy. To the warmth and training of his word, added the prestige of admirable holiness and that of countless miracles. Since the apostles, men have perhaps never seen so much disloquence united with so many wonders.

A century later, Saint Francis Xavier was to give the peoples of India and Japan a similar spectacle. In the short space of ten years, he preached the Gospel in more than a hundred different islands or kingdoms, and converted an incalculable number of souls. "I don't start to count the leagues that he has made," said his main historian, "the supputation would be difficult, and I am content to say in general that, according to the rules of the geographers who measured exactly the globe, if we put all Xavier's races to an end, there would be plenty to do several times around the earth. However, the least he did in these journeys was to travel; and those who practiced it the most say of him what St.Chrysostome said of St.Paul, that he traveled the world with incredible speed and as if flying, not without labor and without any fruit, but preaching, baptizing, confessing, uprooting idolatry, reforming morals and establishing Christian piety everywhere. His apostolic works were accompanied by all the incommodities of life, and if one believes that the people who observed him closely, it was a continuous miracle that he could live; or rather Xavier's greatest miracle was not to have raised so many dead, but not to have died himself of pen fatigues.His word took all forms, according to the character and mind disposition of his listeners: simple in catechisms, pathetic in exhortation, subtle in controversies. He was even able to answer multiple questions and of a different nature, but often quite opposite. In the beginnings, God gave him only a great ease in learning the languages for which he was to use?; later the gift was complete and wonderful; he explained the mysteries of religion in one language to many. who used different didiomes, and each one heard as if he had spoken only to himself." Miracles of all kinds would confirm this already miraculous preaching. Thus, all the elements of supernatural eloquence met in this apostle: the light that enlightens, the word that gives the sign that serves as a divine guarantee.

We shall show in his place, in the graces given, these conditions of eloquence, as well as those of other divinely infuse aptitudes. It is only a matter of enumeration of the facts: in the third part we will look for the causes and the means.

1 P. Bounours, the Life of Saint Francis Xavier, 1. 5, p. 376. It was at the height of so many questions of which the saïnt was overwhelmed, that by one of the strangest wonders of which one never spoke yes, he satisfied with a single answer several people who questioned him on very different and most often opposite matters: such as the immortality of the soul, and the movement of the heavens, the eclipses of the sun or the moon, and the colors of the rainbow, sin and grace, paradise and hell. CHAPITRE XIX

THE MYSTICAL PHENOMENS OF THE AFFECTIVE ORDER

DE L'EXTASE

NOTION AND MISCELLANEOUS FORMS Distribution of substances. — L’extase; sa notion. — The element that characterizes it on the side of the soul: the supernatural elevation and its three degrees. — The part of the body: the suspension of the senses and its various forms. — L’extase proprement dite. Does she go so far as to separate the soul from the body? The doctors and the facts. — Natural fainting, which should not be confused with ecstasy. — The ecstatic fainting and the means to recognize it. The two general forms: ecstasy and delight. — The existence of . ecstasy, and the conditions of virtue it requires in the subject.

[. — We have just described the mystical facts of the intellectual order; in the following chapters we will study the facts of the emotional order.

The soul sees and hears only to desire and to love. Through intelligence, she meets and recognizes her object; by will, she adheres to it, she loves, she acts, she lives.

In the mystical life, whose will is the center and the home, the soul follows an ascending path and undergoes gradual transformations which lead to complete consumption in God; it is the Contemplation with its successive phases. The study of these wonderful ascents was the subject of our first part. But, in the course of these ascensional adherences of the soul to the divine world, love produces other phenomena that we must now consider.

The first is the ecstasy, in which the soul, absorbed by the object that delights it, suspends its external and sensitive life, and seems to withdraw from the body that it animates. By the effects that erupt outside, ecstasy belongs to this order of phenomena that we have called organic; by the inner state of the soul, it is a moral fact which proceeds from love, and which resides mainly in the will; and, as this latter point of view seems to us to characterize ecstasy, we place it among the facts of moral or emotional order.

In the ecstasy itself, or without lingering to ecstasy, the supernaturally moved and attracted soul experiences, under the embraces of love, a touch of joy or pain, depending on the nature of the impressions that dominate it. When she owns her object and admires its perfection and beauty, the fervor lumblasses, and she abandons herself to the transports of joy. If she is separated from it, or if she steals it unknown and outraged, she suffers, she saddens; and these various feelings burst upon the body by wonderful effects in relation to the inner state.

Apart from contemplation, mystical influences that directly interest affective life can therefore be reduced to the following three points: ecstasy, jubilation and suffering.

I. — Etymologically, ecstasy means an exit and a fixedness out of oneself! The word is the perfect expression of the thing. In ecstasy, in fact, the soul deserts the senses to attach itself to a supernatural object that charms it and absorbs its powers.

Saint Augustine! defines it: "an alienation that frees the soul from the senses of the body, so that the spirit of man, under the action of the spirit of God, rises up to the contemplation of the heavenly things"; and Saint Bonaventure *: "a desertion of the outside man and a delicious elevation of the soul to this source of divine love that surpasses all understanding." According to St.Thomas d'Aquin ÿ, one suffers ecstasy when one is drawn out of oneself, which takes place in two ways: by the apprehensive force of intelligence, or by the appetiteful virtue of the will coming out of itself to bear and rest on the object loved. Gerson # sees it as a delight of the mind that suspends the operations of the lower powers. Alvarez de Paz ÿ I calls for an expansion of the spirit in God, which abstracts from the external senses, and comes from the very sublimitity of this elevation; for, the forces and capacity of the soul being limit1 From various. quaest. ad Simplician. 1. 2, quaest. 1, n. 1, p. 188: Mentis alienatio a sensibus corporis, ut spiritus hominis divino spiritu assumeus, capiendis atque intuendis imaginibus vacet.

Ecstasy is, the outer man being set aside, a certain delightful elevation of oneself above oneself to the superintellectual fount of divine love.

3 Sum. 1. 2. q. 28, a. 3. It must be said that a man is said to suffer ecstasy when he is placed outside himself; which indeed occurs both with respect to the apprehensive power and with respect to the appetitive power. According to the apprehensive power, someone is said to be set outside himself when he is set outside his own proper knowledge..., while he is raised up to comprehend certain things that are above sense and reason. According to the appetitive part, however, someone is said to suffer ecstasy when the appetite of someone is carried toward another, going out in a certain manner outside himself.

4 Theol. myst. specul. Ecstasy, therefore, is a rapture of the mind with the cessation of all operations in the lower powers.

$ De grad. contempl. 1. 5, P. 3, c. 8, t. 6, p. 577. Is ergo ecstasis elevatio lied in Deum cum abstractione a sensibus exterioribus, ex magnitudine ipsius elevationis processdens; cum enim anima limitatæ virtuitis et capacitis sit, quantum efficacius et vehementius uni functioni waited, tanto tes, dit-1l, the more it is applied to a function, the less it can give attention to others; which makes Bona ‘that ecstasy is something other than a transport of the soul by which the exercise of the external senses is so prevented, that not only they do not act, but they cannot act nor be excited by external objects.

Thus ecstasy, including a double aspect, the retreat of the sensitive world and the elevation in God, can be defined: a sublime absorption of the soul in God, which suspends in man the exercise of senses.

IT. — It is the proper of ecstasy to raise the soul, to attract it, to fix it in God and to exhaust in this effort of attention and this effusion of love all its strength, to the point of making it incapable of considering and wanting anything else.

The mystics distinguish three degrees in this divine attraction. The first consists in the mere alienation of external senses, and is commonly realized in imaginary visions and auditions. The second suspends the exercise even of inner senses or imagination. The third takes place by direct contemplation of the divine essence, or at least by ineffable intellectual communication where human senses and reason do not have access.

This is the teaching of Richard de Saint-Victor ?, continued by Saint Thomas $ and the whole of the School. Cardimal Bona‘, in particular, describes this classic gradation.

"The ecstasy thus arrives in the first and most imperfect way, when the soul, seized by contemplation, uses all its strength in these intimate acts, in such a way that it ceases to apply to the external senses, which suspends their functions and renders useless the external excitations that put them into exercise. It takes place in the second way, when the inner senses are absorbed by a high contemplation, and God refuses them his assistance, they are prevented from acting, so that they cannot carry themselves to the objects to which they have a natural inclination. At the third and highest degree, the upper part of the soul, knowing, reason and will, is raised above all sensitive images by a supernatural and hidden means which God implements, and which is known only to those who have experienced it."

Let us note, with Saint Teresis?, that this absorption into God often continues, with more or less intensity, after the ecstasy itself; but then it is no longer ecstasy, it is simply a continuation and an effect of this divine transport.

This is ecstasy in the soul.

IV. — In the body, it is characterized by the suspension of external senses.

Cette aliénation des sens dans l’ordre de la contemplation cecidit supra Petrum; alio modo ut contempletur veritatem divinam per intelligibiles effectus, sicut fuit excessus David dicentis (Ps. cxv, v. 2) : Ego dixi in excessu meo : Omnis homo mendax. Tertio modo ut D dteDIleE eam in sua essentia, et talis fuit raptus Pauli et etiäm Moysis; et satis congruenter, nam sicut Moyses fuit primus doctor Judæorum, ita Paulus MIE peut se produire de trois manières : la première convient à l’extase parfaite, la seconde est un simple évanouissement naturel , et la troisième tient de l’un et de l’autre, c’està-dire est un évanouissement extatique. In the ecstasy itself, it is the soul lacking in the body; in the ecstatic or natural fainting, it is the body lacking in the soul.

Let us clearly explain this triple ligature of senses.

Ÿ. — When one experiences a powerful impression, the faculties suddenly concentrate on the point that provokes them, absorbs them and becomes as insensitive to other surrounding realities; they stop seeing, hearing, feeling everything that is not the fascination object. Let one carry this charm to a high power, let the soul be subject to the brilliance of divine enlightenment, to the sovereign attraction of infinity, and one will have ecstasy, in which the soul will lose all feeling of its presence and action in the organs.

The desertion of the body by the supernaturally delighted soul is more or less complete, depending on the degree of inner absorption, and this absorption varies in the ecstasy itself. At the peak, the suspension of the senses is entire; the body keeps no more activity than that of vital functions, with the expression caused by the spontaneous resplendentness of the intimate vision. During the intervals and the release of complete rapture, the ecstatic finds, in part at least, the use of his senses; he hears what is said around him, sometimes he utters some words himself. _

It is a question among theologians and mystics, if the desertion of the soul can be so consumed, that the bond between the body is broken, so that the return to normal life constitutes a true Saint Augustine ‘, after hearing St Paul, dared to decide whether his rapture took place in his body or out of the body, dared himself to pronounce himself; but elsewhere he felt that this separation could occur in some ecstasy, especially in that of the apostle. Saint Thomas #, without directly contesting the possibility of this rupture, does not see the necessity of admitting it, at least for St Paul, and seems to conclude in the negative. Cardinal Bona ‘immits the reservation of St Augustine, relying on the hesitation of the great apostle and also that of Saint Teresus, who, after having tried comparisons to explain, without admitting death, this separation, ends up declaring that she may not know what she says.

On comprend ces perplexités. On the one hand, the miracle of the resurrection is so considerable, that it must be admitted only as a last resource and on irrefutable evidence. On the other hand, Saint Paul and others after him.

1 De Gen. ad litt. 1. 12, c. 1, p. 566. For he stated this in such a way that he said he did not know whether he was caught up in the body or outside the body; who would dare to say he knows what the Apostle said he did not know?

2 De videndo Deo. Epist. 147, ad Paulinam, n. 31, p. 133. For he was caught up in such a way... that whether he was in the body or outside the body, that is, whether — as usually happens in a more vehement ecstasy — the mind was estranged from this life into that life while the bond of the body remained, or whether a complete dissolution occurred such as happens in full death, he said he did not know. Thus it happens that... it is not incredible that to certain saints, not yet so dead that their corpses remained to be buried, this excellence of revelation was also granted.

3 Sum. 2. 2. q. 175, a. 5. And therefore in the rapture it was not necessary that the soul be separated from the body so as not to be united to it as its form.

Whether the soul, by divine power, has sometimes departed or can depart from the body in a loftier and more forceful rapture is a doubtful and difficult question: for the Apostle, caught up to the third heaven, professed that he did not know whether this happened in the body or outside the body. But it is not for us to determine what so great a man did not know. For who, says Augustine, discoursing most learnedly on the rapture of Paul, would dare to say he knows what the Apostle said he did not know? The same ignorance took hold of Teresa's mind, etc.

8 Int. Chât., 6° Dem., ch. 5: While all this is going on, is the soul united to the body, or is it separated from it? Je ne sais. I don't want to say either... I may not know what I am saying, etc. asked st, in their sublime delights, soul, reaching a degree of freedom and ineffable clearance, had not been freed, in this whole spiritual flight, from the burden and chains of mortality. To which it must be added that these divine transports are sometimes so vehement, that one searches vainly in the lightest trace of life organs.

In any case, no one is thinking of challenging the possibility of prodigy; therefore, it is no more than a question of fact which must arise as follows: Yes or no, are there any cases where the ecstasy art was carried until the rupture of the bond between the soul and the body?

If it is believed that there is nothing to suggest authenticity, more than once the ecstasy would have effected this separation from death and would have been followed by real resurrections.

Saint Furcy, the first abbot of the monastery of Lagny, died! in an ecstasy, and while his body remained lifeless, his soul, carried on the wings of the angels, penetrated into the heavenly dwellings; then she had to take over his mortal remains and continue her trial. A second time ?death occurred, while he was praying, in a mysterious illness that had followed his first rapture. His soul, having travelled in turn, under the guidance of his angel, heaven, hell and purgatory, entered his body, which was nothing more than a corpse. A similar miracle is read in the life of Saint Sauve!, Bishop of Amiens. Still being a monk, during a serious illness, he had a vision that detached his soul from his body and introduced him into the midst of the heavenly choirs. His brothers, when they saw him dead, began to bury themselves; but as they were about to do the funeral, the holy religious came back to life, and they heard him exhaling his pain in touching complaints about the hard necessity of having to return to this world of misery, after enjoying eternal joys. He recounted what his eyes had contemplated with splendors in the heavenly residences, glory, clarity, peace, the bliss of the blessed satisfied with the presence and love of God. e But, alas, he exclaimed, this ineffable enjoyment was hardly beginning, which a divine voice made heard and condemned me to leave this stay of light and life, to return to this world of darkness and mortality."

Blessed Raymond of Capua * tells, with very detailed details, that Saint Catherine of Siena died in a transport, her heart having burst

He happily gave up his spirit to the Lord Savior. Voce divina meis dictum est comitibus : Revertatur in sæculo, quoniam necessarius est Ecclesiis meis, etc. |

So great was the force of that love, that the virgin's heart was split from top to bottom, that is, from one extremity to the other, and thus, the vital veins broken, she expired precisely from the violence of divine love, with no other natural cause compelling it. Do you marvel, reader? But know that there were and are several witnesses to this, who were present at her expiring, who first reported this to me, whose names will be given below. Then I, still hesitating, went to her and diligently inquired what she herself felt about this. She, bursting into sobbing tears…. said: Would you not, Father, have compassion for a single soul which had been freed from a dark prison, and, after seeing the most pleasing light, was again shut up in the accustomed darkness? I, I say, am that wretched woman to whom this happened, God's providence so disposing, on account of my demerits... Then I [said]: For how long a time, Mother, did your soul remain without the body? And illa: Dicunt funeris mei observatrices, quartet escapesse horarum spatium. interexpireem et resurrectionem meam...; salt anmma mea, putans se æternitatem escapesse ingestam, de tempore mon cagitabat. de part en part par la vehemence de l'amour. His soul remained for four hours separated from his body; after which, the heavenly Husband whom she believed to have ever commanded him to return to the earth, to work there for his glory and for the salvation of souls. The faithful historian had learned the fact of the admirable virgin and of the many witnesses present at this wonderful trip, including four religious still alive at the time of writing this account. The saint herself testifies in a letter! addressed to this blessed guide of her conscience, that, under the action of ecstasy, her soul had left her body and tasted the heavenly bliss.

According to the historians of Mother Agnes de Langeac, this venerable servant of God would have died four times, in excess of pain or ecstatic love, and would have returned so many times to life. Let us remove the first? and the fourth * from these resurrections, because it seems to us that death in these encounters was not sufficiently demonstrated. It is quite different from the other two *, on which we have the vote of Mr. de Lantages, whose good faith and good spirit have never been disputed, and who was able to gather the most accurate information on these facts. Without condemning, as he says in his preface, those who would think otherwise, for him, he believes that there was, these two times, death and We could still cite the example of another spiritual daughter of St.Dominic, the Blessed Stephen of Soncinno!, whose all the delights went, to what we believe, until death; the facts we have just reported are sufficient to demonstrate the possibility and the actuations of these kinds of wonders.

VI. "Sometimes we take for ecstasy what is only a natural fainting?" These syncopes which take place in the order of piety can be caused by impressions too vivid and come from the great debility of the body or its extreme sensitivity. Too tender inner suavities, impetuous sluggishness, deep sorrows determine, in some weak and impressionable people, a more or less prolonged alienation of the senses. They suddenly collapse and lose consciousness of their own thoughts. A refreshing air, a few exciting scents are usually enough to remind them to themselves.

There is this difference between this palmoison and the supernatural rapture, that in this soul, far from suspense I say a word, is the account of the two resurrections of Mother Agnes. What is very certain about this account is all the external accidents that very reliable people saw with their eyes, who were close to her when they thought she was dying and resurrected. But I agree that there is no equal evidence that she is truly dead and resurrected. For my own sake, I feel that this is the case for the reasons I have said in reporting the first of these resurrections, and for my respect for God's servants, after which I write this Life, all of whom are in this feeling. But although it seems to me that my claim is pious and prudent in this encounter, I declare to the reader that I will not blame, nor that I will not even fight intensely against him, if he wants to be of a contrary feeling, and say as a few that Mother Agnes, these two times, has only returned to herself from a great ecstasy, not resurrected, as I believe with many others and with herself.

4 JOHN OF SAINTE-MARIE. the memorable lives and actions of the holy and blessed daughters of the Order of Saint-Dominique, 1. 3, c. 4, t. 1, p. 708.

Sometimes, too, what is believed to be rapture [...] the soul, taking up again its intellectual and affective life, finds itself raised to a vision that captivates it, to a love that transports it — whereas in the other case it ceases to think and to will, or has only vague and indeterminate thoughts.

Let's note another form of natural fainting. During meditation, one absorbs into a thought, one <sends to a vaporous concentration, to a kind of passivity that numbs and withdraws from the sensitive and conscious life; if one still thinks, one no longer knows what, or it is to various things more or less frivolous and indifferent.

It is rare that in this drowsiness the alienation of the senses can be complete. Most often it is enough to shake these people strongly or talk to them with vivacity and energy, to remove them from their slumber.

Saint Térèse severely blames these excesses, which are only poorly disguised spiritual sensualities and whose result is to consume the forces of the body without profit for the soul, and even to cause the mind to lose, if it is not a remedy. "It would be much better," she said, "to use in the service of the Lord the long hours lost in this kind of drunkenness; it can be deserved much more by one act and often by exciting the will to love God, than by leaving it so in inaction."And she adds: "I therefore advise the priors to eliminate, with all possible care, these long fainting monasteries from their monasteries. They take away their energy from the faculties and the senses themselves, and the soul can no longer obey it; by doing so, they lose the merits that could have been acquired by constant concern to please God. It is seen that in a nun they come from the exhaustion of the forces, that the prioress removes from him penances and

1 Les Fondations. ch. 6. — Medina del Campo. fasts which are not compulsory; in some cases, she may even remove them from her in complete safety of conscience. Finally, to distract her, she will occupy her at the offices of the house... Oh, how deplorable is the misery where sin has reduced us! It is necessary to use measure, even in good, under the penalty of ruining our health and thus seeing us escape spiritual advantage that we desire to enjoy. This is why it really matters a lot, 1} is even necessary for a large number of people, especially those who are weak in head or imagination, to know themselves well."

It is superfluous to add, with Godinez! and Scaramelli?, that it is mainly women who are subject to these kinds of illusions.

VII. "However, the directors must be on their guard so as not to misunderstand; for, as we have said, fainting can be ecstatic. It can be done, in fact, that the supernatural illumination delights. The soul by raising it to divine splendors, and that the soul, still imperfect, finds itself seized with fear at this spectacle, and under the blow of a deep emotion that dominates it, the disorder and brings a bodily failure. But, while the natural chamoison totally or largely suspends the life of the mind, in ecstatic fainting this life continues with an activity and elevation that surpasses nature'. If there remained no memory of what happened in ecstasy, which sometimes happens, then the effects that follow these kinds of failures would be used and that Joseph Lopez Ezquerra explains as follows:

"When fainting is natural," said the author!, "it produces weakness, fatigue, warmth, disgust for virtue and desire for rest. If it is supernatural, on the contrary, although the body feels tired, the mind comes out available, alert, fervent and ready to undertake everything for good and virtue."

If to these signs we add, as Scaramelli advises $, that of the reminder, which we will be talking about soon, we will have sufficient guarantees of the presence or absence of the true supernatural. When, recalled in the name of obedience, the person who suffers these equivocal failures returns immediately from his sleep, and moreover the other marks offer nothing suspicious, one can hold these faintings to be truly ecstatic and sur1 Ibid., n. 190, p. 107: If dum corpus hoc deliquium patitur, mens is etiam extincta, debilis aut inefficax., tunc deliquium erit a naturali et non ab infusa causa. But if, while the use of the senses is dead, the spiritual faculties are occupied most intensely and vividly with God or another spiritual object, such that (the master) clearly perceives that it cannot be known thus by any natural cognition, then it will manifestly be a swoon from an infused and supernatural cause.

2 Lucern. myst. A natural swoon produces weakness, weariness, tepidity, tedium of virtue, and a desire for rest. But in the supernatural [swoon], although the body feels weariness, the spirit nevertheless is rendered prompt, agile, fervent, and turned to all things pertaining to labor and virtue. Wherefore if the first sign is lacking, let (the master) have recourse to the words of the following sign.

3 Dirett. Mist. Tratt. 3, c. 20, n. 189, p. 211 : Primo, l'esamini diligentamente circa ci, che ella opera internamenente con lo spirito, m entre è peruta nei sensi... Second, the faccia precetto che torni in se, che parli, che risponda: se obbedirà, darà un contrassegno di trovarsi in estasi vera, perchè Iddio si accomoda allobedienza, e, alla voce del Superiore, lascia l'anima che tiene stetta tra le sue braccia, acciochè sia abile ad obbedire. If then she does not obey, it will be a sign that she is neither with God nor with herself, but swooned away outside herself. If, on the contrary, she does not obey this command of authority, it is a natural drowsiness, if not evil.

VIII. — This absorption into God, which renders insensitive to all the impressions of the outside world, can be accomplished in two ways: by a peaceful and gentle attraction which effortlessly removes the soul from the outside life and the pupil suavely to the contemplation of divine things, it is the ecstasy proper; or by a kind of divine invasion upon the soul, which violently separates it from any conscious relationship with the sensitive world and rushes it with impetuousness towards the vision which charms and subjugates it; the ecstasy then takes the name of delight.

"The difference that distinguishes the delight of the ecstasy," said the Angelic Doctor! the famous Cardinal Bona?, "is that the ecstasy removes the soul from the senses with more gentleness, and that the delight separates it with more force and with a kind of violence; so that the delight has this more than the ecstasy, that it does in some way violence to the soul, and that it suddenly and powerfully takes away sensitive things, to carry it and raise it to the contemplation and the love of invisible things."

However, according to Cardinal Laurea ÿ, reproduced by Benedict XIV #, Schram * and Scaramelli , mystical authors often take these two words indifferently one for the other. Saint Francis de Sales also does not distinguish between the two expressions: "We give delight," says Térèse, "different names expressing the same thing: we call it elevation or theft of spirit, transport, ecstasy." "The ecstasy," he said, "is called delight, especially since by icelle God draws us and lifts us up to soy; and rapture calls ecstasy, as, by iceluy, we go out and remain out and above ourselves to unite with God."

We will therefore use indistinctly the terms of ecstasy and delight, although we have distinguished them as special states of prayer; for, as we have said in its place, rapture presupposes a further degree in the mystical scale.

IX. — We will not stop demonstrating the existence of ecstasy; these facts are frequently encountered in both the Old and the New Testament pages, and are multiplied to infinity in the lives of the saints. On this point, observes Benoit XIV, which lists a long series of authorities, 1 there is agreement among theologians, mystics, philosophers and all those who have dealt with the subjects of canonization. The facts already told and those we will still claim are sufficient for a full demonstration; but we must say a few words about the degree of perfection they imply in the subject. Considered in general, divine ecstasy accords only to pure souls or those whom God destinies to a high holiness. Thus Cardinal Bona ‘assigns as one of the surest marks of true ecstasy that it meets in a soul free from earthly affections. However, just as a great holiness can be without ecstasy, ecstasy can also occur to a mediocre virtue, and does not even exclude absolutely, nor most other graces for free given, the anomaly of sin?.

According to Scaramelli, ecstasy is diversified according to the degree of virtue; but we have distinguished three kinds of ecstasy or three degrees in ecstasy, depending on whether it suspends only the external senses, — that is the most imperfect degree; or that it enchains both the senses of the outside and the senses of the inside, — that is the second degree; or, finally, that it raises above the senses and understanding, — that is the third degree, of all the most perfect.

The ecstasy of the first degree is sometimes granted to the beginnings, more often to the perfect ones; but it is, according to this author, the proper one of the progressors. The ecstasy of the second degree, which binds the inner senses, is suitable only for souls raised to the union of love; more importantly the ecstasy of the third degree, which accords only very rarely and to some privileged among the perfect. CHAPITRE XX

DE L'EXTASE

CAUSES AND EFFECTS In the soul, ecstasy is born of love. — The two principles of ecstatic attraction, goodness and beauty. — Its forms from the point of view of the cause that determines it: Admirative ecstasy, love, joyous, painful. - Causes in the body. — Is alienation of the senses a natural consequence of inner absorption, or a special gift? — Effects of ecstasy in the soul: freedom and merit during ecstasy. — L'héroïsme. — L'impatience de mourir. — Effects on the body: insensitivity, expression of physiognomy, agility. I. — The ecstasy, we have said, presents two sides: the inner one, which is a prominent elevation of the soul to the divine world; the outer one, the suspension of the senses. Let us study successively how ecstasy comes into the soul to shine from there on the body, and the admirable effects it produces on one and the other. Saint Denis! The Areopagit has formulated this law, repeated by all mystics, that ecstasy is born of love. Ce 1 Divin. Nom. c. 4, $ 13. Divine love is ecstatic, in that it does not allow those who are lovers to belong to themselves, but to those whom they love.

18* precipitated movement from the soul towards the vision that charm can only be a movement of love, the action of the soul being at the bottom only an exercise of love in possession or in search of the object of his life. The light, no doubt, has a part in the delight of the spirit; but, in the end, the soul gives in to the light by moving towards the objects which it reveals only because it loves and is complacent in its vision, as St.Thomas teaches. The delight of the mind is therefore the true cause of the love of the will?.

Let us listen on this point to the pious and learned Bona 3.

"One is in ecstasy or in delight, when one is drawn out of oneself, and this happens both according to the understanding and according to the will; in understanding, because the deep meditation of one object distracts him from all others; but it is in the will that the true cause of this abstraction of spirit is, for the vehemence of love absorbs the soul and does not allow him to remain a masteress of herself. It is a famous sentence of Saint Denis, whom love makes ecstasy; and, although the soul flies to God as by two wings, know: knowledge and love; love nevertheless gives him for this flight more strength and degility. Knowledge is required only to light love; but love has the virtue of uniting the lover with the loved one and transforming one into the other, as the Apostle said in these words to the Galatians: "I live, or rather it is no longer I who live, but Jesus Christ who lives in me."That is why the Platonic philosophers attribute to love the perfect knowledge of God, which they refuse to science, because, through knowledge, we are only seeing God, while we possess it out of love, and by this possession we still know it, according to this maxim of Saint Gregory the Great: "Love is himself a knowledge." And Saint Bernard, in turn, after assigning two causes of supernatural transports, light and love, also attributes the main part to love, which brings the soul into the mystical cellars of the Spouses."

II. — In order to hear better where the effective virtue of ecstasy comes from, let us stop looking at the two aspects that truth takes in the eyes of the intelligent soul, to charm it and provoke in it the impulse of love, I mean goodness and beauty.

The good attracts the being, because it responds to a need of its nature and is the very object of life. That is why all beings aspire to good, as they aspire to life." Hs call with such ardour and impatience, as it can be said, according to the Greek expression, the CALLED par excellence, Kaäov. When this aspiration of soul toward good, which demands and sees all its powers, becomes so pressing that it loses sight of any other object and makes it insensitive to external impressions, it is ecstasy. These ardours grow even more in that possession of goodness, which, like the fire that simmers all that it reaches, transforms into itself the beings to whom it gives itself; for it is the own.

1- ARISTOTE, Æthie. 1. 1,e.1,t %, p. 3: 4ù raküç dneprvevro Tayaldv of the goodness to make good; she gives herself only to spread and bring everything back to be.

Finally, security and enjoyment bring joy, whose transports can be such as to absorb all forces, until it renders unable to see or want anything out of the object loved and possessed.

Beauty has an even greater share in ecstasy.

The beautiful is the splendour of the good, that is, the good in such perfect evidence and such great brightness, that it attracts and delights the beings before they have even been able to see that this object is their good and responds to the attractions of their nature? Here again there is a call; but it is the beautiful who calls rather than be that he fascinates: it is the active Käov 5, in all its power.

III. — In the face of this delightfully subjugated appearance, several successive movements occur in the soul.

1 Denis L'Aréopr. De div. nom. c. 4, n. 4. Goodness converts all things to itself, and, being a unifying divinity and principle of unity, gathers together first those things which are dispersed; and all things desire it as their principle, as their sum, and as their end.

2 S, FRANCOIS DE SALES, Treaty of the Love of God, 1. 7, c. 5: God draws the spirits to soy by his sovereign beauty and incomprehensible goodness: excellences which both are still but a supreme divinity very beautiful and good all together. Everything is done for the good and for the beautiful, all things look towards luy, are meüs and contained by luy and for the love of Juy... In short, the good and the beautiful are only one thing: all things seem good and beautiful. Thus God, Father of all light, sovereignly good and beautiful, by his beauty attracts us to contemplate him; and by his goodness, he attracts our will to love him... Love provoking us to contemplation, and contemplation to love, from which it follows that ecstasy and delight depend entirely on love.

3 A remarkable thing, which is the affinity of the two concepts of good and beautiful, the words which express them in the main languages, have, when they are not identical, a common root. In Greek, xahoc means both good and beautiful. The Hebrew word tob also presents this double meaning. The Latin bellus, which has provided to most of the derivatives the expression of beautiful ct of beauty, has its etymology in bonus. (See FREUND, Grand Dict. de la lang. latin, au mot Bellus.) The first is the seizing, a kind of stupor coming from what the mind, making effort to expand, in order to embrace throughout its scope the vision whose light exceeds, and unable to dilate at its will, remains as forbidden and stops still; it is admiration. This movement extends all the more, as illumination is more superabundant. If it becomes intense enough to remove the soul from all sensitive impressions, it produces ecstasy.

This first movement follows the momentum of love, the eager desire to reach the fascinator object, and in this effort one is even less self-sufficient. That if one succeeds in enjoying the object and fully responds to the hopes and desires, then it is above all that the soul will come out of itself to be all to love.

Finally, the enjoyment of the well coveted produces the drunkenness of Joy, which alone is sufficient to determine ecstasy.

This slenderness of the soul, provoked by the revelation of goodness and beauty, thus takes on one of these three forms: the surprise of admiration, the impatience of love and the drunkenness of joy. Richard de Saint-Victor‘, followed by most mystics, especially Bona?, assigns to ecstasy these three causes: admiration, devotion and joy, and these three feelings have manifes- . . . . a common source, love.

St. Francis de Sales % also admits three species of ecstasy; but according to this saint doctor, the third, who controls the other two, is in the works. "My dear Theotime, as for the sacred ecstasy, they are of three kinds: the moon is of understanding, the other of affection; the one is in splendor, another in fervor, and the third in work: one is made by admiration, another by devotion, and the third by operation."

At the bottom, it is less an ecstasy than an effect. characteristic and a sure note of divine ecstasy, as well as Saint Francis de Sales to make it notice !.

But, in addition to the three forms specified by Richard de Saint-Victor, he may encounter a fourth one determined by the excess of pain. The sight of beloved object unknown, outraged, sorry, Throws the loving soul in a mortal sadness that absorbs it. Makes him repeat the momentum of his love, without reducing anything of his anguish.

These are the causes of ecstasy in soul and the various ways of producing it.

IV. — The ligature of the senses, which is the part of the body, can be regarded as a special and gratuitous gräce;* however, it is much more likely?, and it is common teaching, that it is a natural consequence of inner absorption. The forces of the soul being limited, the intensity of its application on one point removes it from all the others, and this intensity can become such, that it leads to the cessation of other operations

1 Treatise of the love of God, 1.7, c. 6: The second mark of the ecstasy vrays consists of the third ecstasy, which we have marked on it: ecstasy all sound, all amicable, and crown the two naturals. Under the irresistible attraction that calls her, the soul, as Mary d'Agréda! expresses it, "removes the senses to fly to what she loves, abandoning what she animates."

This seems to be the opinion of the Angel of the School, Saint Thomas?. Suarez, who wisely discusses this point of view, shares this feeling and does not give any other reason than impotence for the soul to suffice for the organic functions, when it is absorbed within the divine light. The most authorized mystics, among others Alvarez de Paz‘ and Joseph Lopez Ezquerra, think ct prove the same.

V. — After reporting the causes of ecstasy, we must study the effects, in the soul first, and then on the body.

The ecstasy produces in the soul an elevation that absorbs into God without destroying his freedom, and leaves after him a heroic energy for good and an ardent desire to get out of life to possess God. The first view

FT Cilé mystique, 1°° P., L 1,0. 3, n. 26.

2 Sum. 9. 2. q. 175, a. 2: Potest considerari raptus quantum ad suamr eausam, et sic potest habere causam ex parte appetitivæ virtutis. For from this very fact, that the appetite is vehemently affected toward something, it can happen that through the violence of the affection a man is alienated from all else.

On Religion, [tract] 2, ch. 45, n. 5: The sole reason is this, that the power of the soul is finite, and being vehemently absorbed in higher and interior actions, it cannot at the same time descend to lower and external ones.

+ De græd. contempl. There are, therefore, two things in ecstasy: the one is a vehement interior occupation, which does not proceed from human effort (for this by no means suffices for total alienation of the senses), but proceeds from divine grace suckling and alluring the soul; the other is an abstraction from every exterior use of the senses, which, as Thomas Aquinas holds, flows almost naturally from that prior and more vehement occupation. Because, namely, a man cannot so intently attend to divine things and at the same time retain the use of the senses.

$ Lac. myst. This abstraction or alienation of the senses arises from the fact that, since the powers of the soul are limited, a sublime and efficacious elevation draws and gathers to itself all the powers of the soul, so that [gap in text] none can remain for the senses, wherefore they are wholly deprived of their sense-perceptions. [French continuation:] ...constitutes the very essence of ecstasy, and we have spoken of it in giving its notion. Examinons les autres.

First of all, does rapture allow freedom and merit to survive?

All theologians admit that the acts that precede the ecstatic attraction can be free, but they are divided on the existence of merit during the very time of ecstasy. Many believe that in the absorption of pleasure, the brilliance of vision and the training of will are such, that there is no room for the deliberations of free will. This is the opinion of Saint Alphonsus of Liguori ?, of Bossuet ?, who, however, praises the contrary sentiment, and of a few others whose authority cannot be disdained.

The largest number claims the reconciliation of ecstasy and freedom. In the first place appears Suarez, who discusses this interesting question in his fourth TREATY on the virtue of religion. It starts with recon1 Bexoir XIV, De serv. On the Beatitude of God, bk. 3, ch. 49, n. 14, p. 357: It is asked among theologians whether one in ecstasy merits in the acts of the intellect, that is, of seeing, and of the will, that is, of loving, which he has during ecstasy. Cardinal de Lauræa says: One in ecstasy merits in the preceding acts, since they are free and are concerned with a good object, end, and circumstances, as are the other acts of religion and faith; but he does not merit in the acts which occur during the ecstasy itself, since these are not free. — Suárez stands for the freedom of the acts, and thus for their merit; and Father P. Antonius ab Annuntiatione ..., Gravina adheres [to this view], etc.

When the soul arrives at the passive state of contemplation, then the soul, although it does not merit, because at that time it does not act but only undergoes, nevertheless acquires a certain great vigor for acting afterward.

3 Instructing. on the states of prayer, 1. 9, n.13,t. 6, p. 194: It is true that the prayer of pure grace, which is done in us without us, of self has no merit, because it has no freedom; but it is also true that it gives rise to very eminent acts, and even it is the doctrine of the theologians, like Suarez, that God does not always deprive of merit ecstatic orations and delights, where it often pleases him that freedom is preserved entirely.

4 De Relig. 1. 2., c. 19 et 20, t. 14. |

S 1bid., c. 19, n. 23, p. 206: Assero hanc contemplationem, prout intelnaître that, in the contemplative vision, the soul can be free only indirectly, i.e. in the acts preceding and preparing ecstatic contemplation. The light is necessary especially when it shines with the brightness of the evidence, and unless you close your eyes then you are not free to not see. But if on the side of intelligence the soul is not free, it is quite different from the will. Suarez openly affirms and defends the exercise and the merit of freedom in the act of love that constitutes ecstasy, and in the special acts that occur during the suspension of the senses." [1 proves his assertion by three examples from Scripture: Adam's making an act of faith during the ecstatic sleep where God revealed to him his purposes on the human seed; Solomon's asking for wisdom in a dream; Saint Peter's refusing to eat unclean animals that were shown to him in vision.

He still establishes it by the following argument ?. Nothing in rapture necessitates the will, nor does the grace which [gap] reaches even unto ecstasy [amount to] a free act proximately and directly, although remotely it often derives its origin from a free act.

It must be said that the act of love and charity, which is exercised in such contemplation and ecstasy, is free, whether as to its exercise or even as to its specification, according to the character of the intellectual consideration and judgment.

This assertion can be proved by the examples adduced concerning Solomon, for it is sufficiently established from the foregoing that he then had free choice. The same holds of Adam, who in his sleep exercised an act of faith, as the Saints teach, since this cannot occur without liberty. Peter also, in Acts 10, was in an ecstasy when he saw the sheet descending from heaven...; and yet the same Peter had liberty, when he said: 'Far be it, Lord,' etc.

Divine grace does not destroy nature but perfects it; hence although in the loftiest contemplation it moves and excites the affection to love of itself through divine inspirations, which we call exciting graces, which are necessary acts insofar as through them the Holy Spirit touches the heart, nevertheless it never excludes free consent in perfect and obediential love. Because liberty in this love pertains to the perfection of the wayfaring state, and is necessary for the act to be meritorious; but it is not likely that God, when he raises a just man to eminent contemplation, would deprive him of this perfection and this fruit, since in this life it is most greatly to be desired. [fragment, illegible connection:] ...moves it, nor the light which illumines it. God's supernatural action, far from destroying freedom, perfects it. And is it not appropriate and natural to assume that God, by raising the righteous soul to the sublime heights of contemplation, does not deprive it of the ordinary fruit, and of all the most precious, of holiness, which is merit? The ecstatic light requires no more; neither by its brightness, for it is a maxim received among the theologians, that the will is irresistibly driven only by the light of glory, which is superior to that of ecstasy; nor because it prevents the will, the reason having all its play in contemplation, as much and more than in the simple light of nature.

These reasons of the illustrious theologian seem to us to be of great weight.

Alvarez de Paz? pronounces himself no less expressly; he admits of exception only for sleep, and again, with the reservation that, even during this time, God can strengthen by miraculous action the powers of the soul, so as to leave them an exercise sufficient for freedom and merit, as it happened in Adam's supernatural sleep and in Solomon's dream.

According to Scaramelli $, the violence of ecstasy only reaches intelligence, but does not extend to will. Philip ‘of the Most Holy Trinity, reflecting the doctrine of Saint Teresus, deals more directly with the difficulty and acknowledges that, under the power of the divine attraction which makes ecstasy, the soul is not free from this freedom which may desire evil, but that it preserves the freedom of good; to use the terms consecrated by the School, that it has, not the freedom of upsetness, but that of contradiction, freedom which is certainly sufficient for merit, since Our Lord and His divine Mother had no other. It is one of the aberrations of the fallen man to believe that he ceases to be free, as soon as he is in the fortunate impotence to do evil. No doubt, the same author adds?, the delighted soul has no more freedom for all that is sensitive and external; but it retains the fullness of its moral life in this world on which its gaze cts its will. However, it may happen, especially in the beginnings, that the still weak soul loses full consciousness of itself in rapture; it would be difficult, in this case, to say where freedom and merit are *. tia ista non infertur voluntati sed intellectui, ita ut anima perfecte wianeat libera. And although God, in rapture, by the violent light which he infuses into the intellect, snatches the soul to himself, yet there remains to the will as much liberty as is required for acting with merit.

1 Sum. Theol. myst. P. 2, Tr. 3, D. 3, a. 4,t. 2, p. 339. Among mystical doctors it is customarily disputed whether in rapture sufficient liberty for merit is found; some affirm it, others deny it. For the clarification of this difficulty, it must be known that for merit as for demerit some freedom is required, as authors commonly teach, and this was recently defined by Innocent X; but the freedom of contradiction suffices. Dicimus, cum S. M. N. Teresa..., that for the most part, in the supernatural rapture of which we speak, there is sufficient freedom for merit.

But it is true that, with the senses bound, judgment is not free as regards those things which are received through the senses; yet it remains free as regards those things which are divinely shown to the soul, for the soul, rapt above itself, judges truly and perfectly concerning those things which are manifested to it.

3 Jbid., p. 341. It can happen, however, that beginners, from their own weakness and imperfection, are totally absorbed in rapture, and then there is in them no [...] — The proper and characteristic effect of divine ecstasy is to communicate a supernatural energy that goes as far as heroism, that is to say, up to this generous impulse of the soul that makes it undertake and sustain what is ‘more perfect and more arduous, in witness of its fidelity and its love!'. It is a constant fact that the true ecstasy lights in the heart an ardent and insatiable love, and the love brought to this point that we are ready to brave everything for the object loved, is it heroism?

The effort of an ecstatic soul to strive for perfection is all the more energetic, since, in the divine light that langues, it sees, on the one hand, the infinite holiness of God and his ineffable goodness to the creature; and, on the other, it sees, with evidence that confuses it, its own ingratitude, its stains and its imperfections; this double feeling gives it an indefatigable activity and these wonderful boldnesses, so well described by the pious author of the IMITATION. *

Saint Francis of Sales # calls the holy ardour for the good that follows the divine ecstasy, the ecstasy of the work and the action, and he considers very perilous the delights that libertatis indicium, and sic merantur tantum per actus antecedents and consequent.

1 S. Tomas, 3. P., q. 7, a. 2, ad 2: That heroic habit does not differ from virtue commonly so called, except according to a more perfect mode, inasmuch as one is disposed to good in a certain higher way than commonly belongs to all.

2 St.TERÈSE, His Life, c. 20: As for me, I know very well, and I have seen by experience, that a delight of one hour, even a shorter duration, suffices, when it comes from God, to give the soul a sovereign domain over all creatures, and such freedom, that she no longer knows herself....We had witnessed her weakness, and suddenly we see her pretending that there is more heroic, no longer merely to serve God in a vulgar manner, but to aspire to glorify him with all the expanse of his strength. This heroism of sentiment, it is called temptation and do not have this sequel." Seraphic Teresis thinks the same and expresses it in several places in his writings?.

VII. — The ecstasy, inspiring the love and admiration of divine things, produces another effect in the soul, that of making death desired with a kind of greed: "The proper of true ecstasy," says Bona*, "is to bring to the heart an anxious desire to come out of this life."After seeing God in the light of contemplation, the soul aspires with a holy impatience to the happiness of seeing him face to face and possessing him forever. "After these great favors," says Térèse #, "the soul becomes so eager to possess Him who gives them to him, that his life is more than a torment, though mixed with delights. She sighs with ineffable anxieties after death, and she keeps asking God with tears that he remove her from this exile. All that she sees in it is fatigue; she finds relief only in solitude; but this sorrow immediately re-enters her, and she is never at rest."

Besides these two main results, the energy in action and the impatience of dying to be to God, ecstasy is a fruitful source of holy influences, which we have indicated in dealing with contemplation in general and ecstatic union in particular. We defer the study of certain effects of ecstasy on the body, to deal with it with more opportune in the continuation of our exposure; we now bring back to the following three that we propose to report, namely: organic impassibility, expression of physiognomy and agility.

VIT. — Ecstasy, as we have said in studying its causes, reduces the body to a state of insensitivity and inaction, more or less complete according to the power of attraction exercised on the soul the object of the vision.

This insensitivity occurs at several degrees. In the greatest delights, it is at its peak: tact, hearing, smell, taste, in a word, none of the senses attests the mildest impressionnability; the most painful incisions, the strongest concussion, no dispatch is able to awaken the sleeping senses. Minded in ordinary ecstasy, the feeling is totally suspended when the divine attraction is at its peak!. Most often, the eyes keep all their activity; but it is to attach themselves to the vision with a vivacity that seems to enlarge them; from the surrounding material things they perceive nothing, so that one can assure of it by presenting suddenly the hand or any other object: neither the eyelids n1 the plums undergo the slightest impression. Îl also occurs tears, sighs, exclamations!, spontaneous cries?. As soon as the ecstasy seized it, St Joseph of Copertino* threw a loud cry followed by a long moaning. Saint Michel des Saints also entered his transports by shouting a whimsical cry, accompanied by several sighs or unarticulated months that express surprise, like: there!

Not all senses are fully linked in the release of pleasure. Sometimes the sight is exercised, but rarely. More often we hear the external words as a confused and distant sound, and we respond to them.

Even in the midst of ecstasy, it happens that the ecstatic speaks of the object of his vision; Saint Catherine of Siena © dictated, in her delights, whole treatises; Saint Mary Magdalene of Pazzi? made aloud her examination of conscience and confession, in the presence of her divine

The suspension of the external senses in divine ecstasy is sometimes of all of them, sometimes not of all, or not entirely; nor does it always arise from a lesser perfection of the ecstasy, so that in it the use of sight, hearing, speech, etc., though with some difficulty, remains as in one half-asleep: for ecstasy can be perfect and nevertheless give place to speech, groans, tears, exclamations which burst forth from an abundance of spiritual lights and affections, and which foster rather than impede interior union with God.

2 Benoit XIV. De serv. Dei beatif.1. 3, c. 49,n. 11,t. 2, p. 356: Tum Gravina, tum de Lauræa verba clamoremque in extasi divina admittunt, tanquam ineffabilis gaudii et alacritatis signa, si verba sanctitatem resonent, modo clamores et ejulatus horrorem non inducant.

3 ParroviCCHI. She first broke out into a loud wailing, then indeed into vehement lamentation.

4 Louis DE SAINT-JACQUES. Life of Michel des Saints, 1. 2, c. 6, p. 441.

$ Benoit XIV. De serv. Dei beatif. 1. 3, c. 49, n. 11, t. 2, p. 356: Negari non potest in ecstasim raptos, loquendo de ecstasi divina et supernaturali, aliquando loqui.

5 RaAyMmonD DE Cap. In this dictation this was singular and admirable, that the whole dictation was uttered by her only at those times when, from an excess of mind, her bodily senses were deprived of their proper act... And yet, the Lord so working, the sacred virgin, placed in that ecstasy, dictated the whole of it.

7 Vinc. Puccini. This examination having been made, and the same rapture nonetheless continuing, etc. Époux. Jeanne de la Croix !, a Spanish nun of the third order of Saint Francis, preached during her ecstasy a sublime doctrine and even spoke several foreign languages that she had never learned. For thirteen years this prodigy lasted, it was visited by the greatest figures of Spain, doctors, bishops, lords and ladies, especially by Gonzalve de Cordoba, Cardinal Ximenès and Emperor Charles-Quint himself.

Sometimes also the ecstatic speaks in the name of another, of God, of Jesus Christ, of an angel or of some saint. Schram ? points out, after Cajetan and Sylviusÿ, whose words he reports, that these kinds of substitutions make the raptures suspicious; but he admits that there are facts of this kind in the absence of any suspicion, and he points out in particular those which one tells of the two saints whom we have just named: Our Lord spoke through the mouth of Catherine de Siena, and the three divine Persons by that of Marie-Madeleine de Pazzi.

One of the sisters in the religion of Saint Catherine of Ricci# could not believe her ecstasy. One day, "founding her in this state and seeing herself without witnesses, she kneeled before the saint, begging the Lord ardently to have mercy on her and to remove her obstinacy from her heart not to add faith to the delights of her holy wife. Then, rising her will towards Catherine's face, she saw only the face of Jesus Christ with her big hair and beard. With fear in her sight, she wants to escape. But without leaving her ecstasy, the saint, holding her with her two hands by her shoulders and looking her face, said to her, "Who do you think I am, Jesus or Catherine?"The poor child, even more frightened, cried out a great cry, so as to be heard from a crowd of her companions who ran from all over the world, and replied, "You are Jesus."And three times, at the same request, she said the same: "You are Jesus." At the very moment a great Joie flooded her soul; she had just obtained the certainty of Catherine's great holiness and of the truth of her ecstasy. She then naively told her companions "that she had never seen beauty comparable to the beauty of Jesus' face, which had taken the place of Catherine's".

The decisive rule, as does the sign Benedict XIV!, is to appreciate these kinds of cases after all.

It is said of Saint Mary Magdalene of Pazzi?, Mother Agnes and many others, that their long ecstasy did not always prevent them from going to their outer occupations. Above all, there are two circumstances in which ecstatics find it easy to move: when it comes to going to communion and obeying the orders of the superiors, as we see in particular, to name but one example, in the life of Saint Francis the Roman ‘. However, immobility and a kind of suspension of vice, at least of the life of relationships, are the ordinary effect of ecstasy, and the facts we have just pointed out are only exceptions.

In this state, the vital heat decreases ‘, especially at the extremities, i.e. at the feet and hands?, and sometimes the body is so icy that it becomes rigid like a corpse, although breathing and circulation are not entirely suspended.

Finally, the neglect of the body by the soul can be so effective, that the vital functions are or seem to be interrupted, that the least clues of organic life disappear: not a breath on the lips, not the lightest movement in the chest, in the heart or in the veins. If it is not death, we have at least all the appearances, and we have already said that the desertion of the soul could go so far.

When the principle of life withdraws at this point from the organs, the expression they take is that of immobility and death. These effects occur only in the highest and most violent delights; usually, although ecstasy removes the feeling of the outside life, it gives the physiognomy a characteristic aspect that betrays the intimate transport of the soul. By an irradiation which is due to the nature of man, the intoxication and the clarity of the inside are reflected outside; the supernatural vision delights and beatifies at the same time, although variously, soul and body. Under these rays and attractions ins. the face of the ecstatic lights up with an all celestial beauty, which translates the deepest and purest admiration. It's a real transfiguration."

This expression varies according to the nature of the vision. All intimate feelings are painted with admirable perfection on the face el in latitude. As long as the ecstasy continues, it is rare that it does not present different aspects, whose variety and transition are reflected on the body with a flexibility and fidelity that are not equal in the mobility yet so great of the human physiognomy. The forms that most often reappear are: admiration, love, joy, pain, and respond to the different kinds of visions that we have pointed out in speaking of causes; which brings back, from the point of view of expression, admiring, loving, happy, painful ecstasy.

Generally, the body keeps the position where he surprised the divine eruption: he is standing, sitting or kneeling, hands joined or extended, raised or lowered; however, the attitude may vary with the phases of the apparition?.

Finally, with the celestial expression of which the physio- {V. CEpari. Vita S. Mariæ Magd.de Pazzis. Acta Sanctorum, 25 May, vol. 19, p. 258, n. 46: Caught up in ecstasy she made no movement, nor did her eyes so much as blink once; but her countenance, at other times pale and wasted from illness, had become ruddy and full, as of some heavenly Angel.

2 ALVAREZ DE Paz. De grad. contempl. €. 9,t. 6, p. 585 : Ideo in raptu, nomie, agility is one of the most curious phenomena of ecstasy. The lovely vision that drives the soul and absorbs into the beloved object also sometimes, often even, attracts the body, the pupil, moves it with an irresistible empire and subtracts it from the natural laws of gravity. We will not insist on this prodigy, reserving that we should deal with it further in a special chapter.

Saint Térèse, describing the extraordinary effects of rapture, sums up almost everything we have just said.

"Often," she writes, "my body became so light, that he had no more gravity; sometimes it was so much, that I no longer felt my feet touching on the ground. As long as the body is in rapture, it remains as dead, and often in absolute impotence to act. He keeps the attitude where he was surprised; so he stays on foot or sitting, with his hands open or closed, in a word, in the state where the delight found. Although the feeling is not usually lost, it has happened to be completely private; this has been rare and lasted very little time. Most often the feeling is preserved, e-mails one feels I don't know what trouble, and although one can't act outside, one doesn't let one hear; it's like a confused sound that would come from far away. However, even this way of hearing ceases when the rapture is at its highest degree, I mean when the powers, wholly united with God, remain lost in him. So, in my opinion, you can't see, you can't hear, you can't feel anything." CHAPTER XXI

DE L'EXTASE

TIME Ecstasy occurs during sleep or the night before. — It is, in general, irresistible, unforeseen, sudden, transient. — Sa durée. How is the common doctrine about the short duration of rapture reconciled with the long ecstasy of the saints. — The end of ecstasy by natural awakening. The phases of this return. — The suspension of ecstasy by the reminder. — Conditions du rappel. — The conduct to be held towards the ecstatics in the long ravishing.

I. — In terms of time, we have to consider the beginning, the duration and the end of ecstasy.

The ecstasy can occur in the sleep or the sleep. The Scripture contains examples of ecstatic sleep, especially in Adam!, the ruler and source of mankind, and in Abraham, * the father of believers.

Ecstatic sleep differs from natural sleep by its intensity. In this one, the senses are not entirely bound; a bright clarity, a loud noise, a strong concussion are enough to restore them to exercise; this one, in con1 Gen. n, 21. The Lord God therefore cast a deep sleep upon Adam, and when he had fallen asleep, he took one of his ribs, etc. Ibid., xv, 12. Cumque sol occumberet, sopor irritates super Abram and horror magnus and tenebrosus invades eum. milk, resists these impressions and other much more powerful !, although the physiological conditions of the body seem to be externally the same.

It is usually during the day before that ecstasy declares itself and, preferably, in the recollection and fervor of prayer, after Holy Communion; but it also seizes out of prayer and in the midst of ordinary occupations, which takes place especially in the ravishing itself?.

The occasion that determines transport can be a word that is heard. Blessed Gilles #, of the order of Santo Domingo, no longer possessed himself by hearing the sweet name of Jesus; the same was true of St Peter of Alcantara # to these words of the Gospel: "The Word was made flesh," and, in general, every time he explained Christian mysteries. This opportunity may be a mere memory, * a thought that arises from previous thoughts or that arises unexpectedly in the mind, f, an object of piety,

Divine ecstasy can also occur in sleep, as is clear from the ecstatic sleep of Adam, when Eve was formed from his side; but ecstatic sleep differs from natural sleep in that natural sleep suspends the senses in a gentle manner, easily dissolved and apt for waking, whereas, on the contrary, ecstatic sleep binds the senses with a stronger resistance—not for rest, as natural sleep, but for the grasping of divine understandings.

2 Jos. Lopez EzQuErRRA, Luc. myst. Rapture, therefore, occurs more often in a person occupied with various things (though it sometimes occurs in one who is recollected), and then, by a sudden and unforeseen movement of the spirit, he is violently carried off toward the divine object.

3 ANDRÉ DE RESENDE. As often as he heard the most sweet name of Jesus named by others, or named it himself, which he was accustomed to do very frequently, it is incredible to say how his whole soul melted.

4 Fr. LAURENT. When he expounded the mysteries of the faith, he ordinarily seemed to be carried out of his senses and illumined by the Lord with a light from above, etc.

5 Ste TÉRÈSE, Chdl. int., 6° Dem., c. 4: One of these kinds of delights often happens without meme that one is in prayer, when a person is touched by remembering a few words that God once said to him.

8 Ste Ténèse, 1bid., 7° Dem., c. 3. In the past, when it was consumed a religious song; most often, the true cause is a vision that suddenly appears in the eyes of the soul and puts it out of itself.

II. — Ecstasy is imposed with irresistible power. Sometimes, however, God seems to wait for the consent of the soul and to make him a gentle violence. The soul can then resist, and if it refuses by humility, it feels in it the effects of this divine attraction, as if it had accepted it.

"Nearly never can we resist rapture," said Térèse! speaking of herself. Sometimes I could oppose some resistance; but as it was kind of fighting against a strong giant, I remained broken and overwhelmed with fatigue. At other times, all my efforts were in vain; my soul was taken away, my head almost always followed this movement, without I could hold it, and sometimes even my body was taken away in such a way that it no longer touched the ground. When I wanted to resist, I felt an amazing pressure under my feet that would remove me; I would not know how to compare it. No other of all the movements that were happening in the mind has anything approaching such impetuousness. It was a terrible fight; I remained broken. When God wills, all resistance is vain; there is no power against his power. From time to time he deigns to content himself with making us see that he wants to grant us this favor, and that he is only up to us to receive it. Then, if we resist it by humility, it produces the same effects as if it had obtained full consent."

Usually, ecstasy comes unexpectedly, in this sense at least that it cannot be anticipated long in advance; God, in these extraordinary favors, does not become day or hour. " However, ecstasy may take on a periodic character, such as renewal every Friday, after Holy Communion, or at the hour of crucification and the death of the Saviour.

The soul can also be prevented by a certain intimate impression, by an increasing contemplation, by irresistible impulses of the approach to rapture. These symptoms are often given to ecstatics to give them time to escape from the eyes of the public; for humble and holy souls fear nothing as long as to be surprised in those states that attract eyes and provoke esteem; and all masters ? strongly recommend that these people avoid with the utmost care to occur and publish these kinds of favors.

In any case, when it arrives, the ecstasy is sudden, without transition or sharing, as happens in the half-sleep ÿ.

The grace of ecstasy is never granted in a permanent way, so that it can enter into delight at will. "It's a sign, or at least a reason to suspect that ecstasy comes from the evil mind or from a natural cause," says Bona #, "when one brags about entering the delight every time one wants it; for no one receives this gift in a manner of habit; but God draws the soul to himself by his grace, when he wills and as he wills."This rule is so obvious and so sure, that she does not suffer any exception!

III. — From the admission of all, ecstasy is of short duration, because of the violence that the senses and the body suffer? According to Saint Teresus, in agreement with the mystics who preceded him and those who followed him, "it's a lot when she goes up to half an hour."

However, many saints are told that they spent hours, days, weeks, whole months in delight. Saint Colette 4 remained in transports which deprived her entirely of the use of her senses for six, ten, and even twelve hours. The Blessed Angel of Folignoÿ was three days in a row outside of herself. Sainte Marie-Madeleine de Pazzi$ spends so once four days, and another whole week. Saint Phantin, monk of Thessalonica, is delighted for twenty continuous days. La

1 ScHRAM. $ 600, p. 334: Si quis pro suo libitu extasin patiatur. If the ecstatic is rapt or carried out of the senses as often as he wishes, it will be a sign of diabolical ecstasy; for ecstasy is given to no one as a habit, but divine grace, as and when it wills, draws the soul to itself.

2 Boxa. Rapture is wont to last but a short time, on account of the violence inflicted on the senses and the body.

8 Sa Vie, c. 18.

4 Ér. pe Juuers. At times she remained in such a state for the space of six hours, sometimes for ten or twelve, perceiving nothing of what passed outside.

$ ARNAUD. BB. 4 jan., t. 1, p. 206, n. 193: Duravit mihi ista visio per tres dies continue.

6 Vnc. For she persisted in this (ecstasy) for eight continuous days.

One woman persevered in ecstasy for four days and four continuous nights, returning to her senses only for two hours each day.

7 BB. 30 aug., t. 40, p. 623, n. 1. For twenty whole days, rapt in mind to heaven, and perceiving no man — the venerable Mother Agnès de Jésus 'was sometimes absorbed in God for fifteen days and three weeks, nevertheless carrying out her offices, helped by her holy angel, and always answering appropriately, as if she had been fully in possession of herself!' We could cite many of these facts.

To understand and reconcile these statements, which appear to be contradictory, it is necessary to distinguish in peak ecstasy and intervals. After Saint Teresus?, who explains this very clearly, the delight undergoes alternatives of union and release from understanding, imagination and memory, while the will always remains united with God, to varying degrees however. At the height of union, this master faculty draws and fixes on the object that delights it those submitted to it. The simultaneous accession of all powers, together with the will, lasts little, not more than half an hour. After which the divine attraction relaxes; but the will does not separate itself from the object that she loves, and still maintain, at least in large part, the suspension of the senses: the intelligence, memory, the imagination detach, less to distract herself, than to reflect on the vision itself, and seek new reasons for admiration and praise, until the will reminds them or God applies them again to the object from which they have emerged, or to any other, which leads to a resumption in ecstasy.

We must hear Saint Teresus testifying to us his own experience: his statements on this subject make law among mystics!.

"This total transformation of the soul into God, produced by the rapture at its highest point," she says?, "is of very short duration; but as long as it lasts, no power has the feeling of itself, nor knows what God works.

"Maybe you will ask me, Father, how the delight sometimes lasts for several hours. I will answer from what I have often experienced.

"The delight, as I have said of union, is not continuous; the soul enjoys it only at intervals. On various occasions she stings, or rather God lukewarms in him; and after he held it all for a few moments, the will remains alone united by delight. In the other two powers, the movement is similar to that of the shadow of the needle in the sundials, which never stops. But when the Sun of Justice wants it, he knows how to make them stop; and it is this simultaneous rapture of all powers which, in my opinion, is short-lived. However, as the transport that took the soul away was so powerful, the will, despite the new movements of the other two faculties (intelligence and memory) remains deeply damaged in God. In vain, by the agitation of their natural activity, do they want to disturb his peace, it dominates them as sovereign. To be not troubled by the senses, the least of its enemies, she also suspends them at her will, because this is the will of the Lord. The eyes remain almost all the time closed, although they would not want to close; and if sometimes they open, they do not distinguish anything, as I have already said. In this state, the body has lost all power to act; hence it results that, when memory and understanding unite again to the will, these two powers encounter less difficulty. Let him to whom God does such a favor, therefore, have no difficulty in finding himself, for several hours, the body as bound, and the memory and understanding distracted. Most often, to the truth, the distraction of these two powers consists only in spreading in praises of God, of which they are as drunken, or in trying to understand what has happened in them. Yet they cannot do so at their own discretion, since their condition resembles that of a man who, after a long sleep full of dreams, is still only half awake."

IV. — One comes out of the ecstasy in two ways: by single island awakening or by reminder.

The ordinary return is due to the cessation of the inner charm that carries the soul: the cause ceasing, the effect must cease. The ecstasy leaves the soul to extend to the body; the body only regains its action when the soul is freed; or rather, removed from the senses by the vision that drives it and raises it to a higher life, the soul, as soon as it is restored to itself, resumes all its organic functions.

This return to outside life is instantaneous or gradual.

The instantaneity seems to be the common law. Free from the attraction which was absorbed outside, soul, alert and as rejuvenated, finds effortlessly the regular and conscious government of the organism.

When the release occurs in degrees, it is not uncommon for it to be laborious. The face of the ecstatic, previously suspended by the mysterious charm, falls insensitively: its features relax, the mouth closes, the eyelids fall down, its head leans, and it then occurs on its physiognomy, again human, an anxious and prolonged malaise. While the ecstasy suddenly removed senses, the soul, when the vision ceases, only gradually resumes its action on the organs; it is all the more hard to restore its numb senses and as paralyzed, that it has been separated from them with more violence and training. It's a painful struggle and a kind of anguish similar to that of a person who makes an effort to get out of a deep sleep, from an overwhelming lethargy!.

Moreover, it is only to regret that the soul is brought back from a bright and enchanting vision to the darkness and servility of the flesh. Sometimes the fixity seems to start again, and the face lightens several times; but these are only memories. When Blessed Gilles ?, by the order of the Preachers Brothers, came out of divine contemplation, it was heard, even from afar, to grow sighs and moanings, as if his soul could hardly bear to have to resume his bodily functions, just as a child suffers and complains, if, at the moment he sucks milk with an greedy sovereign, he is taken out of the mother's womb. Blessed Christine de Stommeln took long enough to come back from her delights. These were first interspersed moanings, which printed light oscillations on the whole body; his breath, until then impercepble, became deeper and deeper; his lips articulated a few words that betrayed inner drunkenness and threw it into jubilation transports. The exaltation slowly calmed down and ended with a great abundance of tears. After a three-day pleasure, Saint Catherine of Siena ? was in a sort of drunkenness and drowsiness that she could not dominate.

Usually the awakening is quick, if not instantaneous. The soul, suddenly freed from supernatural charm, immediately regains the empire over the organs. This usually happens when the vision withdraws to allow the ecstatic to go about his duties of state and to satisfy either obedience or charity. The traits of this nature are read in the life of Mother Agnes of Langeac and in that of another servant of God, Mary of Oignies 4. Quel1 PIERRE DE DACIE. When therefore she had sat thus, leaning a little over a certain bench, with her face and hands veiled by a cloth, for the space of three or four hours, she groaned with sobbing, so that her whole body was moved a little; and afterward she began to breathe a little, though much more rarely and with less movement than people commonly do. After this she began to speak, yet so softly that it could scarcely be perceived by one listening attentively; not indeed in a complete sentence, but in a single sweet and loving word uttered — that is, 'Most Loving,' 'Sweetest,' or 'Most Dear to the Heart,' 'Inmost,' or 'Bridegroom' — she exulted with so great and so unusual a leaping [of joy] that, her whole body trembling... she persisted in this under a single movement drawn by the Spirit... She began to lament the many miseries of her exile, with the greatest bitterness of heart and a profusion of tears, in such a manner of weeping as I had never before seen.

2 RaymonD DE CAPOUE. At length..., that holy ecstasy having ended, the spirit, enticed by the heavenly things it had seen, returned so unwillingly to bodily life that the virgin remained as though continually asleep, and in the likeness of one in a delirium who cannot wake from sleep, yet does not sleep fully.

3 OF Lantages, Life of the Ven. Mother Agnes of Jesus, Passim.

% JacQ. DE Viry. BB. 23 jun., vol. 25, p. 562, n. 65: Quenque tamen propter indigentium aliquorum utilitatem, nullo nisi Spiritu sancto inciquelois, while this last was plunged into the sleep of contemplation, the Holy Spirit awakened her by saying: "Go, someone is waiting for you, not out of curiosity, but out of necessity." This is still taking place in the reminder*, which we are going to talk about; but in these cases, the awakening can be slow and painful. The violence that Mary of Ognies used to take away from the rapture sometimes went as far as to have her blood shed in her mouth, as if her bowels had been torn apart; and Dominique of Jesus Mary *, undressed carma, was never reminded of her ecstasy without him vomiting the blood in abundance. Others, Anne-Catherine Emmerich ‘, for example, come out instantly and without apparent suffering from their ecstatic sleep, to the voice of obedience.

V. — The reminder is an order made to ecstatically by the rightful superior to interrupt his rapture and return to ordinary life. The power of recall can be delegated as the authority itself. aunt, cogebatur suum somnum disrumpere. Go, said the Spirit; for someone awaits you not out of curiosity, but out of necessity.

1 Louis DE Saint-Jacques. Vie de S. Michael de Sanctis, 1. 9, c. 6, p. 110: Hearing about the glory of the blessed, F. Michel pousse son cri ordinaire et tombe en extase.. The general ran and said to the brother: "My dear brother Michel, therefore, be careful that I am here."This flaw obeying Tevint to him, at the very moment, to the voice of his superior.

2 JacQ. DE Viry. J6ëd. She indeed, having heard of the arrival of strangers, lest she should perhaps scandalize someone, doing violence to herself, tore her spirit away, with such great pain, from that sweet delight of contemplation, from the embraces of her Spouse, that at times, as if her innards were torn open, she vomited or spat out pure blood in great quantity, preferring to be afflicted with this martyrdom rather than disturb the peace of the Brothers, and especially of the pilgrims.

3 CARAMEL. Dominicus. She immediately began to discharge a great quantity of blood, as was her custom; for the body, when the soul is withdrawn and restored to the senses, suffers the utmost violence.

4 P. ScumMoEcEr, Life of Anne-Calherine Emmerich, c. 18, t. 1, p. 278: Various questions made by doctors remained unanswered. Then M. Vicar General said to him, "I command you to answer by virtue of obedience."As soon as these words were spoken, she rejected her head on the side where we were with surprising speed..., and answered all the questions. This injunction, duly rebutted by whom according to law, always has its effect ‘in truly divine ecstasy, and there are examples in the lives of most ecstatics, especially those of St Joseph of Copertino * and the venerable Mother Agnes. A delight that resists this trial should not be regarded as divine; but authors of the greatest weight, such as Saint Ignatius of Loyola * and Cardinal Bona ÿ, hold this sign as infallible only as much as it has the support of other circumstances. If the reminder is formulated externally, there is no evidence that the demon, assuming the author of the alienation of the senses, cannot determine the awakening as it produces the transport in order to mislead, but if the recall is purely mental, God alone has the virtue to realize it, because only he is able to know it. The devil only conjectures.

1 Josepnx Lopez EZQUERRA, Luc. myst. In ecstasy, in the rapture of the body and the other favors where the senses do not function, the soul must return at once to the senses and obey fully the director's precept, as... the mystical writers commonly hold.

2 BonAvENT. CLAvVER. BB. 18 sept., t. 45, p. 998, n. 34. Nor did [she] send forth ecstasies, except when I, by holy obedience, had so commanded.

3 DE Lantages, Life of Venus. M. Agnès, 3° P, c. 3. Et passim.

# BENED. XIV. De serv. Worthy of great notice is the example related by Father Ribadeneyra in the Life of St.... Ignatii de Loyola, I. 5, c. 10. Where he relates that Father Reginald, a grave man of the Dominican family, met at Rome with St.... Ignatius, and [related] to him in the presence of the same Father.... Ribadeneyra, [that he] had related at Bologna... that there was a Virgin outstanding in the power of prayer, who was so often estranged from the senses that she did not even feel fire brought near her, etc., and by St.... [they] asked Ignatius what his judgment on such matters was, and he replied that, of the signs set forth, only this consideration was to be held: that the Virgin, as had been recounted, showed the most ready obedience to the commands of her superiors; and when Reginald had then departed and had begun the discourse of St. Ignatius had continued, Ribadeneyra adds that he concluded at last that those signs could be from God, and could also be from the demon.

which, however, is not a sign VI. — On the strict conditions of the reminder, the authors disagree. According to some, it is sufficient for the recall to be mentally responsible; according to others, the inner injunction is effective only in the case of a special inspiration from God; and, regularly, the order of the superior must be verbal. Scaramelli pronounces himself ‘for this latter feeling, and the reason he claims is that the command, in order to compel, must be expressed externally. This reason does not seem decisive, for the perception of this order does not occur through the channel of the senses, since, in fact, the senses are suspended, and that, from the admission of all, this order can be respondent at a distance and in an unknown language of ecstatic. It is therefore a whole spiritual relationship that establishes soul to soul, as well as ecstatics are more than once attested.

Saint Joseph of Copertinoÿ, questioned how, in the name of obedience, he returned to him, while he remained insensitive to iron and fire, replied that, in his abstraction, he did not hear the voice of his superior, but that God, who loves obedience, withdrew from him the _ 4 Direct. Myst. Tratt. 3, c. 20, n. 192, p. 212. Sd che alcuni molto si sernono di tali comandi mentali, e che vi fanno sopra gran fondamento, parendo loro di pottere per questa via giungere con sicurezza a discuoprire se sia falsa o sia vera l'estasi di qualche loro penitente. This, however, I cannot in any way approve of them.

2 Jbid., p. 213. Who ever said that an internal command is a true precept, when it is of the essence of every precept that it be made manifest? Chi a detto mai che il superiore abbia facoltà di comandare con atti interni, e che il sudido sia sottoposto all Therefore, when the Director imposes on the ecstatic soul purely mental precepts, there is no reason why God should accommodate himself to such orders. And if at times he does accommodate himself to it, he does so for other purposes of his own, and not because such condescension is owed to such commands.

8 Pasrmoviccui. In truth, neither force, nor iron, nor fire could recall him from his ecstasies; but when recalled through obedience, he was at once restored to himself. Asked accordingly how this came about, he replied: "The superior's voice, indeed, is not heard by him, but a vision..." so that he obeyed at once. Marie Moerl ! also declared that she was reminded of the ecstasy, not by the outer word, that she did not hear, but by an inner voice to which she could not not obey.

In these circumstances, an internal act seems to be sufficient, no doubt, it would be difficult to establish that God absolutely must comply with this injunction set out outside human conditions; but it would be equally difficult to demonstrate that he must give in to the very external reminder. The question is not whether God is required to give effect to a mentally expressed order, for everything here is a free condescendence of his goodness; it is sufficient to see that he grants it.

Citons quelques faits.

Father Antoine Villacre, in charge of the Franciscan province in which the monastery of Agréda was located, wanted to examine for himself all that was asked of him about the ravishes and supernatural states of the venerable Mary of Jesus. So he moved to the place, questioned the nuns, saw with his eyes the wonders of which he had been told, and what shed much more light, received from the servant of God the faithful communication of the sublime graces of which she was the object.

"Having discovered, in the examination which he had just made, the perfect obedience in which this soul was established from the beginning, he resolved to make a test whose effect is a sure mark of the good spirit, although the failure of this effect must not always be interpreted in bad part. One morning he went to the monastery of the nuns, and in the way he was told that the servant of God was, after communion, delighted in ecstasy to her ordinary. The superior prudent, returning to himself, inwardly commanded him to come to the parlor, where he had something to say to him, hoping that the Seioneur would do this wonder in confirmation of the perfect obedience and good spirit of his handmaiden. His divine Majesty did what he hoped, making known, in the sublimit of his ecstatic communication, to the lower obedient the command of his superior. She immediately returned from her delight and went to the parlor, where, in the time that the provincial arrived in turn, she was to receive her orders there. The superior praised God for the experience which he had just made of such a clear manifestation of his favors; and, judging about establishing the whole truth in the monastery, he communicated to the abbess and the principal nuns what had happened. The abbess wanted to experience it herself. Being ill in the infirmary, and having learned that the servant of God was delighted in ecstasy in the choir, she commanded her to come incontinent to visit her; and the Lord renewing the same grace, her handmaid returned from the delight and immediately went to the infirmary, according to the order she had received from her superior. All those who had some authority over the servant of God experimented in the same afterward, not only her superiors, but also her confessors and the novices' mistress, and they saw her return from the highest of her delights to their only inner commandment."

What is reported from the servant of God Dominique of Jesus Mary is more explicit and even more wonderful. His superior orders him out loud, in front of him.

1 CARAMUEL, Dominicus, n. 406, p. 192: Erat in ecstasi Dominicus ‘and some of his brothers, to come out of his ecstasy; but in himself he formulates an act of contrary will, and Dominique remains in his delight. Driven before King Philip Il[', this monarch, to whom the General of the Carmelites had delegated his authority, also enjoined him orally to regain his senses, while inside he contradicted this order; and the saint religious remained still; he commanded him in spirit to speak to the queen, and he spoke; to be silent, and he stood silent; and finally, to break his ecstasy, and he returned immediately.

Despite these facts, we would dare to pronounce ourselves absolutely for the constant effectiveness of the inner reminder, when Father Scaramelli? assures, in the name of experience, that these secret orders often remain ineffective. But, far from irritating them, as he openly does, we would advise practice of it, because success provides plausible proof of the divinity of ecstasy, while the appreciably manifested reminder makes this demonstration only in a negative way, i.e. that his insurgents would be a sign that God is not there; but, effective, it is not sufficient for him alone to characterize the delight; 1 he needs the other guarantees of divine intervention.

Besides, whether their authority is immediate or delegated, and whether they exercise it mentally or verbally, superiors must only engage in these experiences for legitimate reasons, primarily for the purpose of recognizing or persuading others that ecstasy is true and divine; never by lightness, vanity, curiosity or any other unacceptable reason. They must also refrain from making ecstatic injunctions that he could not perform without miracles, such as rising from his bed, if he is sick or paralytic, to stand suspended in the air, to reveal secret things, to perform healings; it would be tempting God, who alone has the power to carry out these wonders, and God is in no way obliged, in order to satisfy man's whims, to derogate from the laws of nature. A secret inspiration of the Holy Spirit can explain and legitimize such commands, which are always followed by their effect. Apart from this, they can only be excused in ignorance of the rules, and their inefficiency would prove neither for nor against ecstatic transport.

Practically, the course to be followed in these trials is that of Father Scaramelli? and which he sums up in these two points: first, to impose nothing that is suitable for the person and the state in which it is located; second, to prescribe nothing to him except what it would be entitled to require of her if she had the use of her senses; for, of two things, moon, or it is intended to command the creature, and then it is to speak to speak nothing; or it is said to give oblivion to God, which would be an unbearable tyranny, to moins, as we have said, to a movement within the Holy Spirit.

VIL — Ecstasy can resume after one or more reminders; the defense to return to it would be excessive and almost always unsuccessful: when God gave a sufficient sign of his presence, his action cannot be bound by human injunctions. Sometimes, however, these kinds of prohibitions have a more or less prolonged effectiveness.

More importantly, the order not to leave the ecstasy is beyond the limits of legitimate authority, especially since this negative result would provide no evidence in favour of the supernaturality and divinity of the phenomen.

If the rapture lasts for a long time, whether or not there has been a reminder, there would be an inconvenience and crutitude to subject the ecstatic to all kinds of experiments, such as seeking to awaken it with deafening noises, shaking it violently, making it breathe deleterious smells, torture it with iron and fire. Their current insensitivity does not mean that the organs keep track of the violence and do not feel the consequences. As Godinez counsels!, and after him Scaramelli?, one must simply take the person away from the eyes of the public, in a place withdrawn where it will be left in the hands of God; one will only visit it from time to time to help and relieve it, if necessary, in the work of CHAPTER XXII.

JUBILATION AND MYSTICAL EMBRAMENT The jubilation to its principle in love. — It translates into drunkenness

qui transporte. — She exhales by shouts, songs, movements

extraordinaires. — Les embrasements. Simple chaleur intérieure. — La

combustion. — L'incendie. — Jubilation et embrasements de saint Philippe

de Néri. — Explanation of mystical incandescence.

[L — Divine love is usually betrayed in souls by consolations and drunkenness unknown to the earth; for it is, as Saint Thomas of Aquinas says, the source of spiritual joy. But sometimes he throws in wonderful access of jubilation, which burst on the body in different ways.

It is these transports that we would like to describe.

II. — Most often, it is an intoxication that precipitates the movement of the heart, ignites extreme and suave ardours that go so far as to cause fainting. On the anniversary of the ascension of the Saviour, Saint Julienne du Mont-Cornillon ? could not at times remain in his house;

1 Sum. 2. 2. q. 28, a. 1. Spiritual joy which one has concerning God is caused by charity.

But on the solemnity of the Lord's Ascension, Juliana at times could not bear being shut up in houses; rather she had to be led out, or carried, into the open air, where she could behold the sky. She was so filled and replete with grace that, her narrow body being unable to contain its fullness, she to whom Juliana had come feared greatly lest, the vessel of the body bursting, her visitor should be split through the middle; so it was necessary to lead her, or carry her, outside so that she could contemplate the heavens. There she seemed to follow with her eyes the glorious humanity of the Saviour penetrating into the heavenly abode, and her heart felt such braiding, that he was as it were about to break.

In this state, we grow sighs, we feel the need to speak, to cry, to praise and exalt the object of love and to relieve ourselves of the delicious torments that it imposes. Brother Gérard !, one of the first disciples of Saint Alphonse de Liguori, felt in the heart impetuousnesses which torched him loud and deep sighs. "If I was alone on a mountain," he once said to the doctor Santorelli, "11 seems to me that I would enflame the world of my sighs."And applying the doctor's hand to his heart, he felt him beating violently, as if he wanted to escape from the chest. The ardours that consumed Saint Catherine of Siena ? were so vivid, that they took away from her in spite of her unceasing moaning. His confessor warned him to abstain as much as she could, at least when she was near the altar, so as not to disturb the priests in the action of the sacrifice. To comply with this order, she withdrew from the altar, and she prayed to God to enlighten her director on the impossibility where she was to stand, and he immediately received a supernatural light that made him understand "This joy that the soul feels is so excessive," said Saint Terèse!, "that she would not want to enjoy it alone, but to all, so that all may help to praise the Lord. Oh! that of parties, that of demonstrations she would, if it were in her power, to make everyone understand what her happiness is!"

: Sometimes the transport sexhales by singing, which is the ordinary expression of intimate exaltation. The only name of Jesus tossed Saint Felix of Cantalice into a sweet drunkenness, and he himself never uttered it except with incomparable suavity. To satisfy the ardour of his love, he composed of pious hymns that he sang alone. or with others, always in the brawl of a holy drunkenness. Another son, much more famous, of the Seraphic Francis of Assisi, Saint Peter of Alcantara?, was so filled with divine consolations, that, some effort was made not to sing in public, he could not stop, which made him treat as mad by the worldly; heavenly madness that envied Saint Teresis ‘ and that she wished her sisters.

IIT. — At other times, the impressions are so intoxicating that the body, unable to endure rest, abandons itself to impetuous movements, which attest that the soul is no longer the masteress of itself.

Thus David * danced before the ark of the Lord, until he was foolish; that St Pascal Baylon!, carried with ferventness and a burning face, tripped and danced in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary. Brother Gérard Majella, whom we have already talked about, sometimes also danced in his ecstasy. One day that Christine the Admirable spoke of Our Lord with the nuns of a convent that she loved to visit, the Spirit founded upon her by a sudden and unexpected invasion. His body began to turn on itself as a toupee agitated by children, and a movement so verliginous that one could no longer distinguish the shape of its limbs. After she had so turned for a while, this movement sapped, as if the access had passed, and she entered into a sweet rest, during which one heard between her chest and her throat a wonderful harmony. Then, returning a little to herself, she rose up, as drunk, truly drunk: "Bring me, she exclaimed with a brilliant voice, the whole community, that we might bless the sovereign goodness of the Saviour Jesus in the wonders that he operates. The sisters ran immediately, for the servant of God was a great subject of joy and consolation. Then she sang the Te Deum, which all continued with transport. This song ended, Christine found herself completely, and having learned what had happened to her, she fled confused, saying that she was crazy. These facts, no doubt, must not be set up as a law; but their very strangeness does not allow them to be ignored in a complete enumeration of mystical phenomena.

IV. — These violences of love are manifested above all by the outsides of heat and fire. God is a consuming fire, according to the expression of Scripture!; when he appears in the soul, the dilate, he heats up, 1 l'enflames, and these ardours sometimes become so intense, that they extend to the flesh, as it happened to the psalmist? when he cried: "My heart and my flesh have braided in the living God."

These expressive manifestations of love, in the form of fire, occur to varying degrees.

The first consists in an extraordinary warmth in the heart, the home of love, and from there radiating on all organs. A reliable witness, said the historian of the Blessed Julienne of Mount Cornillon, testified that he had seen more than once a great smoke rise above the head of the pious virgin in prayer; which was probably, adds the same writer, the sign of fire burning in his heart. Divine love lit up in St Brigitte ‘ such ardour, that she did not feel the excessive colds of Suede. Saint Wenceslasÿ,

1 Hebr. xx, 29 : Etenim Deus noster ignis consumens est.

2 Ps. [Ps.] LXXXIII, 3: My heart and my flesh have exulted in the living God.

A certain person is accustomed to testify — one whose assertion it is not permitted to doubt — that she saw at Namur the virgin of Christ, Juliana, at one time after the Gospel engaged in prayer, with above her head a great rising cloud of smoke ascending upward...

4 BB. 8 oct., t. 52, p. 403, n. 446. Thus she was accustomed to sleep there, having over her a plain garment or a cloak. When she was asked how she could rest there amid the most intense cold that afflicts those parts, she answered, saying: 'I feel within me so much warmth from divine grace that that cold which is outside does not press me much toward a softer bed.'

5 Caro. IV. BB. 98 Sept., vol. 47, p. 780, n. 6: Cum quadam vice iret duke of Bohemia, visiting at night the churches, barefoot, through the ice and snow, left behind bloody prints that warmed the earth; he therefore walked first and recommended to his companion, who suffered and complained of the cold, to lay his feet on the trace of his feet.

V. — The fire of divine love can become so intense that it forces the use of refrigerants to temper the ardours that invade and consume the body. Saint Stanislas Kostka, "the venerable Mother Agnes, and an infinite number of others, are told that the inner flames of love caused them delicious tortures, which could hardly be softened by applying wet cloths on their chests, or by injections of cold water. "Divine love was so burning up Saint Francis Xavier," reports his main historian? "that he was usually seen with his face burning, and that, to temper the ardours from within and from outside, one had to throw water into his breast. Often, in preaching or walking, he felt so fond and so inflamed that, unable to sustain this inner burning, he opened his all-B sudan. Wenceslaus, at night, while snow and ice covered the fields and the road, was followed by his soldier-secretary, named Podywoy, in whose feet the cold grew so strong, although he was shod, that he could not bear it. Cui B. Wenceslaus aiens dixit: Pone pedes tuos in vestigio pedum suddenly in front of the stomach; and this is what was seen to him in several encounters, in the public squares of Malaca, Goa and on the shore of the sea."

On a winter day, which St Francis of Assisi was on his way, ascended, because of his great weakness, upon the donkey of a poor man, at night caught him; he had to stop under a rock forming a kind of vault, to shelter there from the inconveniences of night and snow. But soon he heard his companion turn aside and push complaining moans: the cold, whose clothes too light could not defend him, prevented him from sleeping. Then the saint, all burning with the ardour of divine love, spreads his hand on him, and, admirable thing! at the touch of this sacred hand which carried in her the fire of a fire all seraphic, as Saint Bonaventure expresses!, the cold disappears, and this man feels inside and outside a heat similar to that which comes out of the mouth of a furnace. Immediately strengthened in his mind and body, he slept until the morning, in the midst of the rocks and snow, better than he had ever done in his bed, as he assured him himself.

We would like to be able to tell the admirable ardours and projections that Jesus' love brought forth in Saint Mary Magdalene of Pazzi?. Her transports were so impetuous that, unable to contain Islands, she traveled through the monastery with inflamed exclamations; she was heard constantly exclaiming: "O love! to love!" To temper the fire from which she was set on fire, she was often

1 Legenda S. Francisci. C. 43, T. 44, D. 339. forced to drink a large amount of water, the coldest one could find, to throw it on his face and chest, to plunge his arms into it, without nevertheless succeeding in appeasing the inner heat that consumed it. Often she was seen waving a piece of her veil as a fan, in order to bring some relief to this strange torture that set her whole face on fire. -

VI. — When the flames come to this point that the body boils, becomes incandescent and burns objects under its contact, this is what mystics call the fire.

Blessed Jean Colombini!, founder of the order of the Jesuates, felt such ardour that he was almost naked in the harshest winters. One day, one of his friends met him in the public square, and asked him how, barely clothed, he could withstand such an intolerable cold, when the others dared to go out well covered in clothes and coats. "Give me your hand," said the holy man, and taking her, he makes her touch her breasts uncovered. "Well," he said to him, "do you think I am freezing?" "No, indeed," replied the other, removing her hand as if she had encountered burning coals. God! What is this wonder? Is it flesh or a hot iron that I have just touched?"And he is astonished, neither that the Blessed does not bother, but rather that he is not consumed by such intense heat. Sometimes this fire became so burning, that it was shining in luminous rays from all parts of its body, especially from its face; it itself, losing the feeling of external things in the transports of its love, fell to the ground, and its companions saw its face illuminated with a redness of flame, whose Day was powerless to sustain the brightness.

St. Peter of Alcantara!, consumed by this suave fire of charity, could not stand at any time in his cell; he began to run in the countryside, in order to temper by the freshness of the air blazing of his body. One day, when the divine flame came to invade, he went down to his neck in an ice-water reservoir; but, far from finding some refreshment there, the ice melted and the water boiled, as in a vase on the fire, so much was set on fire in the heart of the saint, from where, like a powerful home, these inextinguishable ardours escaped.

The charity that ignited the soul of Saint Catherine of Genoa? carried fire in all parts of her body. His chest, in particular, and the whole area of the heart, seemed incandescent, and he could not apply his hand to it without feeling an intolerable heat.

The fire of love made the heart of Blessed Nicolas Factor, a Franciscan religious, a true oven1 Fr. LAURENT. One day, feeling that the flame of this divine fire had also seized his body, he ran out into the garden, and there plunged himself, up to the neck, into a frozen pond...; yet by a wondrous miracle of divine charity the ice was seen to melt, and the pond to boil like a seething pot; because the heart of St. ...of Peter of Alcantara, burning within, had made the water boiling hot through the heat of his body.

2 CLem. XII. Bulla canon. BB. 15 sept., t. 45, p. 183, n. 39: Animus veluti altare Domini..., totus exarsit, vaporem exhalans divini ignis, non solum penetrantis inflammantisque cordis intima, sed pertingentis usque ad extenaise. Unable to sustain the violence, in the middle of the winter he threw himself into icy waters, which immediately became hot and almost boiling. "

The blessed Lucie de Narni?, of the third order of Santo Domingo, consumed by this inner fire, had the skin ash and black, and the flesh as cooked and roasted. The flames swollen and lifted his chest so disproportionately, that the sisters, fearing that his ribs were broken, tried to contain them with all the effort of their hands. "Ah!" she said at the height of her access, "I burn and cannot live! With fire! with fire, my sisters! the love of Jesus consumes."

The heart of Saint Paul of the Cross, founder of the Passionist congregation, was burning at this point of the divine flame, that more than once the corresponding part of his wool tunic was roasted, and that two false ribs had a noticeable protruding on the left side.

So extraordinary as these facts appear, they are not rare, mainly among the ecstatic ones; but we must limit our narratives there, or rather we want to close them by quoting a last example, that of St Philip of Neri, in which most of the wonders of mystic jubilation seem to be summed up as in a VIL. — Philip asked the Holy Spirit to fill him with his gifts. His vows were to be beautifully fulfilled. On the day of Pentecost of the year 1544, as he was repeating his prayer, he suddenly felt a heavenly flame so impetuous, that, unable to sustain himself, he fell to the ground, and sought, when he discovered his burning breast, to give himself some relief. As these ardours slowed down a little, he rose up, but everything was still flooded with an ineffable joy that made his whole body, especially his heart, tremble. He carried his hand to his side and found that he had made an uplift in the region of the heart of the fist, without any inconvenience.

He was then twenty-nine years old, and he will live even more than fifty, usually available, always alert and joyful, without ever suffering or speaking of this wonder, which will not be revealed until after his death. In doing the autopsy of his body, the doctors found in the part of the thorax where the miraculous protuberance occurred two false ribs, the fourth and fifth, broken, and their fragments, separated at a small distance from each other. In this enlarged space, his heart, which was of extraordinary size and muscle strength, could expand with greater amplitude.

As soon as the saint began to pray, to speak of God's things, or to perform some sacred function, his heart palpitations became extreme; it was said that his breast would break; his body so trembled, that all under him and around him was shaken, his bed,

1 BARNABEI. At twenty-nine years of age, on a certain day near the feast of Pentecost, he ardently prayed to the Lord the Holy Spirit that He would graciously and mercifully grant him His gifts. Mos erat. Philippo. Spiritus sancti.gratiam implorare.. Ecce autem tanto amoris does his room itself, absolutely as in an earthquake.

The result was such warmth throughout his body that in his very old age, and although exhausted by all kinds of austerity, he was forced, until the middle of winter, to seek some refreshment. It was often necessary, during the coldest nights, to leave open Islands doors and windows of the room where he was resting, and to shake the air around him with a linen or fan. His clothes were usually open on his chest, and when in bad weather he was warned to take more precautions, he replied that it was useless, since, far from suffering from the cold, he was plagued with extreme ardour. Despite his great mortification, he was forced from time to time to drink a little fresh water, to quench his throat dried up by the burning breath that was escaping from his chest.

Sometimes the impetuousness became so vivid that he betrayed by exclaims inflamed his anxious lovers. "I am wounded by charity," he exclaimed. Let me, Lord, let me! My poor mortality can no longer sustain so much joy! I die, Lord, unless you help me!

But his transports were never more ardent or admirable than at the altar. There, it was in vain that he tried to contain them. Sometimes, losing his voice, he was forced to stop; sometimes he experienced a vehement agitation that moved the altar itself. His whole body was barely on the tip of his feet, and in this situation he was seen to be braided with an irresistible movement and as dancing in spite of him. In fact, he was often delighted out of himself, and he had to be pulled by his clothes to bring him back, and tell him how he was doing with the sacrifice. Also, when he was to celebrate in public, he took care to take a servant who was initiated into his secret and who gave him these good offices.

It was usually on offer that the exultation of his mind and heart began. A tremor then caught him; he could only pour the wine into the chalice by pressing the elbows on the altar, and, admirable thing, though the chalice was very small and he put a lot of wine there, he never poured a drop of it. When he raised, according to custom, the divine Hostie, often his arms remained in the air, as stiffened, without he could lower them. That's why he put the greatest speed to carry out this movement; he did the same when he had to distribute holy communion, for then also his fervour slammed immediately and shook his whole body; one could see above the ciborium, that he held with a trembling hand, sow and raise the holy species, with the other hand he quickly laid the host on the tongue of the communicants, though he never let none fall. Only once one saw an escape from his fingers in his convulsive agjitations; but she remained suspended in the air, to the great admiration of the assistants. After taking the precious Blood, he sucked with incredible greed the drops attached to the edge of the chalice, and pressed it so hard with his lips and teeth, that he had almost worn it. To hide the joy that was now shining on his face, he recommended that the servant present the ablutions only when he warned him. These were, in short, the drunkennesses of divine love in Saint Philip of Neri.

VIH. — The explanation of these strange facts is not without difficulty, although not everything is mystery.

Undoubtedly, there is a striking relationship between love and fire, as St. Denis admirably explains. *

:G.45. Migne; it, Col. 327 and 398. As fire consumes and changes in itself everything that approaches it and undergoes its action, so divine love transforms into God the creature that submits to its power.

There is another more striking reason for the relationship between spiritual love and the body heat of the heart. The heart is the organ that responds to the emotional life; the more man extends and activates his life of love, the deeper in his heart is the backlash of this inner activity, and this backlash is blamed by an increasing acceleration of blood in this organ, and from there in the whole body. However, the intensity of heat is directly related to that of movement, which is its true generator. This explains in large part most of the mystical burnings: love accelerates the movement of the heart; this movement determines a proportional heat in this organ first, and then throughout the body.

However, the natural correlation between the intimate love of the soul and the sensitive heat of the organs is not enough to give reason for all these phenomena; for, in many, the incandescence occurs without any symptoms of fever or abnormal acceleration of the blood. Moreover, the body could not naturally support such violent shaking: in the burning of the fire, especially when they are repeated, the flesh should consume itself, calcinate itself. Nothing similar happened: the burnings and the transports did not prevent Blessed Colombini, St. Peter of Alcantara, St. Philip of Neri and others, from reaching an advanced age.

Therefore, the best explanation seems to us to be CHAPTER XXIII.

LES SOUFFRANCES MYSTIQUES

THE DONATION OF WEAPONS AND MYSTICAL DISEASES The spirit of Christianity on reparation by the cross. — Formes diverses

des souffrances mystiques. — Le don des larmes. Différentes sortes de

larmes. — Sources des larmes infuses. — Les maladies mystiques : leurs

causes. — The three signs to which they are recognized, namely:

of which they occur, their symbolic significance, their effects. —

Quelques traits. - Admirable painting in St. Lidwine.

I. — It is the law of Christianity that the restoration of fallen man is achieved through voluntary suffering. Jesus Christ glorified his Father and redeemed man by suffering, and he prolongs in the most holy souls his reparation and redemption by pain. You can't love it without loving the cross. The inflamed soul of his love is therefore called to reproduce the expiating life of this divine Reparator.

Love, moreover, has the first effect of associating with the pains of the Beloved: "Remember," said Our Lord to the Blessed Marguerite Mary!, "that it is a crucified God whom you want to marry; therefore you must conform to him, saying goodbye to all the pleasures of life, since there will be no more for you who will have no more pleasure.

1 Life of the Blessed by its contemporary, vol. 1, p. 67. are not crossed by the cross."And could the lover not suffer by seeing the object of his unseen love, repulsed, outraged? If love produces joy, then it also produces, by a natural consequence, suffering.

Thus is explained the great attraction that carries the loving souls to the crucified life. Jesus Christ responds to their desires and fulfills his plans for reparation by adding to the pains and tribulations of his faithful servants special trials that hasten and consume their immolation. The distinctive character of these trials is to find no explanation in the regular order of nature, and to betray, by their nature or by their causes, a supernatural origin.

IT. — Tears are the ordinary sign of pain. When they come from a supernatural source, they must be regarded as a free gift from God.

Without causing injury or alteration in the organs, love, through its desolations, can throw the body into an extreme demotion that expresses internal anguish. But usually the body pain is located, and when it results from an organic alteration, it constitutes what is called a disease. If the principle of morbid affection starts from nature, the disease is natural; when it proceeds from a higher cause, the disease is, in this case, the responsibility of the mystic.

Finally, the main reason for mystical suffering is to associate with the Saviour's passion, and this talk can go so far as to mark on the flesh the traces of crucifixion by stigmatization.

This chapter deals with the supernatural gift of tears and mystical diseases; the next two will be devoted to the interesting issue of stigma. We have spoken at length about desolations and inner sorrows, describing the passive trials that prepare for contemplation. What remains to be said on this subject will find its place among the accessories of stigmatization.

IL. — Tears are the natural expression of pain, and, as Saint Thomas notes?, even though they come from the joys of love, they assume a mixture of sadness.

It is important to distinguish from which tears it is IC.

Tears are active or passive, depending on whether they spring from the sole effort of nature, or whether they are due to a special and gratuitous action of the Holy Spirit. Active tears are generally indifferent in themselves; they become good or bad, depending on the character of their object or end. Those who are evil are born from the very source of our sins, that is, our passions. Among honest tears, some are caused by natural motives, good in themselves; others, by supernatural motives. These different kinds of active tears, either good, bad, natural or supernatural, are not those of interest to the mystic; it is concerned only with infuse or passive tears.

They are called infuses, because they are not their raison d'être in nature, and they are a free gift from God, passive, because it is not in the power of the will to bring them forth or to tarnish their source!

This gift is frequently found among the saints. The Blessed Marguerite of Hungary ? had the cheeks consumed by the tears that were constantly flowing from her wishes, while she was praying. Saint Anschaire $, the first archbishop of Hamburg, asked for a long time and obtained, at the end of his life, to be able to cry at will. The devil complains that the tears that Saint Auxence * mixes with his prayers burn him. We could quote infinitely, and we believe we can say that no other gratuitous and extraordinary gift has ever been granted with as much profusion as that of tears, because no other one is better suited to the present condition of man.

IV. — Among these tears are several species, which Joseph Lopez Ezquerra 5 brings back to the three sources of pain, desire and love.

The former are caused by the double desolation of having offended God and seeing him offended. These were no doubt the tears Mary Magdalene watered her feet

1 Jos. Lopez Ezquerra, Luc. myst., n. 146: The cause of all these is altogether supernatural and infused, although they flow naturally through the eyes; whence we call tears of this kind infused, not only on account of their cause, but also insofar as they are poured forth apart from every faculty and deliberation of the soul; for nothing would suffice, were they not given mercifully and supernaturally by God.

3 GaRix. BB. 28 jan., t. 3, p. 519, n. 30: In orationibus semper flebat. Her cheeks were scorched by the flow of tears, and she used up many small cloths in wiping them.

3 S. Ramsert. BB. 3 febr.,t. 4, p. 429, n. 59...: In ultimo ætatis suæ anno hanc gratiam diu quæsitam, Domino largiente, promeruit, ut quotiescumque vellet, ploraret.

To me, hostile Auxentius..., the streams of your tears burn me.

Luc. myst. n. 146, p. 102: Perfect and wholly passive tears... can be referred to a threefold kind, namely to tears of sorrow, to tears of... [text corrupted, merging with an unrelated passage on] the Savior in the house of the Pharisee. Blessed Marguerite of Cortona! and Saint Otte? shed tears of blood on the sins of men and to obtain their conversion. Saint Mary Magdalene of Pazzi#, meditating on the ingratitude of men, wept bitterly; in her pain, her heart came to this degree of anguish that he seemed to make an effort to get out of her chest, and she was heard shouting: "O Love, how offended you are! Vous n'êtes point connu! Vous n'êtes point aimé! »

Infuse tears also arise from the desire to be with God without delay or uncertainty. Saint Geneviève of Paris # had received to a high degree the gift of tears, but she could not above all retain the course of it every time she looked up to heaven and thought of the prolongation of her exile. The impatience that she had to enjoy God also caused the Syrian virgin, Saint Domnine, to shed an extraordinary abundance of tears.

1 JuxcrA, BB. 22 febr., t. 6, p. 307, n. 19: Hæc ita proximorum vitia cum hristi Passione deflevit, quod non solum frequenter præ dolore radices oculorum videbantur de suis orbibus erui, verum etiam aliquando lacrymaæ in sanguinem versæ sunt.

2 F. Scaemsecx. BB. App. ad 5 maïii, t. 20, p. 597, n. 12: Toto affectu deprecabatur Dominum pro conversione gentilium et confirmatione neophytorum, non solum lacrymas, sed sanguinem quandoque ex oculis fundens.…. Likewise also for sinners.

8 V. Cepari. AA.SS., 25 May, vol. 49, p. 258, n. 45: A little afterward, beginning to weep, and breaking out into cries interrupted by lamentation, and giving other signs of great anguish, she behaved as though her heart, longing to leap forth from her breast, were making a way [to escape]...; with great feeling she said: 'O Love, how greatly you are offended! You are not known, you are not loved!'

# BB. 3 jan.,t. 1, p. 139, n. 14, p. 142, n. 41: Quotiens cœlum conspexit, toties lacrymata est... Therefore she was accustomed to weep without ceasing, since she knew that, being placed in the body, she was a pilgrim away from the Lord.

$ Tusoporer. Spending whole days in continuous tears, she wets not only her cheeks but also her garments of haircloth, for with such garments she covers her body.... She weeps, and mourns, and groans...; for burning love toward God brings forth these tears, kindling the mind to divine contemplation, and goading and urging her with its spurs so that from this life... This impatient desire comes from love, the most fruitful source of holy tears. In the name of the only adorable Trinity and that of Jesus Christ, Saint Ignatius of Loyola felt such tenderness, which his eyes immediately flowed like two fountains. The happiness of being to God gave Saint Elizabeth of Hungary the same emotions, but calm and serene. "She was crying all the time," wrote her great admirer Montalembert? "and the gift of the holy tears, which she had received from the cradle, had become more and more abundant as she approached the grave. The more happy she felt, the more she cried; but her tears flowed like a quiet and hidden spring, never riding her face, without altering in any way the pure beauty or the plecity of her traits; they added to it only one more charm: it was the last effusion of a heart to which no word could ever be sufficient."

One must count among the tears of love those which the compassion of our crucified Lord spreads. The venerable Mary of Oignies? poured out torrents when she meditated on the mystery of the Passion, without any human effort being able to contain them. When a priest had taken him over with gentleness, on a holy Friday eve, of the little moderation which she seemed to put in her tears and sobs, she withdrew from the church by obedience and prayed to the Lord to show this ecclesiastical that the tears which flow from the movement of the Holy Spirit are not stopped at will. On that very day, while this priest was saying Mass, 1 there was such a burst of tears in him, that he was almost suffocated; the more he tried to repress them, the more abundant they were flowing, not only on him, but on the book and on the linens of the altar. He then understood, through his own experience and with confusion, what he had not wanted to learn from humility and charity. The servant of Christ, who had seen everything in spirit, having returned to the church long after the Mass, and speaking to the priest about what had happened to him: "Now," she said to him, "you know for yourself that it is not given to man to stop the impetuousness of the Spirit, when he breathes upon us."

When the mystical phenomenon we describe does not exceed a certain measure, it can be explained by the physiological relationship that exists between intimate emotions and tears. But when this phenomenon takes on proportions that should affect the organs, and they do not, however, receive any damage, it is necessary to seek interpretation, not in nature, but above or outside, i.e. in the miracle.

Mary of Oignies, of whom we have just spoken, shed tears in such abundance night and day, that they were flowing upon her face, and that the ground would have been soaked around her, if she had not taken care to collect them with the linens that covered her head. His confessor and his biographer, Jacques de Vitry, having asked him one day whether this continuous flow, coupled with his long jeunes and his long watches, did not exhaust and if his head was not weakened: "These tears, she said to him, comfort me; it is my bread and day and night: far from weaning my head, they revive my mind, far from causing me any pain, they satisfy my soul; instead of weakening my brain, they fill my heart with a heavenly anointing and suavity, because they are not the result of violence, but the fruit of the divine Goodness which gives them."

Blessed Véronique de Binasco! was continually spreading sweet and silent tears during her prayers and meditations, and, if she made an effort to hold them, she was caught immediately by a violent hoarseness that made her sick. He was seen spreading such a quantity, during his contemplative prayer, that his clothes were soaked in it, and the earth flooded all around, as if a full vessel of water had been thrown into it. To collect the ones she was pouring out during her ravishing, a burrow was put in her cell, in which they fell so abundantly, that he sometimes found it up to several books.

How can we naturally explain such an outpouring of tears, whose health feels no harm?

V. — Mystic diseases have the discunctive character of coming from a supernatural cause. However, they may occur in the event of a natural infirmity or accident; the course and various phases of evil will make divine intervention visible.

1 ISIDORE DE IsoLAnIs. BB. 43 Jan., vol. 2, p. 174, n. 11-15: Lacrymarum The causes of these trials imposed on loving souls are summed up in the following three: the atonement of personal faults, the love of Jesus Christ crucified, the reparation of the sins of men.

VI. — The signs to which we can recognize the mala.- mystical dies often appear in the way in which they declare themselves or end, i.e., when they begin or cease by an act, a circumstance which has no natural connection with evil. Thus, one can affirm the mystical character of a morbid affection, when it occurs during the meditation of the sufferings of the Saviour; after that one has offered himself as a victim, either to atone for his own sins or those of others, or to obtain any other spiritual or temporal favor; if these phases are in harmony with the ecclesiastical cycle; if it results from an intervention that God permits to test his servants, as he came to Job, and as it has been seen in many other saints. It will be the same if evil, after disconcerting human art by the strangeness of its forms, suddenly ceases following a prayer, a delight, a communion, upon the command of the superiors; if its end is announced by revelation or for a precise term, or if, after death, any trace of wounds and deterioration of the organs disappears, and the body shines with wonderful beauty.

In these and similar cases, evil must be viewed as having a supernatural origin. The evidence will be all the more convincing, since the disease will be better detected and will have resisted all natural remedies.

Symbolic significance can still be a decisive clue; as if, for example, stubbornness is punished by a violent headache; excess mouth, impotence to take nothing, extreme hunger, vomiting; the pulls of schism, dislocation of limbs. This meaning, we understand, is known only by revelation or by external coincidences that indicate this relationship.

One of the signs, of all the most admirable and the least suspicious, of the supernatural origin of a disease, are the effects that result. In these kinds of infirmities, while the body is tortured and crushed, the soul often overflows with comforts and light; always, with strength and energy. It is not enough, for one to conclude that the mystical character of the disease is that the patient bears the evil with resignation or even with joy; the effects we are talking about must be radiant and exceed the ordinary proportions of the common calm and patience. The surest mark is a growing proportion between body pain and extraordinary graces of the soul. "When the body comes to be afflicted with some pain," said Saint Gertrude! "the part that suffers is to the soul as an atmosphere all lit up from the rays of the sun, and of which it receives wonderful light; so that, the greater and universal the sufferings, the more the lights they communicate to the soul are pure and brilliant."

In addition to these effects of holiness on the soul, mystical diseases are often accompanied by wonderful phenomena in the body order. The most frequent and extraordinary are the suave smell that exhales the wounds of these sick divines and the healings that their contact takes place.

VIL. — We still have to produce examples of these divine infirmities, and circumstances that allow us to recognize them.

Saint Aldegonde ‘is inspired to ask God for a disease that torments his body and sanctifies his soul; she soon feels the suffering of a horrible cancer in her womb.

Anne-Catherine Emmerich reflected, in her strange and continuous illnesses, the anxieties of the Church during the last period of Jansenism and the dark days of the Great Revolution. One of his historians, Father Schmoeæger, after describing the upheavals and defections carried out by the most stirring and clever of heresy, thus expresses the repairing backlash that received from all these admirable excesses of God's servant, become as a universal victim.

"This was the time when Anne-Catherine bore the weight of the sufferings of the Church, and it may be thought that her heart had been prepared for the end and for the purpose of her sufferings, which flowed in her, not as a general evil or as a vague disease spread throughout the body, but which was imposed upon her by God, according to a certain order, or at certain intervals, as well as well-defined tasks which she had to accomplish completely, so that in finishing the one she immediately began another. Each of these tasks was shown to her apart in vision in symbolic forms, so that their acceptance was a meritorious act of her charity....In the vision, Anne-Catherine saw and understood perfectly the intimate meaning of her sufferings and their connection with the situation of the Church. The whole cycle of the feasts of the Church was for her a present always alive and without veils; she took part, as a contemporary, in the solemnities in which the Church celebrates every day the mysteries of faith and the facts of religion... In this participation in the celebration of the feasts, she received from her divine fiancé, not only the tasks she had to perform for her Church according to the order of the ecclesiastical calendar, but also the strength, inner consolation and unalterable peace of the heart, which were necessary for her not to lose courage in the midst of her incessant tortures. Although the relationship between such and such bodily suffering and the task of atonement was clearly and simply shown in the vision...... before the nuns or the doctor, she would not have dared to open up on this subject, because it would have been believed mad or delusional. She therefore willingly submitted herself to all the prescriptions of the man of art and supported with docility the attempts that medical science, so foreign on this ground, made to heal in her the sufferings that were the purpose of her life."

These sufferings were as many as strange and cruel. "In addition to the continual and singularly poignant pains which ended only with her life, and which had their seat in the heart, there was in her a perpetual succession of diseases very varied in their forms and often presenting the most contradictory symptoms; for she had to endure not only all the sufferings of the Church, but also the varying sufferings of its members taken individually. There was not a point in her whole body that was healthy or free from pain, for she had given everything The venerable Anna-Maria Taigi was also associated with this glorious role of reparation by the cross. "She was continually suffering from extraordinary headaches, which were still increasing in intensity on Fridays, especially during the hours of the Saviour's passion; they were so violent that she was forced to go to bed, and when the circumstances or demands of the house forced her to continue her work, evil was so strong that, despite her natural virtue and energy, her tears were flowing through torrents. His eyes were as pierced as thorns, and could not bear the light of day without sharp pain. The ears suffered from acute rheumatism, which was almost continuous...; she constantly had unbearable bitterness in her mouth. His sense of smell felt in a sensitive way the horrible infection of the sins that cover the world, it was an intolerable torment; his feet and hands suffered, especially the one who had the power to heal the sick, violent and acute pains; his whole body was tormented. The poor woman suffered from a host of diseases, such as gout, asthma, hernia, pain in her legs, especially in the last years of her life. Crucified on her bed of pain, she was the joy and consolation of others, the peace and joy of those who saw her, the ardour and courage of the afflicted; she was affectionately interested in everyone with inexpressible benevolence, forgetting her own sufferings, always quiet, cheerful, courageous, always resigned in everything to the will of her divine Spouse. The sufferings continued to increase, but the abundant waters of the bitter tribulations that melted upon his head could never extinguish the fire that was burning in his heart. In order to prolong his painful existence, in the interests of the neighbor, God would sometimes tell him what should relieve or heal him. "...

"She continually had heavenly conversations; but instead of the spiritual enjoyments she once enjoyed, the delight carried her to the most painful contemplations, and God discovered to her the evils of the world, the plagues prepared by her righteousness, the sins of the peoples, those of the clergy, etc. That is why communications and delights did not bring any relief to her heart, but her charity carried her, on the contrary, to pray again to the Lord to suspend his anger and her righteous vengeances, and to make repeated offerings of herself. God, accepting his desires, avenged upon her the rights of his righteousness, and were then new and cruel sufferings."

This mixture of bodily pain and intimate diilluminations is also found in Jeanne-Marie de la Croix*, a Franciscan religious. "She suffered almost continuously; all diseases seemed conjured against her, and succeeded in the strangest way; so she was often forced to keep the bed for a long time. The fever, the kidney pain, the stone, the most horrible cramps, the inflammations, the convulsions, the vomiting, the torment of a thirst that nothing could soothe, the most painful toothaches, and other diseases, made his life a constant martyrdom. But in the midst of the most cruel sufferings, she kept a cheerful and benevolent face, and had only affable words on her lips that won all hearts. She saw herself, under an ingenious and pious image at the same time, as an instrument of music whose delicate strings were not good for nothing, when they were not touched by the hand of the heavenly artist. But when this powerful hand touched the tender cords of his body, he came out like painful sounds, all of which were in a lovely harmony, and sang as a song of love to Jesus Christ. She heard a voice at the bottom of her soul that was familiar to her: "Courage, my sister; sings the Lord on the harp of the cross. He everywhere had companions of his table, but very little of his cross and his suffering."She then became as if intoxicated with love for suffering: "Oh, how happy I am, she sighed, that God may well drop on my poor soul some pieces of the Holy Cross!"The singular character of the diseases she was attacked with decided one day to recite on her the prayers of exorcisms, in order to deliver her from the evil influences which he believed to be vic-. time. Then she became all ablaze of love, and God, touching her in the most intimate depths of her being, said to her: "O holy simplicity! it is I; no exorcism can drive me out. You're not chaste, you're not bewitched, you're not possessed. Let the Holy Spirit act, he does not follow the rules of the doctors of the earth."His sufferings sometimes went up to such a point that his soul fell into the anguish of death, as she found herself uncomfortable in the body that held her; her nerves twisted in a terrible way, often for a day and a night without interruption. It went up to this extreme limit that separates death from life. God then delivered her himself from the sufferings she was suffering, and plunged all the powers of her soul into deep peace and in ineffable delight. Going out with a sweet smile from this terrible struggle, she exclaimed: "Long live the love of my God! I would pour with joy for him until the last drop of my blood."Wonderful visions sometimes came to console her in her sufferings, and to illuminate with their sweet light the deep night of which she was wrapped."

The venerable Mary Bagnesi', who offered in her person an admirable model of mystical suffering, felt renewed her pains every Friday, during the Holy Week and all that of Easter, on the day of Ascension, at the feasts of the Blessed Virgin and some saints, especially of her patrons. But while his body was being subjected to torture, his soul was receiving increased strength and heavenly consolations. When those who lived with her saw evil worsen, they no longer marveled at it, and explained it by the time when it was, by the approach of such or such solemnity. At the height of her suffering, if the occasion presented herself to exercise charity and to build up with fervent words, she seemed to find herself completely, and she spoke as if she had not suffered from anything. In these holy interviews, her face was inflamed, and she was like a lovely mixture of the whiteness of the milk and the purple of the roses; it would have been said a twenty-year-old girl, and yet, from her teens until her death, she spent almost forty-five years without being able to get up from her bed.

When Saint Francis Romaine? meditated on the wounds of the Saviour's feet, she suffered from the feet and walked only hard; when she considered the wounds of the hands, she felt a great pain in her hands, which then left everything to fall; if she looked at the crowned head of thorns, she was unable to stand or sit, she was obliged to lie on her bed.

By a kind of supernatural sympathy and solidarity, the venerable Mary of Oignies! felt the infirmities of her friends and suffered from their temptations. To deliver herself from it, she asked a priest to make the sign of the cross in the sick place, and evil moved immediately, but to throw itself on another part. Deliverance was complete only after the sign had been repeated two or more times.

Many holy souls read that, in celebrating the memory of the martyrs, they participated in their torments. The Blessed Jeanne of Orvieto ? experienced, in the days of their feasts, the crucification of St Peter and the taking off of St Paul, and took in these delights the attitude of these various torments.

The night before the solemnities of the martyrs, St Colette* suffered all their torments. Sometimes she felt burned, like the blessed deacons Laurent and Vincent, sometimes skinned like Saint Bartholomew, sometimes crucified, cut into pieces, dipped in water or boiling oil. Sometimes it seemed to him that his heart was torn away, that he was opened up and torn his bowels, that he was shoved into his flesh with burning stems, and that he was pierced from one side to the other.

"The cordial devotion that Mother Agnes of Jesus had to the very illustrious martyrs Saint Laurent and St Stephen was rewarded by this precious and terrible thanks to participating in their torments. The pains of stoning and the ardour of fire, she experienced them on the day of their feasts, in a way as real and sensitive as if she had been on a grill or struck with stone. Saint Peter the Martyr (of Verona), for whom she had a particular devotion, did him such a favor. For all the day of her feast, from one minute to the next, she felt like great blows to her heart, and it seemed to her that she was being slit her head, as the pain she felt was violent, thus participating in the martyrdom of this glorious saint."

VIT. — Saint Lidwine seems to summarize in his person and in his life all these wonders of infirmity or patience.

Lidwine was born in Holland in the penultimate year of the 19th century. She barely came out of childhood, that her rare beauty and grace that shone in all her ways made her seek in marriage by the most advantageous parties. She rejected all the offers, locked herself in the paternal house to shelter herself from the temptations of the world, and told her parents that, if we were to shirk, she would obtain from God some deformity that would discourage all prosecution. By the age of fifteen, a first illness took away all his charms, and allowed him to appear safely in public. On a winter day, her companions took them to skate, or at least to see them skate on the ice, as young girls are used to doing in Holland. While they were playing this innocent game, one of them, in his quick race, came to hit Lidwine, who was thrown violently on a pile of ice, and in this shock broke one of the small ribs. Despite the care and remedies, an inner ulcer was formed there, causing him the most cruel suffering. During a crisis which put her out of her self, suddenly slender from her bed between her father's arms, she died; but the pus, finding no other way out, had to go out through her mouth with such painful vomiting, that her parents believed their daughter at the door of the tomb. His life, however, will last for almost forty years, but in the midst of incessant pains, the strangest diseases that follow each other and accumulate on the body of this admirable victim.

Son estomac débilité ne supportait aucun aliment. Consumed by a burning thirst, she drank, not fresh skin that she could not smell, but everything she met, warm water, muddy and fetid water. Sleep ran away from her eyelids, and tears were all her consolation during her long Insomnia; in thirty-eight years she did not sleep the equivalent of three nights. All her childhood companions abandoned her, as if she had been dead, and she found herself reduced to the saddest loneliness: God alone was her support in her incredible trials. They multiplied in all forms. The putrefaction gained the inner wounds; they were filled with worms of a blackish colour, big as the tip of a spindle and of the length of one inch, which, after having eaten the intestines and the neighbouring parts, became day by three openers; it came out of it from one hundred to two hundred per day. Üne new wound formed on the right shoulder whose rot soon devoured the flesh and put the patient in the impossibility of stirring: the two parts of her body, which seemed to want to separate, had to be fastened with strips. The sacred fire invaded his right arm and consumed his flesh alive to the bones; there was only one nerve left to bind him to the trunk. She felt violent slenderness at the head, as if she had been pierced with needles, or broken with hammers. For weeks and months she suffered from toothaches that were kind of rabies. Her forehead split from top to bottom, her chin also divided up to the lower lip, her tongue swollen to the point that she often could not speak. His eyes were not spared; after dreadful pains, one completely extinguished and the other became so weak, that the light was unbearable to him. A chronic esquinancia formed in his throat, which caused him unheard of anguish and often prevented him from receiving the Holy Eucharist. What she made of blood through the nostrils, mouth, eyes, and ears, was wonderful. She was still usually vomiting water in such a great quantity, that, in the course of a single month, there would have been the burden of two men, so that her very infirmities made her life a permanent miracle; she also rejected in pieces the lungs and the liver; her breasts were covered with pustules almost always purulent; her feet and legs paralyzed; her bowels, half consumed by worms and in a hydropisia that lasted eighteen years; to finish her martyrdom, all these ills came in addition to that of the racal, who torturing her horribly until her death. As the plague invaded Holland, Lidwine was the first to attack it. In a word, fevers of all kinds, all known diseases and others worked on it for thirty-eight years, some continuously until the end of his life, others for varying periods of time.

In the midst of these bodily afflictions, of which we were only able to give a brief description, Lidwine kept an admirable serenity and patience. In the beginnings, it is true, there were moments of failure in her soul; but gradually she strengthened, and soon her courage became heroic. "If it were not necessary," she said, "for a Ave Maria to perform the miracle of my healing, I would keep myself from saying it."She endured all her pains with joy, and while outside she seemed overwhelmed by the hand of God, within this divine hand gave her incomparable favors. We have told, speaking of the two-locations, his wonderful peregrinations through the holy places, in time: even though she was nailed to her bed by the multitude of her infirmities. In her visions and ecstasy, she predicted the various sufferings that she would have to endure and the symbolic meaning that the divine will attached to it; for example, the dislocation of her two shoulders symbolized the calamity of the great schism of the West, which then desolated the Church. Everything was kind of a miracle around her. His parents kept in a vase what had come out of his body as a result of operations or dissolution, for he exhaled from these putrid materials a scent that exceeded the most pleasant perfumes; the same was true of his wounds and of all that had been used.

We will not tell the multitude of wonders that filled this life. But we must mention the miraculous transformation that sops on his flesh, at the death of the servant of God." As soon as she had restored her soul, her face, disfigured by illness, became of a beautiful beauty; all the parts of her body, once in decay, appeared in integrity and without any trace of wounds, of a uniform and radiant color that charmed the eyes in inspiring purity. There escaped from this blessed body a smell so delicious and so fortifying, that the virgins in charge of his guard did not prove, for two days and three nights, the need for sleep or food.

This is how God knows how to break out his strength within CHAPTER XXIV

LES SOUFFRANCES MYSTIQUES

LA STIGMATISATION

HIS MISCELLANEOUS FORMS What stigma is. — Its various forms: it is apparent or invisible, — Permanent or periodic and transient, — Simultaneous or successive. — The stigma of hands and feet. — La blessure du côté. — La couronne d’épines. — Agony and blood sweat.

— La flagellation. — Successive reproduction of the other scenes of the Passion. - Plastic formations on the flesh. — Les incrustations et les

inscriptions intérieures.

I. — The wounds printed on the Saviour's flesh in the crucifixion remain the highest and simplest expression of the divine drama consumed at Calvary. These glorious marks of the Cross's reparation survive in Jesus Christ the transformation of his body, and he sometimes graves them, by the ineffable virtue of his love, on the bodies of the saints, to make them living images of his crucified life. These wounds, whose traces he keeps in glory and which he communicates to the lovers of the Cross, are called stigmatized, by a Greek word (or&w) which means piercing, hurting, opening with iron, and, by extension, marking a red iron, which was practiced on the slaves of Greece and Rome: from there came the crucified of love the name of stigmatized.

These sacred openings are five in Jesus Christ: two in the hands, two in the feet, and one in the heart. Stigma is pure and simple, with the disclosure of these five fingerprints. But, in addition to these main wounds, Our Lord still reproduces in his servants the series of his sufferings: agony, flogging, coronation of thorns, stations and various phases from crucification to Calvary. To the signs that put these scenes of pain into effect, are connected the plastic formations by which the Saviour graves on any inner or outer part of the body the image of the Cross, the instruments of the Passion, or any other similar mark. All this set of phenomena tending to reproduce the intimate pains of the divine Crucified and the external circumstances of his torture, is in some way part of the stigma. However, it is supposed to be complete when it presents the five wounds and the crown of thorns; and, strictly speaking, the five wounds suffice, even though the other aspects of the Passion would not be reproduced.

Let us note carefully that the purely inner participation in the sufferings of Jesus Christ does not carry the imprint of stigma; stigmas only exist when the pains characteristic of the crucifixion are located in the body, as happened in Our Lord.

IL. — The stigmas are apparent or invisible. They are invisible when one suffers such or such pain of the Passion in the part of the body and in the form that corresponds to them in crucified Jesus Christ, but without this local suffering being revealed by any external trace.

They were apparent in Saint Francis of Assisi and several others. The saints and saints who have asked God that these sacred prints remain invisible, and who have obtained them, are much more numerous. Dominique de Jésus-Marie‘, seeing Our Lord, who was preparing to burn the stigmas on his body, begged him not to do so, reputing himself unworthy of such a favor. Jesus answered his prayer in part and printed only in his soul the imprint of his wounds. After having tried by all sorts of means to make disappear the divine plagues of which she had been marked, the venerable Ida of Leuven? tried to steal those of the hands from the eyes of men; but, because the vivacity of the pain betrayed her, and the necessity of earning her life did not allow her to hold her hands always covered, fearing above all that this prodigy would expose her to public veneration, she begged the Divine Goodness to withdraw this favor. God answered her prayer by completely removing the outer marks, and softening the pain she felt. Saint Lidwineÿ, seeing himself marked by these wounds, asked the Lord to remove them from all human eyes, and immediately they were covered by the skin, while remaining printed in the flesh. Those of the Blessed Lucia of

1 GARAMUEL. Dominicus, c.5, p.140: Voluit Christus benedictionis nomnine sua illi stigmata imprimere ; oravit Dominicus ne faceret.… ; Christus.… impressit animo.

2 HuGues DE FLORE. She began to entreat the clemency of Almighty God with copious prayers... that... he would remove the stigmata from her body; who, mercifully hearing her, did indeed remove the scars themselves, utterly effacing them from the places where they had once been imprinted; but he did not entirely take away from those same places the lingering pain of the former wound.

3 BruGuAN. BB, 14 April, vol. 41, p. 330, n. 129: Fearing, as God's handmaid, that wounds so exposed could not remain hidden in the future, since on this account she dreaded the crowding of people and their applause, she prayed to the Lord...; suddenly skin was drawn over the five wounds themselves, yet with this preserved: that in the following years of her life she sometimes felt both pain and, afterward, discoloration at Narni... They were visible for seven years; then, at her prayer, they disappeared, except for the lateral stigma, less exposed to view, which she kept for some time longer, and which eventually also closed.

Sometimes, these prints appear in a form other than those they actually have, as seen in Saint Catherine of Ricci. While his hands were open from one side to the other, several of his sisters saw only luminous foyers that dazzled them; others, swollen and red wounds, but healed, with a black round in the middle, of the width of a denier, around which one could see blood flowing?.

IT. — It is difficult to say anything about the permanence of stigma. In general, they persevere until the end of life, and even after death; for more than once one has seen a pink and pure blood shed, as if the person still enjoyed the fullness of life. What is especially wonderful, but also rare, is that long after the trip, these sacred openings are preserved in a body that they seem to preserve from corruption. As soon as the Blessed Helen of Hungary * had made her last sigh, the wounds on her feet and hands were closed; but, seventeen years later, the one on her side was found intact, and a priest, having put his two fingers on it, removed them from them all impregnated with a very fragrant oily liqueur. In many, stigmatic wounds and pains disappear entirely before the end of life or cease to be visible, almost always by the effect of their prayers. These wounds may also occur only at certain times, during Lent or Holy Week, for example, or on fixed days, such as the Friday of each week, every Holy Friday, and under similar circumstances that recall the Saviour's painful mysteries. In most cases, the crises that re-open these wounds and shed their blood only occur at more or less distant and precise intervals, whether the external fingerprints are maintained or dissipated.

St Jeanne of the Cross! received the stigmas on Good Friday, and kept them until the feast of Ascension of the same year; but they appeared only from Friday to Sunday morning, at the hour of the resurrection; out of this time, the marks and the pains ceased entirely. The venerable Gertrude of Oosten ? was also honored with the sacred wounds of the Saviour on the night of Holy Thursday, and, at least until the Ascension of that same year 1340, seven times a day, in canonical hours, he escaped a blood of a beautiful red color. The many contests that disturbed his loneliness to contemplate this prodigy and that frightened his humility made him ask to be delivered from it. The Lord answered; the blood ceased to flow; only the prints remained until his death. His love made him ask again in the rest the bloody traces, but his prayer remained ineffective.

The Blessed Étiennette of Soncino* had her most

1 ANTOINE D'AGA. Admirable life of Saint Jeanne de la Croix, of the Third Order of Saint Francis, 1614, p. 149.

This devout virgin Gertrude of Oosten had received, on the night before Good Friday, the five wounds of Christ, from which, seven times a day for many weeks, flowed the grace of ruddy blood, or at least until the Lord's Ascension in that same year, 1340.

3 JEAN DE SAINTE-MARIE. Memorable lives and actions of the holy and blessed daughters of St. Dominic, vol. 1, 1.3, c.9, p. 704. Great access to pain every Friday of the year and to the two feasts of the Invention and the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. It was on Wednesday and Friday, and especially throughout Holy Week, that Blessed Osanne of Mantua! felt the pain of her stigmas, which she never ceased to suffer. She had obtained from Our Lord that her wounds would remain invisible to all; she alone saw them; but at the time of her death they would be restored, and for centuries her incorruptible flesh would keep track of them.

IV. — Stigma is sometimes simultaneous and sometimes successive. Saint Francis of Assisi received the five prints on the day of the Exaltation of the Cross, in a quick vision. The Blessed Osanne of Mantua # obtained first the crown of thorns, then the wound of the heart, and, one year later, the wound of the feet and hands. The Blessed Helen of Hungary* received the stigma of the right hand on the day of St Francis of Assisi, whom she used to honor with special worship; and that of the left hand, in the feast of the glorious apostles Peter and Paul, at noon; for the stigmas of the feet and of the side, it is not known the day or the hour when they were given to her.

V. — The form of apparent stigma varies according to the subjects. Usually, they occur with bleeding, if not in a continuous way, at least at the time of the seizures, mainly in the heart region. However, it is not uncommon for fingerprints to be accompanied by no flow, or only by simple aqueous exudations, such as dew.

At the feet and hands, the stigmatic configuration is very varied. In Saint Francis of Assisi! and in many others, they were fleshy outgrowths similar to nails. Sometimes the feet and hands are punctured as they were in Our Lord, and the place of the nails sniffs with a vacuum where the blood sweats, at certain times, with more or less abundance. In others, it is a bloody wound, always without suppuration; or even a simple blood congestion that extends from one side of the hands and feet, but without perforating them from one side to the other. This wound sometimes determines depression and sometimes a slight swelling, and takes on various forms and colors. The stigmas of Jeanne de la Croix? were round, of the greatness of a small coin (a real), fresh and vermel like roses. Those of the venerable Ida de Louvain were like variously nuanced circles, which came out inside and outside. In Jeanne-Marie de la Croix, "they were blue dots sown with blood spots, resembling nail heads, which were covered by a very thin film. They were big as a denarius, but they appeared only in the left hand and in the right foot, and only on one side, without ever bleeding." The Blessed Marie-Françoise of the Cinq-Plaies! had her hands pierced besides; but, at her prayer, these wounds were covered with a slight membrane, through which one could still see the inner opening.

Let us note in the stigmatization of the feet a peculiarity worthy of note. Many stigmatized people place, during painful ecstasy that renews in them the scene of the crucifixion, their feet one on the other, as if they were united by a single transfixion. Can we infer from this singular attitude that the Saviour would also have had his feet superimposed on the cross by a single nail?

This question, purely historical ?, does not belong to

1 P. BERNARD LaviosA, Life of B. Marie-Françoise des Cing-Plaies, c. 17, p. 89.

2 The Christian tradition is very divided on this point of history. Some, including Thomas Bertholin (de Cruce, Hyp. 1, $5, p. 59), Bellarmin (De Septem Christi Verbis, Proæm.), Benedict XIV (De Festis, 1. 1, ©. 7, n. 87, p. 89); nowadays, M. l'abbé Martigny (Dict. des Antiquities chrét., word Cruarix, $4), and M. Rohault de Fleury (Mémoire sur les instruments de la Passion, 1. 2, c. 1, $ 1), and most moderns want the feet to have been pierced separately, and they rely on the difficulty of uniting the two by one nail without breaking the bones, which would contradict the prophecy: Os non comminuetis ex eo (Joan. xix, 36) ; on the history of the four nails reported by St. Helena, on the authority of several Fathers, and finally on old paintings that represent the Savior fixed to the cross by four nails.

Others, like Saint Bonaventure (De Medit. vitae Christi, c. 78, t. 19, p. 606), and the famous Tostat (Paradox. 3, e. 10), believe that the crucification was done with three nails, two for the hands and one for the two feet. They also invoke the testimony of the doctors, the custom of the early Christian centuries to thus represent the Savior on the cross (Baronius, Annal. anno 34, n. 118.—Anno 396, n. 52), a custom perpetuated today among the Latins; for in the Greeks, the practice has long been to represent the Crucified Saviour with four nails. Others, finally, remain undecided in the face of these contradictory reasons; among them, mention is made of D. Calmet (Bible Dict., word Clous), Suarez (De Myst. Christi, disp. 36, sect. 4, n. 7, p. 567, who regards the solution as impossible: In hac re nihil certi stitu nose on our subject; but we cannot conceal that it is complicated by difficulties parts of the mystic. Saint Brigitte repeatedly declares, in his REVELATIONS!, having seen the Saviour attached to the Cross with four nails, two in his hands and two in his feet. On the other hand, several ecstatics, in which they reproduce in a living way the scenes of the Passion, superimpose their feet as if there were only one nail for both. In particular, Saint Marie-Madeleine de Pazzi®, Marie-Marguerite des Anges *, the venerable mother Agnes de Langeac#, Saint Catherine de Ricci. The Blessed Gérardesque of Pisa sees Our Lord hanged on the cross the two feet together by one nail. The Bienheuexistimo; Just Lipse, whose treatise of the Cross is a monument of erudition on matter, and which thus concludes (De Cruce, I. 2,c. 9, p. 48) the study of the question presents: Jeaque so morem velerem empty, arbiterium leaks from clavis, and frustra litigamus. But if the question concerns Christ, I do not know, and amid the disagreement of the Fathers it is not for me to judge. Thus, according to the latter author, the ancients used to "crucify him with three or four nails indifferently. What was it about Jesus Christ? The dissentment of the doctors makes the difficulty almost insoluble.

1 Lib. 4, c. 70, p. 276: Ecce malleus et quatuor clavi acuti in promptu sunt.… (p. 272). And the feet likewise are stretched out to their holes... and... are fastened by two nails to the shaft of the cross through the solid bone, just as the hands had been. They fixed the joined feet to the cross with two nails.

2 Vnc. Afterward she stretched herself out on the ground, extending her arms in such a way that it appeared she was fitting herself upon the Cross of Jesus and that each foot was being pierced. (Cf. CEPARI, ibid., p. 296, n. 219.)

3 Life of Mother Marie-Marguerite of the Angels, Carmelite nun and founder of the convent of Oirschot, in the Dutch Brabant. — 3° P., c. 24, p. 344: The wound of the right foot corresponded to that of the left foot, as if a single nail had pierced them simultaneously.

4 From Lanraces, Life of Mother Agnes, 3rd P., ©. 18, t. 2, p. 305: She was put all her length on an invisible cross, yet very hard, her arms stretched out, and her feet laid on one another, and so well attached, that it was impossible to separate them.

5 Hyac. Bayonne, Life of Saint Catherine of Ricei, c. 8,t. 1, p. 146: At the time of the crucification, she. laid her feet on one another, just as Jesus did when he was nailed on the cross.

6 BB. 29 Maiii, vol. 20, p. 173, n. 56: Vidi Dominum Jesum Christum terouse Baptista Varani! hears from the mouth of the divine Crucified, these words: "I have been fastened by three nails on the cross, you must be crucified by so many nails, which will be: poverty, obedience and chastity."

Finally, one last remarkable fact is that of the instruments of the Passion printed in the heart of Blessed Claire de Montefalco?, among which there are only three nails.

What can we conclude from these differences? This, at least, is that the question in dispute remains in the same state, and that it is not appropriate, in order to resolve it, to oppose one another these claims; they do not prove, according to the wise remark of the scholar Papebroch#, either for or against. Should these revelations be rejected because of their disagreement? Neither: both are worthy of respect; only, because of their incompatibility, is it obliged to recognize that they had to occur according to the preconceived ideas of the various subjects, and that the supernatural vision takes place according to the pre-existing provisions of nature, God intervening, not in order to settle the idle controversies, but in order to sanctify souls.

VI. — The lateral stigma does not present less sometimes the fingerprint is superficial, and the flesh is not open; but, most often, it is a wound that reaches the heart and pierces it deeply, if not on its own. In the venerable [da de Louvain!, the opening was so wide and so advanced, that the breath of breath, passing through, penetrated into the region of the liver. In addition to the fact that the blood is closer to its source, and therefore more abundant, the depth of the wound is sufficient to explain why the bleeding is more copious to this stigma than to all others. Sometimes blood mixes with water that recalls the water that came out of the open side of Jesus Christ.

A singular diversity still occurs here. Sometimes it is the right side of the chest that is open, as we see in Saint Francis of Assisi? and in Saint Mary Magdalene of Pazzi*; but most often it is the left side, as it happens to Saint Catherine of Siena a oval shape, elongated; it was also compared to a spear, an arc or crescent... There was also a simple temporary blood flow, or blood extravasations under the skin, with bleeding at a given time. Several cases of penetrating wounds are mentioned: in Ida de Louvain, I air came to the region of the liver; one could see the heart beating at the bottom of the wound of Louise Plazza; in Saint Véronique Giuliani, the air of the chest came out through a gaping wound. Françoise de Serrane, Angèle de la Paix, Joseph Carabantes and Marie-Françoise des Cinq-Plaies also had penetrating wounds, as well as Vittoria Angelini; her doctors had declared that she could not live in such conditions. The doctors of our time will also have to wonder how all these stigmatized people have been able to live long years with such wounds, usually fatal.

[Name garbled in source], BB. 13 April, t. 11, p. 162, n. 14: This rival and companion of Christ's passion is said to have felt an opening of the side so gaping and wide... that in that same wound, laid open after the manner of an oblong wound and reaching even to the liver, breath would slip through the very interstices of the body.

2 S. BONAVENTURE, Leg. S. The right side too, as though pierced by a lance, was covered with a red scar.

3 V. It sent me certain rays to the feet, hands, and right side.

* Ravuoxp DE Caroue, BB. 30 April, vol. 12, p. 910, n. 195: Tunc CgO: and most stigmatized. The essential character of this phenomenon is the commemorative imprint in the region of the heart, not the absolutely identical reproduction of the wound that the Saviour received on the cross. Assuming moreover that in Jesus Christ the transfixion took place on the right flank, it is still easy to explain how stigmatized people receive the impression on the opposite flank; it is sufficient to admit that the radiation that produces it occurs in direct line, that it leaves on the right side of the Saviour to reach the left side of the stigma.

The other stigmas were seen clustering around the lateral stigma and the five wounds gathered in the heart area as if to make only one. Did none of the rays reach the right side? But she said: No, but most directly to the left, upon my heart.

1 The authors do not agree on the side reached by Ja lance. Most believe it was the left side, and this feeling, as Suarez notes (De Myst. Chrisli, D. 41, s. 1, n. 3, p. 686) seems first and foremost most likely, for this reason that the Roman soldier wanting to ensure the death of the supplicator, it was in his heart that he had to strike. Others, however, in large numbers, argue that it was carried to the right side, and they rely on the ancient Greek liturgy (Marriany, Dict. des Antig. chrét., word Lance), and on other monuments of the highest antiquity, among others on a Greek medal including Juste Lipse (de Cruce, p. 111), and Gretzer (de Sancta Cruce, 1. 1, c. 34, p. 114) reproduced the imprint; there one sees the Saviour attached to the cross, a soldier on the right, with his spear, ready to pierce the side of the victim, and all around this legend: Divine blood is the ransom of the world. Some Fathers, including Eustache d'Antioch, Saint Leo the Great and Prudence, imagined a double wound, one on the right, the other on the left, a completely free assumption, implausible, not in conformity with the Gospel narrative and the Christian tradition. Berti (Hist. évangel. Prælect. 40, t. 1, p. 194) believes that it reconciles everything by admitting a wide opening extending from the right side to the left side of the chest. It is more natural to assume, with Mr. Rohault de Fleury (The Instruments of the Passion,,, 2, c.6, p. 273), which the lance entering from the right pierced the heart from one side to the other and its tip came out to the left under Île bois.

2 Taéopx. Raynaud, De stigmatismo sacro et profano, p. 232: In the neighborhood, twenty years ago, in the town of Paternis Cavarum, a matron, S... ...a tertiary of Francis, a woman of holy works and every virtue, after having died most piously, when she was being washed for burial by pious sisters, was found to have a stigma in the region of the heart; which the physicians and surgeons called in... — We participate in several ways in the coronation of thorns. Sometimes it is by violent headaches, without there being any external or invisible crown, as is said from Blessed Emilia. Bicchieri’. At other times, these pains are caused by a symbolic crown that the Saviour seems to pose on the head in a vision. "One day at Holy Communion," writes Blessed Marguerite Mary? speaking of herself, "the holy host seemed to me to shine like a sun of which I could not bear the brightness; and Our Lord, in the midst, holding a crown of thorns, put it upon me.The head a little after I had received it, saying to me, "Receive, my daughter, this crown as a sign "of the one which will soon be given to you by accord with "me." I did not understand then what it meant; but I soon knew it by the effects that followed, namely: two terrible blows that I received by the head, in such a way that it seemed to me to have the whole turn of my head surrounded by very poignant thorns of pain, whose bites will only end with my life."

When the stigma is apparent, it usually consists of a flow of blood around the head or the ‘frontal part, caused by a real or imaginary crown, visible or veiled. The one by Anne-Catherine Emmerich seems to have been real. "She described it," said Fr. Schmæger#, as composed of three different braids naturæ transcends pronuntiarunt. In that one stigma appeared the five wounds of Christ, so arranged that the middle one occupied, as it were, a blooming rose of purplish color; while the other four were seen formed [text illegible] in an oblong quadrangle around the middle.

1 SOŒUR ANNE-MECHTILDE FuazA, BB. App. ad 3 maii, t. 20, p. 555, n. 29: thorns. One of the braids came from a thorny shrub where she saw white flowers with yellow stamens; the second, from a shrub that had similar flowers, but wider leaves; the third appeared to her as a wild slender. Often, in the ardour of prayer, she strongly pressed this crown against her head, and each time she felt the thorns sink deeper. When in the convent the wounds began to bleed..., one of the sisters surprised Anne-Catherine once as she wiped out the blood flowing from her temples, but she promised her the secret."

Blessed Christine of Stommeln also "received an invisible crown, whose thorns, shoveling through her whole head, flowed blood on her face and along her neck.

Îl also happens that it forms on the head, as thorns, a kind of crown drawn with flesh, like the protuberant stigmas of hands and feet. When, in 1618, the commission appointed by the archbishop of Burgos to inspect the stigmas of Jeanne of Jesus Mary * proceeded to this examination, those who composed her noticed, all around the head of this servant of God, a wider circle of more than one finger, which fell under pressure as if it had been swollen, formed a deep groove of half a finger, and stretched, as did the doctors, to the bone region. The venerable mother Agnes de Langeac had her head "skinned with a green crown. This circle had a protruding finger, and the red thorns that came out of it sank into the skin." In Jeanne-Marie de la Croix ‘we saw around her forehead, between skin and flesh, a circle of a bright red similar to a crown of thorns. This crown sometimes spread over the whole forehead, along the cheeks and up to the neck, and gave the whole face a livid color.

Finally, they are still bloody bruises, more or less multiplied. Marie-Dominique Lazzari? had the head pierced by more than fifty holes. The venerable Ida * had as a living wound around her head, and in tears it was thought to be the thorns of which the Saviour was crowned by Roman soldiers.

The shoulders sometimes retain the stigmas of the flogging and bearing of the cross; but, in general, these fingerprints are only temporary, like the trials of the Passion, which we will talk about {. © VIII. — We said that stigma, considered in its generality, encompassed all aspects of divine atonement consumed at Calvary. We have seen a great number of servants and especially of God's maidens, in their painful succession, suffer the torments of the divine Crucified, and reproduce in them, with a touching vivacity, the scenes of his Passion.

Agonism is often renewed, and more than once, with blood sweat. When the thought of Saint Lutgarde ® was about the pains of Jesus Christ, it seemed to him that the blood was flowing from all his body. A priest who heard about this wonder, wanting to make sure for himself that he was true, came to see the admirable virgin, in a time when she had to be busy meditating on the painful mysteries. He found her leaning against a wall and plunged into contemplation. His face and hands, the only parts of his body that were uncovered, were flooded with fresh blood; drops of blood also flowed, like pearls of dew, from his hair. He furtively cut off a wick from her, which he began to consider in the light with a religleux astonishment; but as soon as Lutgarde returned to her, the blood disappeared, and the hair which the pious and indiscreet visitor held by his hand immediately resumed their natural color. Similar facts are reported from Blessed Christine of Stommeln', St Marguerite of Cortone* and many others.

The authors * are divided on the nature of this phenomenon. According to some, it is miraculous; according to others, it is naturally due to the violence of inner sadness. Benedict XIV * concludes from this last sentiment, the most common and the most motivated, that, in the trials of canonization, these kinds of facts must be ruled out as not fulfilling the conditions of the indisputable miracle. In some cases, however, it would be difficult to justify circumstances without the use of miracles.

IX. - Flagellation is rarely apparent. It feels pain without external marks other than extreme fatigue and a kind of general dislocation of the whole body. More than once, however, the whippings leave obvious traces; the flesh is torn or becomes livid by the number of bruises; the hands and arms keep the imprint of the ties that hold fast. After the Blessed Véronique de Binasco! suffered this torment from the hand of the demon, Our Lord delights her in ecstasy, tells her that he made her participate in one of the most painful scenes of his Passion, and heals her from her pains, however, leaving the marks of the blows on her body, which remains very black of the results of this cruel flogging.

X. — The series of other scenes of the Passion, with the corresponding pains and external signs, is often portrayed with such expressive fidelity, that one believes to witness the unfolding of this bloody drama. Sister Marguerite of the Blessed Sacrament, the instigator of devotion to the Holy Childhood, offers an admirable example of this association to Jesus crucified.

"Marguerite's application to the Saviour's Passion," says one of her biographers*, "shows the most extraordinary phenomena; it took place, for the first time,

The fierce demon, attacking, struck her with cruel blows of scourging... and the wicked spirit left the virgin half-dead. Veronica is immediately caught up to the realms above. She affirmed, having returned to her earthly seat, that the Savior had exhorted her with this prayer: 'The mysteries of my Passion I have made known to you,' etc. Returning to the functions of the body, she was found whole. All pain, and all sickness, withdrew by the medicine of the divine gaze, only the blackness of the whole body persisting.

? Louis n'Cissey, Life of Marguerite of the Blessed Sacrament, c. 11, p. 127. times, at the approaches of Lent of the year 1632. We'll only talk about this one... Marguerite was first transported in spirit to the desert where Our Lord prepared by fasting to redeem men. Like him, she also spent forty days there, during which she did not come out for a moment of her delight, and lived without taking any food... These forty days were barely over, that she was, in another delight, taken to the garden of the Olives, where Our Lord communicated to her the sadness of his divine soul, his fears, his sweat of blood, his agony, and imprimated them in her, as much as she was able to bear them. During the first two hours, Marguerite remained with her face stuck to the ground, shed tears with so much abundance, that the whole community was greatly moved. She then rose up, stood straight for a quarter of an hour, with her eyes lifted up into heaven, trembling and seeming very scared; after which she bowed again. Insensitively, one saw his body bend and his head lean to the ground with an unspeakable expression of terror, until, unable to sustain the tearing spectacle of agony and the infinite pains of his Savior, she fell face to face, giving up to God as Jesus Christ had done to carry his cross and the burden of the sins of the world.

"The following night it was applied to the impression that Our Lord felt when the Jews arrested him in the garden of Olives and took him before the judges. At the moment when she saw in spirit the troop led by Judas, she rose up, as Our Lord had had to do, calm, serene, with a port full of majesty, in supernatural peace and sweetness. Shortly afterwards, his hands fixed one on the other, as if they had been bound with ropes, whose marks were so strongly printed in the flesh, that the sisters saw very distinctly two long swellings, which seemed to follow all the sinuousness of the rope and form two kinds of fillets, leaving between them the passage of the rope. His arms were so harshly garrotted by these invisible bonds that several sisters tried unnecessarily to lift them. The whole night passed for Marguerite in this painful state. Sometimes she walked painfully, as if she had been violently dragged; sometimes she remained motionless, appearing to be delivered to exCesIves pains.

"In the morning, this rapture was suspended for about an hour, after which it seemed further tightened by the invisible bonds we spoke of. The black and livid bruises, and the swelling caused by the ropes increased significantly; nevertheless her face, which she held down, preserved a gentleness and majesty all celestial... Marguerite spent a whole day in this state. No doubt it was then, like Our Lord, given in spirit to the beatings and insults of the people excited by the priests of Jerusalem; for in the evening its state was so pitiful, that it was painful to see. His face, black and wilted, was disfigured, as if he had received the most violent blows; his forehead, so swollen, that she could not open her eyes. She had her nose crushed, her lips torn; the chin seemed to have received the most violent blows, and on this part of the figure there was a bloody black tumor that completely distorted her.

"As in the face of the divine Savior, during his Passion, it could have been said of Marguerite that he had no more form or beauty; and yet, according to the testimony of all the sisters, his face, which should have seemed hideous, far from giving horror, remained admirable by the inexplicable gentleness and majesty which she kept in the torments. Especially when it was applied to the torment of flogging, Marguerite appeared to have a supernatural grace. Our dear sister then stood up and stood straight, still; then she bowed slightly her head and shoulders, and crossed her hands on her back, as Our Lord had had to do when he was tied to the post. She had barely been in this position for a few seconds, when the divine power, suddenly leaving the effects of her righteousness to burst out, brought upon the humble victim an infinite number of strokes of yards whose marks sprinted on all sides on her body bruised and furrowed countless scars. Marguerite, during this torture, only raised her head once, which she overturned on her shoulders. Sadness and neglect, expressed at the moment by its physiognomy, appeared to equal the sufferings of its body.

"It was thus applied for five hours to the participation of the flogging of Our Lord. At the end of these five hours, the Son of God stopped Marguerite's torture and returned her to her ordinary state, without keeping any trace of the blows she had received. But this rest was short; for it came out of the impressions of some of the scenes of the passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ only to undergo another.

"When it was applied to the coronation of thorns, its body was used by a secret virtue that made it sit on a seat. His face leaned on his chest, and one heard a kind of small noise, like thorns that had entered violently into his head and which left many traces on his forehead, where one saw the blood suintering through a large amount of red stings. At this moment, there was a violent thrill in her which ran through all her members; and she told since that moment when her soul was filled with so much bitterness, that she would have died if God had not sustained her power.

"It was only after sharing all the pains of her Husband in the different states of her passion that she was charged with the cross and condemned to climb the Calvary with him, in a succession of ravishings that followed for several days. The so cruel pains and fatigues that Our Lord had experienced when ascending to Calvary were too sharp for Marguerite to endure them with continuity; so the delights during which she had to bear the burden of the cross were much less long than the previous ones; but they were renewed at very short intervals, in such a way that it could be said that one of these ecstasy served as a preparation for the next.

"From the first, the cross was placed on his shoulders, invisiblely, it is true, but in such a way that the sisters kept as sure as if they had seen it with their own eyes. Cursed by the enormous weight of the instrument of her Saviour's torture, she walked only with difficulty and as if she had been dragged violently, raising a hand to support this heavy burden, whose mark shone on her heavily compressed shoulders. Several times she collapsed under this weight, and fell failing, exhausted and out of condition to rise without the help of the sisters.

"At the last of these delights which took place on Good Friday and which preceded little before the hour at which Our Lord gave his soul to God, either that Marguerite was more burdened, or that she was penetrated by a deeper sense of humility, she walked only on her knees, leaning on the ground with one hand, and holding the other raised to support her cross. At about three o'clock, it was especially applied to contemplation of the death of the Saviour of the world. One saw her bowing down to the ground, her lips glued to the feet of a crucifix, which she held with an admirable fervor. She remained in this position for three hours, without it being possible to get her out. During these three hours, his soul was overwhelmed by the immense sorrows of his husband and bitterness, where he had plunged the sins of men. Insensitively, his body became stiff and icy like that of a dead man. His feet and hands kept the position they had, his head alone bowed a little. His pale and unfavorable face had a cadaverous appearance. The Carmelites thought she was dead...

"This state of assimilation to the Saviour's death lasted about a quarter of an hour, after which Marguerite gradually returned to life, but without regaining her strength and without her mind being able to detach itself from the sight of the sufferings of her divine Spouse, until the Holy Day of Easter, where, after communion, she was, as she had been so many times already, supernaturally healed, restored in the fullness of her forces, and instantly saw all traces of her suffering disappear... On Easter, she attended the solemn feast that was celebrated in heaven on that day.

"This application to the pains of the Passion of Jesus Christ and to the feasts of his resurrection was repeated several times, at the approaches of Holy Week. As the . first time she ended on the holy day of Easter, where, as a reward for her fidelity, Marguerite always received an additional new graces."

In Saint Catherine of Ricci, this staging of the Passion was renewed every week, for twelve consecutive years. We regret that we cannot reproduce the entire series of these wonderful representations. Let us cite only one page where her recent historian! sums up the varied and successive attitudes taken by the saint during this admirable compassion.

"In this ecstasy, as in all others, his face appeared with a superhuman splendour and a character of majesty that belongs only to angels, inspiring to all those who saw it a deep respect and a keen attraction for the things of God. But while in ordinary ecstasy she remained deprived of the use of her senses, the motionless body and fixed desires, betraying her emotions only by the color of her face, which was pale or blushing according to the feelings that shook her soul; in the ecstasy of the Passion, by a wonderful exception, her body came out of her immobility to conform to the gestures, attitudes, and various movements of the body of Jesus Christ in the course of her pains. She presented her hands, like him, when he was charged with bonds, when he was tied to the column of the flagellation, and reproduced all the movements that she saw her perform under the blows that were ravaged. During the crowning of the thorns, she gently wore her head on one shoulder and on the other, depending on whether the executioners pushed Jesus' head to the right or left. At the time of the crucifixion, she stretched out her right hand, then her left hand, then finally laid her feet on one another, just as Jesus did when he was nailed to the cross. And all these attitudes, all these movements, she fulfilled them with such modesty and such gentle gravity, that she naturally made think of the ineffable sweetness of this lamb, of which Isaiah speaks, which offers without whispering its members to the hand that stripes him, and its head with a knife that rips off his life."We would like to be able to reproduce in detail all that is told of these living images of Jesus crucified: of Saint Mary Magdalene of Pazzi', of St Colette?, of Blessed Madeleine of Panateri*, of Venerable Mother Agnes‘, and of an infinity of others; but we must limit ourselves.

XI. — The plastic formations of the cross and other signs or instruments of the Passion naturally relate to the question of stigmatic fingerprints.

These kinds of phenomena frequently recur in the history of mysticism and occur in various ways.

Sometimes it is outside, in the face, on the chest, that these signs are engraved. One day, Brother Pacific saw on the forehead of Seraphic Francis d的Assisi 5 the letter, or a large cross, nuanced in various colors and spreading on the face of the saint an admirable radiance. En M. Olier, this mark was permanent in the last years of his life: "One of his spiritual children (M. de la Perugia) often told that, despite the care that the servant of God had to hide this favor, never discovering his forehead for all the time that his last infirmities had retained in his room, it was nevertheless seen several times. As he himself spoke to him with great familiarity, and was often with him, he noticed that one of the branches of this cross, red in colour, which rose from the middle of a heart as if inflamed, was almost not formed:

1 V. Puconi, BB. 25 maïi, t. 19, p. 222, n. 167 et seq.

2 Ér. DE Juuiers, BB. 6 mart., t. 7, p. 560, n. 94 et seq. "My Father," he said to him, "your cross was nothing but a cross. — Mon enfant, répondit M. Olier, it is that my cross is not finished," meaning that he still had much to suffer."But, after his death, the cross appeared whole, and everyone could see it painted in very sensitive features on his forehead!.

Anne-Catherine Emmerich ? had several crosses visibly drawn on her chest. Blessed Christine de Stommeln * had this part of her body cruelly torn in three places by demons. Instead of these wounds, three crosses were formed, wonderful by their brightness, their shape and the inscriptions of which they were intertwined.

XI[. — More often than not, it is within the heart itself that these symbolic signs of painful compassion for the crucified Saviour {. We have already talked about the instruments of the Passion discovered, after his death, in the heart of Blessed Claire of

1 M. Falcon, Vie de M. Olier, 3° P., 1. 9, n. 37,t. 3, p. 480.

2 P. SCHMOœGER, Life of Anne-Catherine Emmerich, c. 17, t.1, p. 274.

3 Pierre DE Dacie. BB. 22 jun., t. 25, p. 303, n. 33. Those three places which had before been pierced by the demons' claws were marked with three crosses of wondrous color, with marvelous arrangement and outline.

4 IMBERT-GOURBEYRE , {a Stigmatisalion, 3° P., ch. 4, t. 2, p. 48, note: Twelve stigmatized had in their hearts the sacred imprints of the Passion.

The martyr of Cantimpré: crucifixes in the heart.

Saint Claire de Montefalco: all the instruments of the Passion.

Lucie de Norcie: crucifix et blessure.

Sainte Julienne de Bologne : crucifix.

Rainier de Borgo San Sepolcro : fouet.

Isabelle Barilis: all the instruments of the Passion.

Cecilia Nolili : deux fouets.

Paul de Saint-Thomas : crucifix.

Bienheureux Charles de Sezze : crucifix. |

Jeanne-Marie de la Croix: the spear, sponge and reed.

Saint Véronique Giulani: instruments of the Passion and various figures.

Florida Cevoli : idem.

Of these twelve stigmatized, six positively announced that their hearts would be found, after death, the sacred footprints. Montefalco; but it is appropriate to present here the whole fact. During an ecstasy that came to the Blessed in her last sickness, the demon dared to appear to her, doubling her threats at this supreme hour; but she urged him, and, with the accents of his faith, forced him to flee. One of the sisters who was with her, fearing that these obsessions would inspire her some trouble, approached and made the sign of the cross on the sick woman. Claire, immediately coming out of. her delight: "Be fearless, my daughter," she said to her, "for I carry in my heart the cross with Christ."And, speaking to another nun, she said to her, "If you seek the cross of Jesus, take my heart; you will find there this divine Crucified!"

These words gave rise to awakening, and as soon as the saint had made the last sigh, there was no more question of extracting and inspecting her heart to see if it would contain any special mark of the cross of Jesus Christ. One of the sisters opened his chest and removed his heart, which was as big as a child's head. After hesitation and prayers, it was resolved that the autopsy of this organ would be carried out, and Sister Françoise, appointed for this operation, took her heart into her hands and, with a razor, divided it into two, not without having shed many tears. The nuns, placed in a circle, a candle in their hand, then contemplate the most amazing spectacle; they see, represented by wonderful signs, the mysteries of the Passion of Jesus Christ.

On the right side of the heart appeared the image of the Crucified Saviour, a little longer than a woman's thumb; he had his arms stretched out and a little higher, his head leaning forward. The right side was open, and the blood was abundant; and on the left side there was a cloth stained with droplets of blood. At the feet, to the right, a circle, composed of small fibers, drew the crown inherited from thorns with sharp tips. Higher hanging, hanging three fibers, three pointed nails, black and harder to touch than flesh. Below was the spear, whose sharp tip and colour of the iron, was directed towards the right side, as if it were coming out of the wound. There was still an informed mass of red colour, combined with other fibres, which was taken to be a sponge.

On the left part of the heart appeared a whip with five flexible fibers, each of which had several knots, all tinted with black blood, separated from the flesh and attached to a handle that looked like wood and ended with a small strap intended to hang it. Between the end of the whip ropes and the crown of thorns, was the column, surrounded by strings of a color of blood. All these signs that recalled the Lord's passion, though formed of the substance of the flesh, had the hardness and color of the instruments they represented. Some were sent to Pope John XXII as authentic pieces for the process of canonization; the others were kept in the tomb of the servant of God, where they can still be seen.' What adds to the wonder is that, in the dissection of the heart that was made with iron and by inexperienced hands, as we have said, these images were uncovered without any alteration whatsoever.

Similar phenomena are canonically observed, in two other Italian ecstatics: Saint Véronique Guliani ‘, and Florida Cevoli ?. -

These plastic stigmatizations that relate to crucifixion are frequent and diverse. Sometimes it is a crucifix or a simple cross, sometimes a nail or any other sign of the Passion. We merely report these facts by their principal nature, without going into detailed details that would force repetitions. But this is the place to mention the incrustations and inscriptions of the same kind having an object other than the sufferings of the Cross. Quelques récits feront entendre en quoi elles consistent.

The blessed Margaret of Tiferno had often [text broken] ...like three threads, hung on one side, at the end of which, bound fast, hung iron nails, sharp-pointed, black, harder to the touch than flesh...; in place of these nails there was another little cord representing a lance, whose point was indeed sharp, of a rust-like color and hardness, etc.; it likewise stood raised from the surface, as if the point were coming out from its own side. There was likewise in this part a certain confused mass of little cords, of reddish color, whose shape was uncertain; this they interpreted as the sponge on the reed. On the left side of the heart was a scourge made of five twisted little cords bound with several knots; a small piece of soft and slender flesh hung down, moreover, representing that by which the scourge is suspended: after it followed a fleshy sleeve, but resembling wood; and in the same way the little cords were tinged with dark blood, and raised and separated from the flesh: all of which are shown even today in the tomb of Clare herself. Nearby was another little cord, which marked a straight column encircled by twisted and slender little cords... All these things, the heart having been torn open, remained intact.

1 Cf. SALVATORI, Life of the Blessed Veronica Guliani, Roma, 1860.

2 Cf. Fr. GEMELTI, Comp. della vita della ven. suor. Florida Cevoli, Roma , 1838.

8 J. BB. 13 apr., t. 11, p. 191, n. 7: Nonnuli ex fratribus memoria retinentes B. [Bullarium], 13 April, vol. 11, p. 191, n. 7: Some of the brothers, recalling from memory, [report] that Margaret, while she lived among men, was accustomed often to repeat to her household that she carried a precious treasure in her heart; seized with the desire of examining the heart..., having exhumed her they sought again the entrails, and the heart amid the buried organs — saying, during her life, that she carried a treasure in her heart. After his death this heart was opened, and three rounded stones were found there, of the size of a nave, on which was engraved a small image depicting the scene of the nativity of the Saviour: one saw there the crèche, the divine Child and the Blessed Virgin his mother, Saint Joseph and a white dove.

A wonderful butterfly described on the clothes of Saint Rose of Lima!, towards the region of the heart, the perfect image of a heart, which was seen and noticed by several young girls who worked with the saint.

Blessed Henri Suso ? had inscribed on his chest, in bloody strokes, the name of Jesus. These wounds eventually healed, and the blessed name remained printed until his death on his flesh in long letters as the joint of the little finger. When he came upon some trial, he looked at this sign of love, and he felt his soul strengthened. One day when he was resting in his cell, with his head leaning on a volume of the Fathers' life, he was seized by ecstasy, and he saw an abundant light escaping from his bosom that shone around a golden cross full of precious stones on which was engraved with an admirable art the name of Jesus. In vain did he try to veil with his clothes the radiance that overflowed from his chest; the more effort he made, the more this foyer lumiOn the eve of the Annunciation, on March 24 of the year 1585, Saint Mary Magdalene of Pazzi ‘ meditated the mystery of the Incarnate Word. Having come to these words of St John: "And the Word was made flesh, And Verbum caro factum is," she was delighted in a sublime ecstasy which lasted from ten o'clock in the evening until the next day at three o'clock in the afternoon. Everything that springs from this holy soul, during this transport, in admiration, in love, in praise, cannot be described. As she exhaled the ardours that consumed her in burning words, St Augustine came to meddle in her vision; unable to speak apprehensibly, she carried her hands and arms on her heart, and with her eyes she begged the Holy Doctor to write these sacred words: Verbum caro factum is; finally, in her impatience regaining her voice, she said: "Here is my blood, this is the ink to write; what are you late to Augustine?" Soon after, she was heard shouting, turning to the saint: "You have just written the sublimitity of the Word in the humility of my flesh!" The much desired inscription was, indeed, fulfilled: the word Verbum was written in letters of gold, and the rest in letters of blood; it itself indicated the meaning of the mystery: the gold expressed the divinity, and the blood of the humanity of Jesus Christ. To give her the certainty that the inscription was real, St Augustine assured her that she would never cease, until the end of her life, having presented to her mind the thought of this great mystery, which took place in fact.

These are the various aspects of stigma, but we have to study the causes of these strange phenomena; this will be the subject of the next chapter. In concluding this one, let us note that to these external wounds, to these symbolic marks on the body, correspond in the soul intimate impressions, and that between the prints of the inside and those of the outside, there exists this inverse relationship that the more crucifying and painful these-c1 are, the more delicious and intoxicating these are! We have already seen this prodigy of drunkenness in pain, when we were talking about wounds and wounds CHAPTER XXV

LES SOUFFRANCES MYSTIQUES

LA STIGMATISATION

CAUSES AND SUBJECTS Rationalistic interpretation. — It is free and in disagreement with the

faits. — The way in which stigma is carried out also contradicts

l'explication du rationalisme. — The two most famous stigmatized:

Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Catherine of Siena. — Sujets de la

stigma: the perfection it requires. — Nombre des stigmatisés.

[ — It is an experience that stigma usually occurs in deep meditation and in love with the sufferings of the Saviour. Many thought they could conclude that this association and resemblance to Jesus Christ crucified is the fruit of the imagination exalted by the mysteries of the cross. According to Benoit XIV', Francis Petrarch and others attributed to this cause the visible impression of the stigmas received by Saint Francis of Assisi; and Pomponace?, agreed

1 De servor. Dei beatif. 1. 4, P. 1, c. 33, n. 19; Synopsis ab Emm. de AZEVEDO, p. 279. To the imagination also Francesco Petrarca and others [ascribe] the impression of the stigmata on St. ...ascribe [it] to the body of Francis, whom, however, at length, among others, Bartholomew of Pisa, of the order... Minorum, redarguit.

2 Jbid., n. 11. Avicenna eam esse imaginatiis vim opinatur, ut alienum corpus transmutari posit.... Huic sententiæ adhæsit Pomponatius, etc. with the Aristotelian and the Muslim Avicenne, attributed to this faculty the power to transform even foreign bodies, especially that of affecting the body proper that the soul animates. This interpretation could not fail to please rationalists, only because it removes the supernatural in one of the situations where it bursts with the most obvious. We will discuss the denials and explanations of unbelief in the place where we will explicitly deal with the causes to which the facts of the mystical order are attributable; but we must point out here, to combat it, the way in which the illustrious Gürres hears stigma.

This learned author, who too often disfigures the supernatural of the facts by the interpretations to which he submits them, seems to have given in particular to his penchant in the question that is before us, where he tries to explain these prodigious wounds in any way consistent with the rationalistic process. According to him, the soul first receives the imprint of the sacred wounds in the ardour of contemplation; and, in turn, by the plastic virtue it exerts on the body, the soul prints these wounds to him according to the divine model that appears to him in these visions. The remedies by which the author tries to temper his theory are not sufficient to excuse the reproach of naturalism.

"An indispensable condition for receiving stigma," writes 1l?, "is immense compassion for the sufferings of the Saviour. The soul, contemplating the passion of this Man of pain, receives its imprint. It is as surrounded by an ocean of bitterness and seems to dissolve in ineffable sadness. Now it is in the nature of the feeling of compassion to transport out of oneself the one who sheds himself, to strip him of himself, to clothe him in some way with the one he loves and to engrave in him his image... Intoxicated with this burning wine that she drinks at the wounds of the Saviour, the soul rested only when she saw on her own body the image and the imprint of her suffering, and that she was thus transformed into him. When she conceived this desire with full reflection and expressed it with perfect freedom, she sometimes obtains, by special favor of God, what she asks, and receives in her body the imprint of the sacred wounds of the Saviour. It is indeed in the body that this transformation of man into Our Lord must be accomplished; for it is the spectacle of the material sufferings of Jesus Christ that excites in the soul this tender compassion, and it is after physical pains that she sighs. The relationship that is established in these circumstances between man and his Redeemer goes from the body of this one to the body of the first, and carries out in him a material and sensitive transformation."

These first explanations do not offer anything that can absolutely be admitted, with this reservation however that most of the souls who received the stigmas did not ask for them. But, after professing, as we have just heard, that external stigma is a special favor of God, the German docte writer strives to demonstrate that it is a natural consequence of internal stigma.

"The soul, the principle of life," he continues, "can not receive any imprint without it being repeated in the body that it animates; for it is eminently plastic; and, as long as this life lasts, it is united to the body by such intimate bonds, that nothing can happen in it that is not reflected in it. It is according to this law that she herself has somehow built her own body, and that any modification that takes place in herself brings a similar metamorphosis into the body. If therefore the soul, as a result of the compassion it experiences in view of the sufferings of the Saviour, receives its imprint, the act which thus assimilates to the object of its affections is immediately reflected outside, and the body also takes part, in its own way, in this wonderful assimilation; this is how the phenomenon of stigmatization occurs."

We ignore the physiological theory on which we try to support these interpretations. What we have quoted is sufficient to establish that it removes the supernatural from stigmatization; we have yet to demonstrate that it is entirely wrong.

II. — It is claimed that the condition for receiving stigma is compassion for the suffering of the Saviour. Whether this is the ordinary condition, it cannot be called into question; whether this condition is indispensable, it is very permissible to contest it, and the following fact, of which we borrow the account from Gôrres! itself, is proof of this.

"Angele of Peace, at the age of nine, had entered a church with one of her friends. There they separated, and Angèle went to kneel alone in the chapel of Saint Francis to pray. Seeing the stigma of the saint, she began, in her childish simplicity, to speak to him as if he had lived. "My Father," she said to him, "who caused these wounds to you? They hurt me, and I want to heal them, if you'll allow me. "These are not wounds," said the saint, "but jewels. — Comment,

‘ Divine mystic, 1. h,t. 2, ch. 16, nr. 228. of jewels,' replied the little girl; they bleed. "No," replied the voice, "they are jewels; and if you will, I will show you how I received them. "I will, Father," said Angèle. And at the same moment the vault of the chapel seemed to open, and the saint signaled to him to lift his eyes. She did so and saw Our Lord in the form of a child, his arms stretched out on a cross, while she herself was surrounded by a great light. The apparition came to her and put on her stigma; which caused her such great pain, that she fell to the ground as dead, with a piercing cry, and thus remained until the evening, always surrounded by light. It was only then that her companion returned, and finding her in the midst of this light, which seemed to her a fire, she called by her cries people who carried her to her parents, still damaged in ecstasy. The doctors tried his pulse and couldn't move his arm. His mother, who wanted to support her, discovered her hand; and it was then that one realized that she was, as well as the other, marked with stigma. The doctors also inspected the feet, and found them also wounded and bloody. They gave her remedies to bring her back from her ecstasy, which they looked upon as a continuation of her wounds; but all was useless. She remained in this state for eight days and then returned to her. As her mother looked at her crying, she said to her: "Do not weep, for it is God who willed it so; send away the doctors, their remedies cannot relieve me." She remained on her bed for two more years, suffering greatly, and eventually being abandoned from hers. She was healed later, and her healing was as miraculous as her illness had been!"

But, should it be admitted that the stigma is, by the 536 MYSTICAL PHENOMENES OF THE AFFECTIVE ORDER made, inseparable from the meditation of the painful mysteries, 1 would not follow that there exists between one and the other the relationship and dependence of the effect on the cause. Who can count the holy souls who have abated themselves in contemplation of Christ's pains, and who have not had the stigmas? If, by his own effort, compassion produced the marks of the cross, the very Holy Virgin Mary would have been the first of the stigmatized ones, according to Barthélemy of Pisa's fair remark.

Secondly, it is assumed that stigma is due to the violence of desires. The truth is that, while a small number of souls, mad of the love of the cross, have asked for these sensitive marks of the crucifixion, most have received them only with an astonishment mixed with terror, and have asked the Saviour, with the instance of tears, to suppress at least any external manifestation. Far from the fact that the soul contributes as a cause in stigmatization, it is most often against the will of the soul that the body is marked with these prints.

And then, how would the soul direct, without even being aware of it, blood or moods on any point of the body? Neither will nor imagination are able to divert the course of life from ordinary ways. If scholarly incredulity were not obsessed with the concern to push back the supernatural at all costs, it would look like a blundered insignia to argue that, by the mere effort of the imagination, one can, according to his whim, determine blood flows to the head, heart, feet and hands; but what is blundered remains blundered, and the bias taken does not allow, that we know, to change logic or to violate the common sense. It is particularly important today, among unbelievers, to attribute most extranatural phenomena, such as stigma, to disturbances and hysterical anomalies, to the suspension of periodic functions in women. In our third part, we will come back to these so-called physiological interpretations. At present, let us merely note that they are free, since the connection between hysteria as a cause and stigmatization as an effect has never come out of the conditions of an interested hypothesis; that, in their generality, they are false, these so-called causes can only be alleged for the woman, and the stigma which also occurs in the man; and that they are directly contradicted in the woman herself, either by the duly established regularity of the functions which are assumed in her, or by the age when the stigmas are printed on her.

The rationalistic explanation will appear even more childish and unbearable, if one considers the stigmatic wounds in themselves and in the prodigies that accompany them. As we have said, feet and hands are sometimes pierced from one side to the other; most often, the lesion of the heart, if natural, would lead to death; the blood remains pure and vermeil in this abnormal flow which should degenerate into purulence. More than that, these wounds that one would naturally like to explain exhale exquisite perfumes, unknown to the earth, as seen in Saint Jeanne of the Cross ‘, in Blessed Lucia of Narni*°, and° in several others. It comes out of embalmed flowers, bright rays, as it is said from the Blessed Helen of Hungary; in venerable

1 ANTOINE D'AÇA, Admirable Life of Saint Jeanne of the Cross, ch. 14, Sr. DE SAINTE-MARIE, Les Vies et actions, etc., des saintes el bienmère Agnes de Langeac!, were red crosses that pierced from one side to the other and had a flower of lilies at the end of each branch; these miracles are of all kinds and without number.

IT. — Finally, the history of stigma attests that the virtue that marks these divine prints does not depart from the soul, but from a supernatural extrinsic cause. For the impression of the five plagues, Our Lord often appears in the attitude of the crucifixion, and, of each of his glorious stigmas, dards rays that come to strike, in the stigmatized, the corresponding parts of the body; the rays of the hands are directed on the hands, those of the feet on the feet; the one of the heart goes to the heart: this is how St Mary Magdalene of Pazzi was stigmatized?

When the stigmas come out, the light is red; it is white if they must remain invisible 5. Sometimes the luminous features start from an image of the cross, as it happens to the Blessed Gertrude of Oosten ‘; or from the Eucharist, as Jeanne-Marie of the Cross tells it. The crucifixion also occurs as for the Saviour: the victim seems to lie on the cross and to be attached to it by nails that successively pierce his hands and feet. Saint Catherine of Ricci! and Marceline Pauper* seem to have been crucified in this way.

The side is frequently opened by a dart, an arrow, a spear.

It is still Our Lord who usually performs the painful crown, sometimes letting down the crown of his forehead on that of his lovers, or, with his own hands, laying it on their heads; sometimes presenting them two crowns, one of flowers, gold or stonework; the other thorns, and acting on their hearts to choose the one who must associate them with his pains. At other times, it is the angels or saints who bring this diadem: Saint John of God * the rebuke of the hands of the Blessed Virgin Mary and those of the Evangelist Saint John.

IV. — To better show how stigma works, and how it is outside natural laws, mention is made of the two most famous and authentic facts of this kind, the example of the Seraphic Francis of Assisi, and that of Saint Catherine of Siena. We borrow the first account from Saint Bonaventure, and the second one from Blessed Raymond of Capua: it is enough to say the respect that one owes to such accounts.

The angelic man, Francis, wrote Saint Bonaventure, had a custom never to rest in good, and, like the heavenly spirits of Jacob's scale, he ascended to God or descended to the neighbor. He had learned to share so carefully the time he was given to increase his merits, that he devoted part of it to the laborious gain among men, and the other to the peaceful delights of contemplation. So when he had used, according to the requirements of the places and times, to provide the salvation of others, he gave up the agitations of the crowd and withdrew to a lonely and quiet place, in order to shake, moving more freely to God, which had been able to attach dust to him in his dealings with men.

Thus, two years before his death, he was led by divine Providence, after many works, to a very high place of the Apennines, called Mount Alverne. Having begun the Lent which he used to do in honor of the archangel Saint Michael, he was flooded in his contemplation with an unaccustomed abundance of heavenly sweets; the flame of holy desires flamed with a new fire, and he felt the divine outbursts of grace spilling over his soul, in more rushed waves. He rose up and tried to fix his gaze on top, not as the curious scrutinizer of the supreme majesty that exposes himself to be overwhelmed by glory, but as the faithful and prudent servant who seeks to know God's good will and burns to conform without reservation. He was therefore warned by an inner inspiration that by opening the Gospels it would be revealed to him by Our Lord what God would have above all to please to accomplish in him and through him. After praying with great devotion, Francis, taking the sacred book on the altar, opened it three times, in the name of the Holy Trinity, by his companion, who was a fervent and holy religious. And as each time one fell upon the Saviour's passion, the saint, filled with the Spirit of God, understood that after he had imitated Jesus Christ in the acts of his life, he had to, before coming out of this world, resemble him in the afflictions and pains of his passion. Although the austerity of his past life and his continued application to bear the cross had exhausted his body, far from being terrified, he strove with new courage to this new martyrdom. The love of which he was consumed by the sweet Jesus had the proportions of a fire that was spreading in burning sparks and flames; the most violent waters could not have extinguished this strong home of his charity.

As the fervent seraphim of his desires brought him up to God and the tenderness of his compassion transformed him into the One who in the excess of his charity wanted to be crucified, one morning it was towards the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, while he prayed on the side of the mountain, he saw a seraphim coming down from the heights of heaven, supported by six burning and shining wings, and who had a rapid flight came to rest, hovering near him. Between the wings appeared the figure of a crucified man, hands and feet stretched out and tied to a cross. Two wings rose from above his head, two more were deployed to fly, and two others covered the Body.

At this sight the saint remained amazed, and a singular mixture of joy and sadness was made in his heart. The sweet spectacle of his Saviour staring at him in the form of a seraphim rejoiced him; but, seeing him thus nailed to the cross, a painful compassion pierced his soul from a sword. He admired without measure the mysterious vision, knowing that the infirmity of passion could not be reconciled with the immortality of a blessed spirit! Finally he understood, through a revelation of Heaven, that divine Providence had shown this spectacle in his eyes, to teach him, the friend of Jesus Christ, that it was not by the martyrdom of the flesh, but by a total burning of the soul, that he should become a perfect image of the divine Crucified. By disappearing, the vision therefore left in his heart an admirable ardour, and imprinted in his flesh no less wonderful prints. For immediately began to appear to the hands and feet the signs of the nails, as he had just seen them in the image of the seraphim; he saw his limbs pierced with the same nails, whose heads appeared inside the hands and on the feet, and whose tips came out to the opposite part. These heads were black and round; and the dots, long, curved and as folded, passing through the flesh, but then distinguishing by a marked promenence. His right side, as pierced by a spear, bore the imprint of a red scar "whose lips were opened, and from where the blood escaped with such abundance, that his tunic and his underwear were often soaked!

The servant of Jesus Christ, understanding that he could not hide these stigmatisms, so ostensibly printed on his flesh, from those with whom he lived, and on the other hand, fearing to publish the secret of the Lord, found himself in great perplexity to know whether he would make known or if he would tarry what he had seen. Having called some of his brothers, and speaking to them in general terms, he proposed his doubt and asked them for advice. One of them, enlightened by grace and guessing by his language and the state of astonishment that appeared in him, that he had had some wonderful vision, said to him: "Brother, know that it is not only for you, but also for others that the divine secrets were manifested to you. You must fear precisely, if you were to hide what was given to you for the benefit of many, that you would not be taken back on the Day of Judgment for having buried the talent that you had to make fruitful." Touched with these words, the saint deviated from his habits of discretion, which made him say in every other encounter: "My secret is for me," and brought with great fear the whole continuation of the vision, adding however that the one who had appeared to him had told him certain things that he would never entrust, during his life, to any man. These secrets of the seraphim, added Saint Bonaventure, probably elevated from those that man is not allowed to say again!.

After Christ's true love had thus transformed into his resemblance the one who had penetrated it, the forty Days devoted to solitude having passed and the solemnity of the archangel Saint Michael arrived, the angelic Francis descended from the mountain, carrying with him the image of the Crucified, image not engraved on the stone or on the wood by the hand of the worker, but printed in his flesh by the finger of the living God. However, as it is good to hide the king's secret, the man who had received the confidence did everything he could to steal from the eyes of these sacred signs. But also, as it is for God to reveal for his glory the wonders of his power, himself, having secretly printed in Francis these stigmates, perform by them brilliant miracles, in order to manifest, to the clarity of these wonders, the admirable virtue hidden under these prints.

We will not tell these miracles; they can be seen in Saint Bonaventure. We will only add, with the legendary pious, that the stigmatization of his father's seraphic has the indisputable notoriety of history. Several brothers, whose holiness guarantees witness, swornly affirmed their conviction of their reality by touching them: some cardinals also observed them, and Pope Alexander IV once declared to the people in a public preaching before several brothers, among whom was Saint Bonaventure himself, having seen them with his eyes. At the death of the saint, more than fifty brothers also saw them, and with them Blessed Claire, as well as all her nuns and an innumerable crowd of laymen, many of whom kissed them with the sentiments of tender devotion, and touched them with their hands, in order to give a more assured witness!

The second example we want to cite is that of Saint Catherine of Siena. Behold, according to Blessed Raymond de Capua*, his confessor and confidant,

1 Legenda S. Francisci. For very many of the brothers saw, while he was alive... Some cardinals also saw... The supreme pontiff also, the lord Alexander, when preaching to the people in the presence of many brothers and of myself, affirmed that, while the saint was alive, he had seen those sacred stigmata with his own eyes. At her death more than fifty brothers saw them, and Clare, the virgin most devoted to God, together with her other sisters, and countless lay people, of whom... very many also kissed them out of devotion, and [the account continues, describing] how this admirable virgin was honored with the sacred stigmata.

In the year 1375, she was in Pisa with Father Raymond and a few others, and was staying in a house near the church of St.Christine. On a Sunday, while she was attending the Mass of the Blessed, she was, after communion, as often happened to her, deprived of the use of her senses and delighted out of herself. Those who were with her were waiting for her to find herself, eager to receive some words of spiritual consolation, as he escaped from her lips from time to time upon the return of her ecstasy, when they suddenly saw her body straightening up a little, standing on her knees, extending her arms and hands, and all her face burst with light. After a long time in this attitude, she suddenly collapsed, as if hit with a fatal injury.

Finally she regained her senses, and called Blessed Raymond, she secretly said to him: "Teach, Father, that through a blessing of his mercy I carry in my body the stigmas of the Lord Jesus. "I doubted the movements and the attitude of your body during your ecstasy; but of grace," he added, "how this wonder worked."She said, "I saw the Saviour attached to the cross descending upon me all shining with light. Under the effort of my soul stinging to meet its Creator, my body rose up. So I saw five bloody rays coming out of his sacred wounds that were heading on my hands, my feet and my heart. Understanding the mystery, I exclaimed: "Oh! Lord my God, let these wounds at least not appear on my body!"I had not finished these words and these rays had not yet reached me, that the color of blood was changed into gold color, and five rays of pure light reached my hands, my feet, and my heart. — So there was no ray on your right side? "No, but on the left side, immediately on the heart, because this luminous trait that was going from the right side of my Savior did not cross, but fell on me in direct line. "Do you feel some pain?" Catherine sighing deeply: "The pain that I experience in these places of my body, and especially in the heart, is such that, without a new miracle, my life cannot be prolonged for a long time."

Indeed, in the first days after the prodigy, it was believed that the saint would succumb. Her disciples urged her to ask her husband that he tempered the violence of these pains; she refused to express on herself any wish other than that of the divine will. Then they increased their tears and their prayers to God, and their prayers were heard. Eight days after the miraculous impression of stigma, Catherine was completely healed. Blessed Raymond asked her if she still felt the severe pains of her wounds: "God has answered you, she replied, to the great regret of my soul; my wounds, far from making me suffer, are now a source of strength and health."

. Unseen as long as she lived, at her death the stigmas became apparent, and kept on her body respected by corruption. Today we can see these glorious prints on one of his hands still covered with flesh and preserved in the church of Saint-Sixte in Rome, and on his left foot, which he owns in Venice in the church of Saint John and Paul!.

1 CHavix pe MALAx, Sainte Catherine de Sienne, ©. 14, t. 2, p. 569. What we have just reported of the stigmatization of St Francis of Assisi and St Catherine of Siena, we would have to say again, if we wanted to expose the facts of this kind, as many times as they happen again. Always and everywhere, it is the miracle in multiple forms, it is the miracle especially in the impression, on the limbs, of these sacred signs. In the presence of these facts, to speak only of those we have quoted, the rationalistic thesis that it is the imagination that opens up the stigmas, supported even in the sense of Gorrres, namely, that it is the soul that, by its plastic virtue on the body, determines and locates these wonderful flows; — in good faith, is a similar thesis sustainable?

Saint Francis of Sales, it is true, seems favorable to this interpretation; to hear, it is by a loving contemplation of the Passion that the soul finds itself all transformed into a second Crucifix, as it expresses itself: "The soul, he says, as form and buttress of the body, using its power on iceluy, imprimated the pains of the plays she is injured in, in places which correspond to those which her lover sees them endured.. ; love therefore made pass the intervening turns of this great lover, Saint Francis, to the outer part, and wounded the body of a mesme dard of pain from which he sees wounded the heart." Exaggeration of language which he hastened to reduce by adding immediately: "But to make the openings in the flesh, outside, the love that is in it does not properly do it; it is for what it is l`ardent Seraphin, thus finding itself to the help, that it has already been the fact that it is the very clearness of the fact that it is the fact that it is the fact that it is the fact that it is the fact that it is the fact that it is the fact that In taking the assertion in its generality, we do not wish to contradict it: it is difficult to assign the limits that the imagination can reach in terms of subjective impression and sensation; but, in the precise case of stigmatization, with the set of circumstances that characterize it, with the real, invisible or apparent wounds that it prevails over the body, we fully contest that such effects can be explained by the virtue of imagination alone, and we hold, with Théophile Raynaud!, such an explanation for a joke that a man of common sense cannot be content with. The last word of these phenomena, well-known, is the miracle; the hatred of men impressed Christ with his stigmatizations, Christ again printing them on men out of love.

V. — We need to talk about stigma in order to appreciate the frequency of this gift and the degree of virtue it requires in those who receive it.

Regarding the second point of view, which we consider in the first place, it seems that the divine stigmas are not suitable for sinners. How can we reconcile in a soul the hatred of God and this wonderful sympathy with Jesus Christ crucified? To consider even things only outside, is there not a manifest incompatibility between the voluntary defilement of sin and the external traces of the Saviour's passion? When, then, these signs meet in sinners, they must be held to be the work of the demon.

1 Apud Beneo XIV. De serv. Dei beatif., 1. 4, P.1,c. 33,n. 13: Ut in corporate proprio homo jam grandis natu indicte posit aliquas notas, illudve præter naturam afficere interventu solius imaginis, tam nugaMoreover, it is a law commonly followed that the grace of stigmas is not granted to imperfects; that it is the privilege of advanced souls, to whom God confers it as the reward of perfect love or as an exciting sovereign to the consumption of love?.

However, the miracle of stigma does not seem to require that perfection has been achieved. It may meet in souls called to a high holiness or a providential role of building up in the Church, yet they are still only in the progress of virtue.

The variety found in the periods of life during which stigma is perceived confirms these observations. Angel of Peace? was marked at the age of nine, and lived fifty-two years; Blessed Lucia of Narni # and Saint Catherine of Rice* received them at the age of twenty, and died one and the other seven-year-olds; St Mary Magdalene of Pazif, at twenty-one years, and she will bear them for twenty years; Mother Agnes of Langeac',

1 ScARAMELLI, Dirett. Mist. Tr. 3, c. 28, n. 265, p. 240: The esame that dovrà fare il Direttore, sarà circa i seguenti punta. First, that although the soul may not yet be perfect, it may be much advanced in perfection, and may already have been, if not wholly, at least in great part purified by God through many trials, because God is not accustomed to bestow such favors, which savor of the prodigious, upon weak and imperfect souls. Secundo, se una tal anima abbia gran communicazione con Dio.., perchè le ferite ed impressionisoprannaturali che Iddio scolpisce nel corpo di alcun suo servo, sono come caratteri e come attestazioni sensibili dell’ amor particolare che gli porta; e pero non si concedono se non a quelli con cui tiene Iddio un tratto molto intimo e famigliare.

? Jos. Lopez EzquerrA, Luc. myst. The aforesaid favor is granted only to the most perfect souls... And although it could be granted to beginners according to the divine good pleasure, nevertheless it has never (as far as we know) been granted except to these most perfect souls.

3 GôRRES, Mystique, 1. 4, c. 16,t.2, p. 230.

4 JEAN DE SAINTE -MARIE, t. 2, p. 190.

5 H. BAYONKE, Vie de sainte Catherine de Ricci, c. 10,t. 1, p. 178.

6 V. Pucommi, BB. 95 maii, t. 149, p. 223. |

7 From LANTAGES, Life of Mother Agnes, 3 P., c. 143, t. 2, p. 293. to twenty-three years old, and she shall die thirty-two years old; Jeanne de la Croix, also twenty-three years old, and she shall live thirty years; Blessed Catherine de Racconigi* and Sister Dominique du Paradis*, at twenty-four years old, and the first one shall go until sixty years old, and the second one until eighty years old; Blessed Christine de Stommeln, at twenty-six years old, and she lived seventy years of it; Blessed Osanne de Mantua, at twenty-eight years old, and she shall not die until fifty-six; Blessed Étiennette de Soncinof, at thirty-three years old, and her life shall continue for forty years; Saint Véronique de Julianis, at thirty-seven years old, and she shall reach sixty-seven years old; Anne-Catherine Emmerich®, at thirty-eight years old, and she shall die until fifty.

In others, stigma coincides with the end of the trial, and seems to be the reward and crowning of their virtue. Saint Catherine of Siena *° will receive these sacred prints five years before her death; St Francis of Assisi ‘, only two; several, the last year or even in the last days of their lives, as Saint Catherine of Genoa‘, for example.

VI. - The phenomenon of complete and visible stigmatization is quite rare. If we leave people still alive aside, the total figure, according to our calculations, does not exceed sixty. Partial stigmatizations, mainly of the heart, all of which are most often repeated, significantly increase this number. Those that remain invisible are much more numerous; there are more than apparent stigmatizations, and a large number probably remain unknown. If humility has been able to conceal during life external and sensitive prints, how much more do those who hide themselves?

Saint Paul was perhaps the first of the stigmatized; for many hear in this sense these words of the epitome to the Galatians!: "I bear on my body the stigmatisms of Our Lord Jesus Christ;" but this interpretation is not well founded, and the common tradition explains this text of the sufferings that the apostle endured, and whose body keeps track of, glorious trace that attests the love and servitude that he professes toward Jesus Christ crucified?.

Saint Francis of Assisi opened the historical series of stigmatized people, in 1224. Since then, the prodigy of stigma has been, so to speak, permanent in the Church, albeit sparingly. As in all mystical favors, women have the best share; it's barely if there are four or five men on the list of complete stigmatizations, and about fifty on the whole; it's always like Calvary, where there were many compassionate women, and the loving and faithful men, absent, except one. De nos jours, on connaît un nombre relativement considérable de stigmatisées. In some, the divine action is manifest; in others, less and perhaps questionable. We made a law not to comment on these current facts.Then the Franciscan order, one hundred and two, among which almost a quarter of Clarisses. Fourteen Carmelites, fourteen Ursulines, twelve Visitandines, eight of the order of Saint Augustin, five Cistercians, four Benedictines, three Jesuits, three Theatines, two Trinitaries, two Hieronymites, two Conceptionists. Thirteen other Orders or Congregations had only one stigmatized by each religious family. CHAPITRE XXVI

MYSTICAL PHENOMENES RELATING TO THE BODY

ABSTINENCES AND VILLES Admirable abstinences of the saints. — The Eucharist is their place of body food. — The conditions and signs of miraculous abstinence. - Free from the law of sleep among contemplatives.

— Caractère surnaturel de ces insomnies.

[. — We have exposed the mystical facts in which vision and love dominate; we have yet to study those in which the wonderful reaches the body. We will see the body in turn subtracted from the natural laws that govern its conservation, the play of its organs, its relations with the physical world that surrounds it.

Among these laws, it is no more imperative than those of food and sleep. Every organized body loses by exercise, repairs by rest and by new assimilation. Yet one of the most ordinary effects of mystical life is to suppress or restrict this double servitude of animal life in more or less broad proportions.

First, let's talk about the miracle of abstinence. He meets frequently among the saints. One has seen who was passing, without taking any food, days, weeks, whole Lents and vents, sometimes one or several years. On two occasions, Moses dwells forty days on the mountain, without food other than the law of the Lord, which he was to pass on to his people. After tasting the mysterious bread that the angel presents to him, Elijah* walks forty days and forty nights to Mount Horeb. The Saviour was to consecrate this forty-day fast by his example.

Saint Simeon Stylite*, St.Elisabeth qualified as a thaumaturg by the Greeks, St.Colette and several others renewed this absolute abstinence during the liturgical quarantine. Saint Simeon Salus, fasting all Lent, until Holy Thursday. Saint Dalmace® also spent a whole Lent without eating food, until the Thursday of the great week, where, after the sacred services, he took his meal with the brothers. On the evening of that same day, he sat on his stairs and remained forty-three days, that is, until the solemnity of Ascension, in the immobileness of ecstasy. Finally his superior Isace reminds him, and the saint then tells a vision that provides all the proof that the illumination whose soul Joui had really came from the Lord.

Apart from the time devoted by Christian piety, these facts are multiplied to infinity. Saint Pierre d’Alcantara

1 Erod. xxiv, 18; — xXXXIV, 28. — 3 IIT Reg. x1x, 8. — 3 Matth. 1v, 2.

In all, thirty-nine days passed without any food.

Forty days were spent fasting, tasting nothing at all.

For forty days and as many nights, nothing at all was eaten or drunk.

7 Léonce, évêque. BB. 1 jul., t. 28, p. 143, n. 47: Adveniente enim sancta jejuniorum quadragesima, non gustabat aliquid usque ad sanclam feriam quintam.

8 BB. 3 aug., tt. 35, p. 220, n. 3-5. Cum totos quadraginta quadragesimæ dies jejunus egisset usque ad sanctam feriam quintam, oblate deinde üa confessed to Saint Terèse! that he gave food to his body only three in three days; and his historians tell that sometimes he extended his abstinence for whole weeks?. Father Saint Elpide* lived twenty-five years in a cave, taking food only on Sunday and Thursday. Saint Euthymus #, nicknamed the Great, ate only on Saturday or Sunday. The venerable Mary of Oignies® was eight, eleven, and sometimes thirty days without drinking or eating, absorbed in a gentle contemplation, and showing hunger only for the Eucharist, which was then her only food.

IL. — It is important to note these two points, namely, that it is mainly the ecstatic ones who are freed from the law of nutrition, and that the adorable sacrament of the altar is the food that supplements all others. Ces faits ne se comptent pasf. En voici seulement quelquesuns. Saint Catherine of Siena, in whom the contemplative life radiated so brightly, spent all Lent and Paschal time without any other repair than the Eucharist, and she obtained from her confessor that she had no more food than this heavenly meat. The days on which she commutes1 Her Life, c. 27.

Indeed, at times this scant refreshment was put off until as late as the eighth day.

8 PIERRE DE NATALIBUS, BB. 2 sept., t. 41, p. 383, n. 37: Per annos xxv quos ibi vixit, Dominico tantum et Jovis diebus sumebat, aliis diebus nihil omnino gustabat.

4 CyrILLE, moine. BB. 20 jan., t. 2, p. 675, n. 58: Nemo unquam viderit comedentem nisi sabbato aut die dominico.

S JAcQUES DE Vrray, BB. 93 jun., t. 25, p. 552. Usually for eight days, but sometimes for eleven..., nothing was eaten or drunk, in fasting.. At one time for thirty days she took no bodily food, and for several days could utter no word except this only: I want the Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

6 Cf. JEAN D8.SAINTE-MARIE, The Lives of the Saints and Blessed Ones of the Order of St.Dominique, Passim.

7 RaAyMOND DE CAPOUE, BB. 30 apr., t. 12, p. 905, n. 170 et 171: À quadragesimali tempore usque ad festum Ascensionis Dominicæ, absque quocumque cibo et potu corporeo.. Cæpit sic absque ciho corporeo vivre. denied, the venerable Catherine ‘, who founded with Blessed Colombini the order of the Jesuates, did not taste any other food. The Eucharist caused St. Rose of Lima? such a satisfaction, that she put it in the impotence of swallowing a bite of bread or a drop of water. The venerable Mary Bagnesiÿ could not bear, in her diseases, the lightest food; but she kept the holy species and found it fortified.

"It happened several times," wrote Mother Agnes de Langeac, her pious historian #, "that, for a considerable time, her body was sustened with no food but the Eucharist, which was wonderful once more than six months in a row, during which he had only the Most Holy Sacrament that remained in his stomach, being impossible for him to swallow anything other than anything else that she vomited all incontinent."

Blessed Nicolas de Flue or de la Roche obtained from his wife, of whom he had ten children, to dedicate himself to God in deep loneliness. He spent the rest of his life there, from the age of fifty to the age of seventy, without using any food. After the first six months, at the order of his superiors, he tries to eat; he barely manages to insert in his stomach some crumbs and a few drops of wine which he immediately rejects. When asked how he could live like this, he replied that it is the Eucharist that is his life. A certificate inscribed in the archives of the parish of Saxlen, during the lifetime of this famous hermit, and quoted by his biographer, is thus conceived: "Let it be made known to everyone that, the year of the Lord 1487, lived an excellent man by the name of Nicolas de Flue, born and raised in the parish of Saxlen, in the mountain, who abandoned father and brother, his own wife and children, five sons and five daughters, went to the desert of Raust, where God sustained him without food or drink for a long time, i.e. eighteen years. At the time when it was written, it was full of meaning and leading a holy life, What we have seen and know in truth. D

[IL. — After these accounts, which we could multiply, it is necessary to wonder to what extent these abstinences are miraculous, and to what signs one can recognize that they have a supernatural character.

It is an undisputed law of physiology that nutrition is the regular condition of health and life. There are two exceptions to this law: a morbid state and a miracle. In principle, or at least as a general rule, the first case invalidates the second case or renders the finding problematic.

There does not stop the difficulty. Organic disturbances are so many, so complex, sometimes so eccentric, that it becomes difficult to do the part of nature. The collections of medicine cite numerous cases of prolonged abstinences where the supernatural does not appear, and which resemble the facts alleged by the hagiographs. Most recently, Tanner, Succi and others performed with fanciful fasts of thirty to forty days; so that we are reduced here to overthrow the terms, i.e. to conclude the supernatural of abstinence by the evidence of holiness, rather than holiness by the act of abstinence.

This is the course outlined by the most eminent judge in these matters, Benedict XIV. He wants to see that after being assured of abstinence, it is examined whether it has coincided, as a cause or as an effect, with illness or fatigue; what are the motives that inspired it; whether it has harmed other obligatory godly practices; and, finally, whether it offers the guarantee of a heroic virtue." It also points to another mark, which several authors declare to be decisive, and which we believe to be such in reality, is when the Eucharist stands as food. But this trial does not strictly conclude with the miracle as much as it is both positive and negative, i.e., that, received, the divine manna of the altar supplants any other food, and that, missing, the result in the subject is the ordinary exhaustion of the inanition.

1 De serv. To state our own opinion, which we gladly submit to the judgment of the Sacred Congregation: if, in a cause of Beatification and Canonization, some lengthy fast performed by a servant of God is put forward, which the postulators contend to have been beyond the power of nature, a careful inquiry must be undertaken into the fact itself — namely, into abstinence from all food and drink throughout the whole time for which the fast is said to have been prolonged; and the promoters must remember, in this as in other proofs, that promoters of the faith have been accustomed to be [...] The marvelousness of these abstinences, supposing them to be supernatural, is explained without difficulty. It is a kind of early incorruptibility that suspends the law of incessant loss of organs, and thereby exempts from the correlative law of food repair.

IV. — Sleep, like food, is necessary for the normal preservation of the organism: life is exhausted by exercise, it is restored in rest. The saints have always tended to restrict this requirement of animality. In addition to their appeal for mortification, they still found here the benefit of the multiplication of time: happy to transform into a fruitful prayer the hours they took away from the unconsciousness of sleep. Like abstinence, the vigil meets mainly in contemplatives and ecstatics.

Saint Macaire * of Alexandria spent twenty days and twenty nights in a row without sleeping; but at the end he was forced to yield, feeling his head delusional. Saint Colette * gave very little sleep, sometimes barely an hour in a whole week; and, according to her historian*, she was a whole year without discontinuing her watch.

1 DuPINEY DE VOREPIERRE, Dict. au mot Sommeil, p. 1095: The need for sleep is, like the need for food, a need for preservation. When he is not satisfied, he becomes imperious, and whatever the time and moment, man succumbs to his attacks.

Dr H. Georce, Treatise element. d'hygiene, 1870, p. 303: Sleep is as necessary for the rest of the body as for the rest of the mind.. Insufficient sleep, especially pushed to insomnia, leaves a great muscle fatigue, leads to hebology of all senses and intelligence, etc. Prolonged insomnia by violence brings death.

? BB. 2 jan.,t.1,p. 85, n. 45: Totis viginti diebus et noctibus non sum tectum ingressus ut somnum vincerem.….. ; ita mihi erat arefactum cerebrum, ut deinceps agerer in extasim.

3 Ér. pe Juuiers, BB. 6 mart.,t. 7, p. 557, n. 82: Aliquoties in octo diebus . vix dormiebat per unicam horam.

Ibid., p. 573, n. 166: since she persevered in keeping vigil without the sleep of slumber for the space of a whole continuous year, by a special grace... For more than thirty years, Saint Lidwine did not sleep the equivalent of three nights. St Peter of Alcantara? slept for forty years only an hour and a half a night, and he declared that in the beginning no other penance had cost him so much. St. Rose of Lima has limited the time for sleep at two o'clock, and sometimes it has given less. Saint Catherine of Ricci‘, "from childhood, never slept more than two or three hours a night, still regretting these short hours as a lost time for Jesus Christ. But as his love for him grew, he gained ground on his sleep; so, when at the age of twenty ecstasy had seized her life, she ended up sleeping only an hour a week, and sometimes barely two or three hours a month."

The Blessed Agathe of the Cross® spent the last eight years of her life on an incessant watch. Saint Elpidef, of whom we have already reported abstinence, slept, it is said, never for twenty-five years, devoting every night to prayer and the singing of psalms. After the death of this admirable master, his disciple Sisinnius? locked himself in a tomb, and lived there for three years, standing, still and in a continual prayer. V.—When the day before lasts without any interruption for weeks, months, years, and without resulting in any reduction in the vigour and exercise of body life, it is not doubtful whether this phenomenon should be considered supernatural. One can restrict the ruinous need to sleep; without miracle, one does not absolutely dominate it. Doctors and physiologists unanimously profess that, without coming out of the normal laws of organic nature, one does not manage more to deprive oneself of sleep than to deprive oneself of food. The difficulty is to decide how early the derogation begins. Where does the power of habit end, where must the struggle stop under pain of exceeding nature and touching the miracle? No one can say that.

It is at least indisputable that the habit of contemplation, and especially that of ecstasy, emerges from the servitudes of animal life; that the more the soul nourishes and drunken with God, the less it tastes the coarse dishes of the body; that the more it is absorbed and concentrated in God, the less it is subject to drowsiness and drowsinessCHAPTER XX VII

Mystical ODOR Frequency of this prodigy. — The smell sometimes exhales sick bodies covered with wounds. — It is customary in stigma and mystical ring. — It often breaks out at the death of God's servants, and even after years and centuries, it declares itself in their relics. — It is felt at great distances and sometimes even at simple thought. — Ces odeurs se rapprochent rarement de senteurs connues. — The explanation of these phenomena is only possible by referring them to the miracle, especially if one considers the circumstances that accompany them. — Signification mystique.

[. — Our body has a constant need for food, because it undergoes continuous work that disintegrates its elements and makes our body a permanent home of more or less putrid excretions and exhalations: death begins with life. We just saw him, the saints were more than once exempted from the physiological law of feeding. More often than not, their bodies, exhausted by penance, worked by sickness, and even in the corruption of the tomb, have exhaled perfumes and secreted odoriferous liqueurs. These wonders form the subject of this chapter and the following.

This one is dedicated to supernatural smells.

These embalming emanations often occur in the apparitions of the Savior, the Blessed Virgin Mary, angels and saints. The many accounts we have made, in dealing with the objects of the vision, exempt us from insinuating on a point of view that it would be easy to justify in many other examples. We now want to consider the miracle only in the person of the saints living on earth, or in their blessed remains.

Among the signs of holiness, the facts of this kind are perhaps the most multiplied, and the Church, so severe in the discussion and affirmation of the wonderful, relates them in large numbers in the legends of the Breviary. Saint Stephen of Muret spread an admirable odor around his person: a certain sign, as his biographer notes, that the author of all suavity filled him with his presence. [He escaped from Blessed Christine of Stommeln?, during his ecstatic contemplations, an all celestial perfume. The virgin purity of St. Philip of Neri * was exhaled by an exquisite smell of nothing from the earth. The sisters of Mother Agnes de Langeac! saw and felt, on a Sunday day, at the time when she was ready to pray, a very smelly steam coming out of her mouth, whatever effort the handmaid of God made to shake her lips, in order to hide this favor. "Many very reliable people," writes the historian of this admirable wife of Jesus Christ, "says that they have often noticed, during her life, that her pudic body exhaled a very good smell that rejoiced and comforted the hearts of those who approached her. These perfumes were especially exhaled from the body of our virgin after she had received at the holy table the Beloved of her heart: she was then spirit and body, for her sisters and for all those around her, the good smell of Jesus Christ."The martyrs were often strengthened and comforted by similar wonders, as we see, to name but the following, in the acts of St. Potit', of Saints Julien and Celsus*, of St. Hermagoras #, of St. Prisk', of St. Martin's.

IT. — These embalming emanations sometimes come from bodies plagued by disease and subjected to active work of decomposition. Sainte Lidwine$ en est un mémorable exemple. In the incredible infirmities which put her body into putrefaction, as we have said elsewhere, her wounds exhaled a sweet smell, and a part of her intestines, which she had rejected by the mouth with waves of blood, kept, even dried up, an aroma that attracted a considerable crowd of visitors into the poor chaumiere of the saint, until finally she had obtained from her brother that he buried the debris of herself in the cemetery. The wounds of which St John of the Cross was afflicted in his last sickness spread such a pleasant smell, that she engulfed the whole monastery.

II. — The stigmas are usually the home of these wonderful smells, as we see, among others, in Saint Jeanne of the Cross! and in Blessed Lucia of Narni?. He escaped from the ring which Saint Catherine of Ricci had received from the hand of Our Lord, in his mystical weddings, an all heavenly fragrance. But what is told in this regard in the life of Jeanne-Marie de la Croix "is even more extraordinary. "From the moment she had received the mysterious ring, her finger exhaled a very pleasant smell which she could not hide, and which all the sisters soon noticed. So they took advantage of every opportunity to touch and kiss him. The smell it was spreading was so strong, that it communicated to the touch and persisted for a long time. Thus, when Sister Marie-Ursule touched her finger, her hand exhaled for several days the most delicious fragrance. This smell was particularly sensitive when she was sick, because she could not take so many precautions to hide the thing. It gradually spread over the whole hand, then over the whole body, and communicated to the objects that she had touched. It could not be compared to any of the fragrances of this earth; for it differed essentially and penetrated the soul and body of ineffable delights. She was stronger when she came back from communion."

Saint Catherine of Genoa, flirting with the hand of the priest who directed his soul, felt a smell of ineffable suavity that comforted him at the same time and soul and body, and whose virtue was such that it seemed to him that the dead, according to his expression, had to rise from it. The confessor would have liked to have enjoyed the same favor; but he could have smeared his hand, but for him the wonderful smell did not exist.

Blessed Mary of the Angels! " first exhaled her perfume than at intervals; it then became more frequent, and finally usual. Though always sufficient to produce a delicious sensation, the emanation was felt more strongly at the solemnities of Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, the feasts of the Blessed Virgin, St. Joseph, the novenas she used to make, and when she approached the holy table."

[V. — It is mainly at the death of God's servants that the smell of holiness is declared. While human corpses are unbearable by the stench they spread, the bodies of the saints often embalm by the most delicious scents. At the time when St.Paternian*, Bishop of Boulogne, gave the spirit a sweet smell to all the assistants, and several of them were healed of their infirmities; what is also said about St.Andreus the Scoti, St.Omer‘ and many others. But, it is necessary to observe it, it is the mortal body itself that exhales these perfumes, as reported from the martyr Saint Piatf, Saint Rose of Lima f, Saint Térèse ?, St Peter of Alcantara ®, the venerable Mother Agnes of Jesus'. Among these wonders, one of the most remarkable is the one who reported the funeral of St.Elisabeth #, Queen of Portugal. Two days after the death of this princess, her body was carried to Coimbra, a distance of more than thirty leagues and by the great heats of summer. The putrefaction was complete, and the pus distiled through the cracks of the coffin. But far from infecting, during the journey that lasted seven days, the carriers and those who ran on their way, he exhaled in the distance a suave and incomparable smell.

The peak of the wonderful is that the bones of the saints preserve this fragrance of heaven many years and even centuries after death. We shall not deal with these accounts; the number is incalculable; we shall suffice to mention a few names and a short series of figures relating the space between the time of death, and another posterior where the smell of holiness has almost always been legally observed.

Saint Rose of Lima* presents this wonder fifteen years after his death, Saint Thomas of Villeneuve‘, twenty-seven years later; Saint John of Saint-Facond*, after sixty; Saint John of Caramolef, after a century; Saint Teresus, after two hundred years, Saint Raymond of Pégnafort®, after three hundred; Saint Eulalie*, after four hundred; Saint Ynigo",

1 OF LANTAGES, Life of Mother Agnes, 2 P., ©. 21, p. 42.

BB. 4 jul., t. 29, p. 192, n. 106-112: At once they perceived an odor breathing forth from it, more fragrant than anything they had ever smelled in this world or could believe possible.… And it could not have happened otherwise than that some moisture dripping from the bier stained the hands and garments of those carrying it.

3 LÉONARD HANSEN, BB. 26 aug., t. 39, p. 989, n. 30.

+ BB. 18 sept., t. 45, p. 958, n. 5.

$ BB. 12 jun., t. 23, p.155, n. 154.

6 BB. 26 aug., t. 39, p. 858, n. 25.

7 F. X. PLasse, Souvenirs du pays de suite Terèse, c. 12, p. 290. after five hundred; Saint Davin', after six hundred; Saint Julien?, martyred, after seven hundred; Saint Aldegonde de Maubeuge, eight hundred years later; Saint Monique ‘, mother of Saint Augustine, after nine hundred; Saint Athanasius ‘, after a thousand years; Saint Mathias, apostle, after eleven hundred; Saint Fortunate' and his brothers, after twelve hundred; Saint Stephen, pope and martyr, after thirteen hundred; Saint martyrs? Dulcissime, Carissime and Crescent, after fourteen hundred years.

This aroma, which attests in such a touching way to the presence of God in his elect, extends to the external objects which they have sanctified by their contact, What is told of the clothes and poor furniture of Blessed Peter Petron * is admirable. The cell of St Joseph of Copertino‘! was distinguished by the smell, and this smell was such that it soaked everything that was used for its use; although it was washed, nothing could make it disappear; after more than twelve years, its room still kept this perfume. Letters written by the hand of Saint Teresis ‘ and other objects that she had simply touched kept an exquisite smell long after her death.

V. — Ces effluves miraculeux se communiquent parfois

1 BB. 3 jun., t. 21, p. 326, n. 20.

2 BB. 16 febr., t. 5, p. 885, n. 9.

3 BB. 30 jan.,t. 3, p. 669, n. 7.

4 Bocaaup, Vie de sainte Monique, c. 16, p. 408.

5 BB. 2 maii, tt. 14, p. 261, n. 441.

6 BB. 24 febr., t. 6, p. 451, n. 3.

7 BB. 14 oct., t. 54, p. 452, n. 12.

8 BB. 2 aug.,t. 35, p. 136, n. 143.

9 BB. 6 jul., t. 29, p. 257, n. 23.

10 BARTHÉLEMY DE SIENNE. BB. 29 maii, t. 20, p. 196, n. 25: Tautam odoris fragrantiam etiamnum ex se effundunt, ut nulla eis aromata vel opobalsami rivuli, si per ædes fluerent, comparari possent.

The cell in which brother Joseph dwelt breathed the fragrance and scent of paradise, and the same occurred with his other garments.

Once [she] received letters... these, then, she produced, smelling most sweetly... at great distances. At the death of Saint Louis Bertrand!, his body spread in the distance an incomparable suavity, and one tells of a monk called Veran, long without the sense of smell, that, at the hour when Blessed Maure passed, he felt, four miles away, the perfume that was exhaling from the body of the pious virgin. Seventy years after the death of Saint Trévère #, his body was discovered intact and spreading a delicious smell. As he was lifted from the ground, everyone felt a thousand in the round like an exquisite mixture of roses, lilies, balm and incense.

The simple thought is sometimes enough to manifest the gentle influence of God's servants. Saint Columba or Columkill#, this famous abbot of Ireland, whom M. de Montalembert® so suavely described the poetic and original physiognomy, visited his monks in spirit and saw them greatly by lightening the weight of their burdens and by making everyone feel an exquisite smell, a soft inner warmth and a dilatation of heart that removed any feeling of grief and fatigue.

VI. — Décrire et qualifier ces odeurs sacrées est chose difficile, sinon impossible. Sometimes they appear to be close to known species. The cell of Saint Rose of Viterb! kept the perfume of the rose; St Cajetan*?, founder of the Theatines, smelled the orange blossom; St Catherine of Ricci, the violet; St Teresus, in turn the lily, the jasmine and the violet; St Francis of Paul, the musk, St Thomas of Aquinas, incense.

Hagiographs mention balm ?, nectar®, aromats *, without specifying more and to translate in some way what has not been equivalent among the things known.

More generally, in fact, it is a singular aroma that has nothing to do with ordinary perfumes and which has been described as a smell of holiness, a paradise smell or paradise, a heavenly smell, supernatural; and when it emanates from the tomb or remains of the saints, a smell of relics. The authors who report these wonders exhaust all the expressions to make heard how pleasant, delicious, penetrating, these wonderful fragrances are. Tantôt ils y voient

1 BB. 4 sept., t. 42, p. 428, n. 69. Through the sense of smell of all, a most sweet odor of roses began to persist.

? BB. 7 aug., t. 36, p. 261, n. 95. That he was accustomed to give off a certain most sweet odor of citron.

3 P. H. Bayonne, Vie de sainte Catherine de Ricci, t. 2, p. 316.

4 RiBerA, BB. 45 oct.,t. 55, p. 711, n. 1. This odor was most sweet, and not always the same; sometimes it recalled the fragrance of lilies, sometimes of jasmine and violets.

8 Proc. de Canon. BB. 2 april., t. 10, p. 127, n. 22: Fragrabat odore suavi..…., habebatque persona sua odorem musci.

6 BB. 7 mart.,t. 7, p. 688, n. 12: Sensit suavem fragrantiam odoris, quasi incensi.., de corpore ipsius Fr. The aforesaid odor went forth from Thomas.

7 BB. 9 janv.,t. 4, p. 581, n. 25. They thought him drenched with balsam.

8 BB. 11 jan.,t. 1, p. 582, n. 33: Nectareum odorem reddens.

° BB. 13 jan.,t. 2, p. 39, n. 15: Carcer enim sic olebat quasi aromata.

10 FRANC. SYLVESTRE. BB. 18 jun., t. 24, p. 577, n. 90 : Sanctitudinis odorem.

11 BB. 18 sept., t. 45, p. 1004, n. 67. Odorem paradisi spirabat. — BB. 24 febr., t. 6, p. 451, n. 3. Paradisiacis odoribus.

That it breathed forth a heavenly fragrance.

13 Jbid., n. 63. A most sweet and supernatural odor.

14 BB. 16 febr., vol. 5, p. 885, n. 8: Odore ipsarum sanctarum reliquiarum, the finesses of all aromatic compositions!, the gathering of all flowers together?, an ideal perfume like nectar?; sometimes they are reduced to saying that it is an unknown smell #, a kind of emanation of eternal beatitude, having nothing comparable on earth. "Whoever approaches the precious shawl that contains its sacred remains," wrote Saint Euphemiah Evagre!, the author of the century, aspires to a sweet smell that surpasses many of the usual scents. It is not that of the green meadows or of the most fragrant things; it is no more like the compositions of man's hand; it is for our world an exotic fragrance which, by its very excellence, attests to the supernatural virtue of the relics from which it emanates."

The perfumer of the court of Savoy was sent to the convent of Blessed Mary of the Angels, * to try to recognize the nature of the smell that this servant of God exhaled, and he had to confess that she did not resemble any of the perfumes here. Also the nuns, his companions,

They thought that, as it were, the scent of every kind of spice had breathed forth.

2 BB. 19 sept., t. 46, p. 889, n. 8: Videtur balsamum cum floribus omnibus permixtum fragrare. |

8 S. GRÉGOIRE DE Tours, De glor. mart., ©. 31. Oil with a nectar-like odor.

The whole body and the reliquary give off a pleasing odor, yet not a soft or aromatic one, but an unknown one.

$ BB. 23 jun., t. 25, p. 416, n. 8. An odor of such sweetness appeared that they thought themselves cherished by the delights of eternity.

A most sweet odor, different from all the spices that are to be found in this world.

7 BB. 16 sept., t. 45, p. 250, n. 22: Ubi quis ad eum locum accesserit in quo est arca illa pretiosa quæ sacras continet reliquias, ejusmodi odoris suavitatem sentit quæ omnes consuetos odores longe superat. For that odor is like neither the odor gathered from meadows, nor that which exhales from the most fragrant things, nor such as is compounded by perfumers, but a certain strange and excellent one, declaring of itself how great is the power of the relics that emit it.

8 Lamis, Summary of the Life of B. Mary of the Angels, ch. 29, p. 158. Did she call her a smell of paradise and holiness.

VIT. — It is useless, as Gorrres is trying to do!, following his tendencies to rationalism or cloud physiology, to look into the body itself for the cause of these embalmed exhalations; it is simply necessary to resort to miracles. How could the body produce, by a natural virtue, these odoriferous effluves up to morbid and cadaveric states? Even in health, the incessant loss is the law of organized nature; the disease accelerates corruption, and death, who knows it? does not give any more obvious sign of itself than the putrefaction: incorruptibility and good smell, especially after life has withdrawn, can only be supernatural. "Although some mixtures make a pleasant smell, by altering it,", observes the learned pontiff Benedict XIV, "it is different from the human body after the soul has moved away. That he may naturally not feel bad, it is possible; but that he smells good, it is outside nature, as is evident from the experience. Therefore, whether the body gets corrupted or remains intact, whether it is rotten or not, if a smell declares itself persistent, suave, incommodating no one, pleasing to all, and whether it is constant that there exists or did exist no natural cause capable

1 Mystique, 1. 3, c. 4, t. 1, p. 339: As soon as the soul has spread its wings and grown to heaven, the economy of life as a whole is profoundly altered. As she climbs into a higher region, she takes the body with her into a higher sphere. New relationships are established for the soul and the body. The life of both is governed by new laws; the various vital functions follow each other in a different order, and the mixing of the elements that enter into the composition of the human body is accomplished according to other bases, resulting in a profound change in the whole compound. The materials it assimilates become thinner, more untied, more ethereal than in the ordinary state.. This transformation of body life is often predicted by the production of it, one must relate it to a higher cause and hold the fact to be miraculous!" _ The external circumstances that accompany most of these emanations add to the evidence of the miracle. Sometimes these are sudden healings performed in those who aspire these sweet smells, as we have had OCCasion to notice; sometimes these wonderful scents are felt by some while they escape from others placed in the same conditions. Among the many facts of this nature, we will tell only the following. The letters of Saint Teresus, as we have already said, exhaled after his death the smell of holiness. A nun who had one of them advised to erase something that she wanted to keep secret. She began to scratch this passage; then, interrupting, she wondered if she was doing well in this. Reassuring herself about the rightness of her intention, she continued to erase; but anxiety soon resumed her, and an unexpected prodigy revealed to her that she was not vain, for the smell she had felt until then suddenly ceased. A Franciscan religious, having come to see this person, recognized with the smell that she was carrying on her relics of Saint Teresus. She admitted that she had indeed a letter from the mother's seraphic, and pulled it from the sachet that contained it, she carried it to her nose, hoping to find the faint perfume, but unnecessarily: it no longer existed for her. At some point, the monk returned and breathed the same smell; only the nun who kept the source had ceased to enjoy it.

The characteristic of this smell, which assigns it a manifest character of supernatural, is that it not only delights the body like other perfumes, but also reaches the soul and performs effects of grace and sanctification. Saint Catherine of Bologna ‘exhaled from her mouth an embalmed breath that pleasantly recreated the senses and at the same time filled the spirit of a heavenly sweetness. The prodigy took place mainly at the choir, which was all perfumed with this wonderful aroma. A priest of great piety, passing by the house of the Blessed Osanne of Mantua?, felt an extraordinary smell that breathed holiness. [He informed who was the saint who lived in this house. He was brought to Osanne, to whom he asked to pray for the salvation of her soul, what she promised to do.

One would have to deny the facts or close one's eyes to the light, to ignore the supernatural reach of such wonders. Intimate grace, no doubt, is the reason for these delicious emanations, as the rapporteurs for the cause of Saint Teresis observed. Quand Dieu pénètre

1 J. GRasseT, BB. 9 mart.,t. 8, p. *57, n. 49. The breath of that body is a most sweet odor, which she also at times seemed to breathe forth while speaking... They observed... the fragrance of a certain most sweet odor diffused throughout the whole choir, which wonderfully soothed their senses and refreshed their minds with a certain heavenly sweetness.

2 Fr. SYLVESTRE, BB. 18 jun., t. 24, p. 577, n. 90: Novum quemdam persensit odorem qui sanctitatem præ se ferebat... For I perceived a certain odor of sanctity proceeding from this house, by which I was persuaded that a godly man dwelt here, etc.

3? Actes authentig. BB. 15 Oct., vol. 55, P- 368, n. 1130: Odor enim spiriet regnant in a soul, not only purifies it, illuminating it, embrasis and embalming it, it still tends to radiate outside by beneficial influences. And since man rises up to the invisible world only with the help of sensitive impressions, God strikes the senses to warn man of his presence." The smell of holiness is one of these divine warnings; but one does not proceed from the nature of man, as he is currently organized; one can only explain it by assuming a miraculous derogation.

VIII. "The good smell is, after St.Thomas?, the effect of the grace which Our Lord was filled with, according to these prophetic words of Genesis: "The smell that my son exhales is that of a field full of flowers," and which, from Our Lord, spreads over the faithful through his ministers, as the Apostle to the Corinthians said: "It is through us that he spreads out in every place the smell of his knowledge: we are the good smell of Christ before God and before men."The saints admirably do the office of the sacred ministers for the sanctification of the Church, and the wonders through which the divine power manifests their virtue are as many sacraments that, with the temporal goods, pour the grace of salvation upon souls, while before the throne of God they are, through prayer and love, like incensers always smoking. It is possible to say of all the saints who spread these sweet exhalations around them, what the pious of Lantages! wrote of the venerable Mother Agnes: "These wonderful smells.. no doubt mean that the very ardent and pure charity of this incomparable bride of Jesus Christ has made of her. an ever holy host and in the smell of suavity before the divine Majesty; that her wonderful example of fervour has been the good smell of her divine Husband in an excellent way, as long as she has lived on earth; and that her memory is now like a composition of various very pleasant scents, as it is written in CHAPTER XXVIII.

BALSAMIC LIQUEURS These phenomena are rare in the lifetime of the saints; however, they are reported.

plusieurs. - There are many after death. Écoulements sous forme

milk, water, sweat, blood, manna, balm. — D'ordinaire,

These liquors have the appearance of fragrant and medicinal oil. — L'huile

odoriferous and salutary which derives from the tomb of Saint Nicholas of

Myre. — Raïson et sens mystiques de ces écoulements. — Surnaturel de

ces faits: précautions à prendre. — The miracle is even more obvious,

if the body is kept in complete integrity and flexibility.

I. — It is still an out-of-dispute fact for anyone who is either little or little poured into the hagiography, that it sometimes derives from the bodies of the saints from odorous and balsamic liqueurs. They usually have an oily appearance, which often makes them referred to as holy oils; but they also take on other forms, such as milk, blood, water, dew, and a melted manna.

These kinds of phenomena are rare during the lifetime of the saints; however, some examples are given. Christine the Admirable !, chained by her relatives who wanted to em1 Tomas DE CANTIMPRÉ. BB. 24 jul., t. 32, p. 654, n. 19: Virginea enim ubera ejus clarissimi olei liquorem cœperunt effluere. Which she took as a seasoning for dry bread, using it as a relish and as an ointment; and with it she anointed the wounds of her rotting limbs. Quod ubi sorores ejus et amici viderrunt, coeperunt flere, nihilque ulterius divinæ voluntati in Christinæ miraculis renitentes, eam solverunt a vinculis. fishing his flight and his ecstatic races, having for all food only a little bread and water, part of the body already in putrefaction was rescued in a wonderful way. Her breasts were filled with a very clear oil from which she watered the dry bread that she could no longer eat, and whose wounds she also anointed. At the sight of such a prodigy, her sisters and friends, moved to tears and ceasing to resist the divine will, freed this truly admirable virgin.

During the Christmas holidays, Saint Gertrude of Oosten! meditated with incredible devotion how deep the joy of the very pure and very glorious Virgin Mary had to be in the birth of God her Savior, and with what pious tenderness she had fed him with her virgin milk. God rewarded her with great inner suavities, of which he wanted to give outside a singular testimony. A miraculous milk filled the breasts of the pious virgin, and did not cease to flow for forty days, from the Sunday of the Nativity to the feast of Purification.

One day while Blessed Christine de Stommeln* remained delighted in ecstasy, he appeared, on the part of the coat covering her head, a very fine dew. One of the assistants, Brother John, who for more than two weeks had a considerable size at the joint of the wrist, humecta the other hand of this liquor and rubbed it out, which immediately began to shrink, and disappeared after a few days.

Saint Lutgarde had gone to see a recluse with whom she had relations of a holy friendship. One day, at the end of the contemplation, flooded with ineffable suavities, she calls her friend and shows her fingers of her hand flowing with a wonderful liqueur: "Here, my sister," she exclaims, "how to act with me the Almighty; of the overabundance of the grace that I am filled with within, escapes outside by my fingers as a kind of oil, symbol of grace."And truly drunk, she ran throughout the house, expressing by her gestures and treptlings the excess of her jubilation.

As they consulted together with the Lord, Saint Rainier of Pisa? and a holy man named Albert, who had been the instrument of his conversion, were one and the other delighted within a brilliant light, and, after their ecstasy, their head was wet with an oil hanging on their hair like dew beads.

Where Saint Agnes of Montepulciano* prayed, the ground was often seen with flowers, and almost every day, when she came out of the prayer, her coat was dotted with small white crosses like snow. On the day she was consecrated prioress *, this mysterious manna covered the altar, the court of the church and the assistants themselves, always in the shape of small crosses.

II. — These facts are rare in the lives of the saints; they are much less so after their death. Benedict XIV! attests that he met in the trials of canonization, and that, more than once, they were expressly recognized as miraculous. Indeed, the number is considerable, as it is easy to convince by browsing the hagiographic collections.

The water that was used to wash the remains of Saint Maure was changed into milk, as a testimony of his virginal pudicity, says his biographer Saint Prudence?, Bishop of Troyes, who claims to have been an eyewitness of the fact.

Several years after his death, the remains of Saint Franque* were found swimming in water that had the color of oil and a bitter taste of salt. This water was preciously collected and operated in the continuation of the healings; and every time those holy relics were visited, it was found that they continued to distill the same liquor.

During the two days following the death of Saint Marguerite of Ravenna { and that her body remained exposed, her face covered herself with a wonderful sweat like a

1 De serv. These liquids have sometimes been dealt with in causes of canonization.

And washing the body according to custom, they presented to my own eyes to see the water turned into milk, a testimony of virginal purity, which Leontius... drinking abundantly, was healed of feverish heat.

8 BERTRAM, BB. 25 apr.,t. 12, p. 399, n. 36. When they had opened the casket, they saw and found it full of water, colored as if with oil, and the bones of St. [name cut off] Franchæ supernatantia.. The sick were brought... and immediately, as is said, or within a short time, they were cured of whatever illness they were afflicted with.

For two days the holy corpse was kept unburied, during which time the face was moist with sweat as though with a kind of dew; and Gentilis, the constant companion of her mistress, having wiped it with a small cloth, the cloth, once dried at the fire, breathed forth the most delightful scent of violets, which remained in that same cloth for many years afterward.

Sometimes it's blood that appears. It was so abundantly derived from the relics of Saint Euphemia that, in the report of Evagr ' and other reliable historians, it could be distributed to the greedy crowds who came to this tomb. The venerable Anne de Saint-Barthélemy, the famous companion of Saint Térèse, legally set out* in the preliminary trial of her canonization, which, having come to visit the body of her mother's seraphic, she saw on her shoulders a redness like that of living and fresh blood, and that having applied a cloth, she removed it dyed with blood. Other examples could be cited. In particular, it is said of several saints, including Saint Amand de Maëstricht#, Saint Jeanne de Valois and the venerable mother Agnes de Langeacf, that long after their death their relics gave blood, when they were tried to profane or detach parcels.

The flow is also in the form of a more or less condensed manna, which is born of bones to the way these kinds of juices detach themselves from the trees or plants that produce them. The body of St.Valtian 7, bishop of Capua about 700, exuded a manna that died in 1584, — an official attestation of the canons of the place and of the time is proof of it, — after a woman of bad life had been buried with these relics. One year after her funeral, Blessed Jeanne d'Orvieto! appeared to a religious, and ordered her to have her remains transferred to a more suitable place. So we dug up his body, and found it in a perfect state of conservation and flexibility. On the side, his clothes were soaked with fresh blood from the heart wound. His head was dotted with a smelly manna, and he and his feet derived an oil from which the most delicious perfumes were exhaled.

This liqueur is often described as balm, whether it has the characteristics of balm, or as close to it by composition and smell. Relics of the martyr Saint Thérapont ?, we saw Jaillir in a rush a exquisite ointment whose aroma spread in the distance. After Saint Agnes of Montepulciano * had made the last sigh, suaves emanated from his body. This prodigy and the reputation of holiness enjoyed by the handmaiden of God drew such crowds, that they were obliged to stay at the funeral, and, in fear that, for a long time, corruption would win the body, they sent to ask for spices in Geneva to embalm. But soon the virgin's feet and hands become like springs of a precious balm; which caused the messengers to chase after, whose mission became useless, the body being naturally or rather supernaturally embalmed.

IT. — Usually these discharges take place in the form of perfumed and medicinal oils. We are silent on the wonderful phenomena that are reported about lamps lit in front of the tomb of the saints. Sometimes oil and oil find miraculously renewed or not consumed; more frequently, it acquires a therapeutic virtue!. We only want to talk about the relics that distill this liquor. These facts are told in large numbers in the lives of the saints. Signalons-en quelques-uns.

St. Walburge's members, especially from her chest, came out with an oil that healed all kinds of infirmities. Bishop Philip?, who wrote the life of this virgin, reports of himself, that being dangerously ill, he had a vial filled with miraculous liquor, and that after drinking it, he returned to health.

On the tomb of St.Ange*, a Carmelite religious, pushed a lily, and, cut, he always pushed back. The witnesses of the prodigy, intrigued, dug at this place, and uncovered the body of the holy martyr, from which escaped the sweetest smell. These venerable remains were moved to rise from the ground and to contain them in a precious chasm. Now at the very place where they had been buried, a spring of living water came forth, and from the point where the head rested, began to pour out a medicinal oil that performed many healings.

The first time that the tomb of Seraphic Teresis was opened, ‘ nine months after his death, his body was found intact, exhaling a delicious fragrance and distilling a very sweet oil, in such abundance, that she had soaked the clothes that covered the body, and the earth all around. Twenty-four years later, an eyewitness reports, the leather belt with which the saint had been buried still left a few drops of this extraordinary liqueur.

Similar wonders are told of the relics of the apostle Saint Andrew, — Baronius said of this miraculous flow that almost all the Christian world had witnessed it; — the relics of St Matthew, more than a thousand years after the death of this evangelist; those of the martyr Saint Demetrius the Great, St Paul of Verdun, St Candidus?, St Hedwige® and many others.

IV. — Among the multitude of facts that we could still mention, we will mention more than one, remarkable among all. It concerns Saint Nicholas of Myre, less famous by his life, moreover memorable, than by the wonders that illustrated his tomb. After his death, he poured from his bones a smelly oil, salutary to all evils, prodigy that attracted the farthest regions of the crowds eager to contemplate him, and that came to seek from the saint the relief of their physical and moral miseries. Seven hundred and forty-five years after his burial, when the Mohammedans had become masters of Lycia, Italian merchants conceived the bold plan to remove this precious deposit and transport it to their homeland. They broke the marbles that contained it and carried it, at least in large part, on their ships. The alarm was given, but too late, to the inhabitants of the land, who ran on the shore with cries of vengeance and pain. The spoilers had rushed to sail towards Italy and landed at the port of Bari on 9 May 1087. The saint whose remains they delighted in the East seemed to lend himself to this pious larceny by the many miracles which signaled his welcome, and which was told to us by a contemporary and eyewitness, the archdeacon John‘. Since then, the tomb of the saint has not ceased to be glorious. The wonderful liquor continued to flow from its bones and to perform countless healings.

"God," wrote the learned Baronius, three centuries ago, "responding in his commentary to the Roman Martyrology, this persistent fact of miraculous oil, God, whose goodness equals power, and who has so in so many ways illustrated the ashes of his servants, deigned to add to their glory to make their dry bones precious liqueurs of precious liqueurs, destined for the relief of the sick and the confusion of the ungodly who dared to attack the saints; just as in the past he caused a water to burst out of the jaw with which Samson terrified the Philistines. And it is not only the relics of the Apostle Saint Andrew and of St Nicholas of Myre, which are mentioned in this place of Martyrology, which present these wonders, but also those of many other saints."

And long before Baronius, Saint John Damascene!, justifying the worship of the relics by the miracles that recommend them to the faith of the believers, said: "Christ Our Lord has made of the remains of the saints as healthy fountains that let many blessings flow upon us, and from which sometimes escape a very sweet ointment. There's nothing incredible about this. For if, in the desert, the water springs out of a dry and hard rock, and God permits it to come out of the jaw of a donkey to quench Samson's thirst, what amazes us that we also see an exquisite balm flowing out of the relics of martyrs? These will not know who knows what the power is

of God and how great the honor he gives to his Vs. — If one seeks the reason and meaning of these wonderful flows, we will say that they appear, the oil mainly!, the abundance of divine grace in the saints; the vessel is full when it overflows. They still mean that the blessed are like reservoirs where God wants us to draw the help we need.

The authors point to other mystical reasons that must not be disdained, but, as Gorrres does, fall into imaginations that nothing justifies. Saint Brigitte % tells of herself that, having come to the tomb of St. Nicholas of Myre, she began to think of the extraordinary liquor that came from it, and that, immediately entering into ecstasy, she saw in mind a character embalmed with a smelling oil, who addressed her these words: "I am Bishop Nicholas, who appeared to you in the outside that I had in my mortal life. All my members were then flexible and flexible in the service of God, as an instrument soaked in oil that yielded without resistance to all the impulses that the hand gave him. In the depths of my soul overlaid praise, on my lips the word of God, and patience in work, and I drew

1 S. THomas, Sum. 1. 2. q. 102, a. 3, ad 13: Oleum figurat gratiam Christi.

2 Mystique, 1. 3, ©. 4, t. 1, p. 345 et seq. Mystical life, in the diet it imposes itself, prefers the foods provided by the plant kingdom: it even has a certain repugnance for the flesh of animals. This abstinence, coupled with the remoteness of all that can excite passions, must in the long run wonderfully simplify the operations of life, give to the products that are intended to maintain it a more plant nature, and favor the formation of this oil which we have seen in the body of several saints, etc. etc.

3 Revelationes, 1. 6, ©. 103, p. 522: Ego sum Nicolaus episcopus.. All my members were so enabled and flexible for the service of God, as an oiled thing which is pliable for the use of its owner, etc. But know that, just as the rose gives forth its scent and the grape its sweetness, so God granted my body the singular blessing of exuding oil, because he not only honors his elect in the heavens, but also gladdens and exalts them on earth, so that many may be edified and may share in the grace given to them — all this in the virtues of humility and chastity, which I have loved above all others. And now it is because most of those who are in the world do not have their bones moistened with divine grace, they render a sound in vain, shun each other to destroy themselves, live barren from every fruit of righteousness, and are abominable in the sight of God. You, at least, know that, as the rose has its fragrance and the grape its flavor, so God has granted my body the singular favor of bringing forth a healthy oil from it; for not only does he honor his chosen ones in heaven, but he also glorifies them and exalts them on earth, that they may be for many a cause of edification, and make them partakers of the grace which they have received."

Thus God raises the saints above nature by wonders of the physical order, to attract more powerful souls to supernatural life.

VI. — That is enough to say that these phenomena, duly recorded, must be regarded as miraculous; but prudence requires great caution here. This, according to Benedict XIV, is the way to proceed in these meetings. "When these kinds of cases are proposed in the processes of beatification or canonization, and what is recommended in these circumstances formulates a very wise rule from which one must not deviate, — if the miracle arises with the character of healings obtained by the use of water, oil or ointment from the body of a saint whose intercession has been previously invoked, the examination must focus on the reality and the wonderfulness of these healings. If it is only because of the flow of water or any other liqueur that is born of dried bones, attention will be given to the place where these bones lie, to see if the liqueur that emanates from it would not come from a natural cause, i.e. from a source that would have its origin there, or from an artificial cause that would bring the liquid to that point. In a nutshell, to qualify these facts as miraculous, it will have to be demonstrated that the liquor comes out of dry bones and outside of any external local moisture. If the bones of the tomb were removed from the difficulty, and the flow ceased to occur in this place, it would become clear that he had his cause, not in the nature of the soil, but in the bones themselves!"

The examiners of the cause of Saint Teresus?, discussing the odoriferous oil phenomenon resulting from his relics, declare that such a fact, not only can be only miraculous, but also constitutes a miracle of the first order, by the reason that it is outside the natural order that the dead bodies, after the consumption1 Serv. If in causes of Beatification and Canonization similar matters are proposed, and it is contended that they are to be counted among miracles; and if, after prior invocation of the servant of God or the Blessed, water drawn from that flowing from his tomb, or oil or ointment flowing from the blessed body, applied to the sick, true miracles occur, and cures happen having all the requisites of a true miracle, the examination will have to be reduced to the cures and their requisites... If the miracle is placed solely in the flowing out of water, oil, or liquid from dry bones..., great caution must be taken regarding the place in which the bones are entombed, as Bordonus writes...: the sepulcher must be opened, and it must be seen from what the liquid proceeds, whether from a natural cause, because there is a spring there; or by artifice, whether the liquid was introduced there... In a word, in order that the miracle of water or liquid flowing for a long time from the bones of the servant of God or the Blessed be approved, it must be demonstrated that it emanates from bones already dry and placed outside a damp location... But if perchance, to remove every difficulty, the bones... were brought out from the tomb or pit, and a translation made to another place, this precaution would not be entirely to be scorned; for if, the bones having been removed, the liquid ceased and no longer flowed from the place from which it had flowed while the bones were kept in that same place, this would be the clearest sign that the liquid sprang not from the place or the nature of the place, but from the dry and arid bones themselves.

2 Authentic acts of the canonis. Since it is self-evident how far beyond the order of all created nature this occurs, how far it exceeds its powers and is foreign to dead bodies..., it must necessarily be admitted that it is a supernatural work, and that in the substance of the fact it exceeds the powers of all created nature, and thus is a miracle of the first order. [French fragment, illegible in context: "...of the flesh, could produce neither humor nor liquid of any kind."]

VII. — The miracle is no less, if the discharge takes place in a perfectly preserved body; for the prodigy of incorruptibility then adds to that of a healthy source that feeds nothing and does not tarnish.

God loves to preserve the saints from the corruption of the tomb, and to give to the Church who honors them this brilliant sign of their glorious immortality. In general, when integrity is maintained for a long time in the bodies of those who have lived godly, it is permissible to see a sign of holiness. This is what Benoit XIV'!' teaches, with a large number of others that he quotes himself, and one can add to these testimonies of science ? the common impression of Christian piety:

However, even when it is a matter of the heroism of virtues, if it is a matter of rigorously concluding these extraordinary facts to their miraculous character, the grave author whom you have just named brings several restrictions. They all limit themselves to ensuring that no natural cause has come into being capable of producing this effect, such as embalming, burial in a place that preserves the flesh or supports its moods; so, according to Benedict XIV‘, that the mere exiccation would not be sufficient to constitute the miracle; it would be necessary, however, that the flexibility and the total preservation of the bodies, unless incorruptibility reached certain parts, such as, for special reasons, in Saint John Nepomucene*, the tongue, to glorify his fidelity not to betray the secret of confession.

These rules breathe wisdom, and we dare to say it too harsh, when it comes to making it the basis of a solemn judgment such as that of beatification or canonization. But the miracle can exist without reaching the degree of obviousness required by the congregation of the Rites. Thus, the body remains intact for a significant time and then becomes corrupt; preservation, though limited, can be miraculous. Similarly Fincorruptibility will occur with partial or total exsiccation; most of these cases will present a genuine derogation from the general law of corruption, although the legal evidence is complicated by difficulties that do not allow to conclude. To cite just one example, the body of Saint Catherine of Bologna has been kept uncovered for more than four hundred years in remarkable integrity, and always flexible as a living flesh, without any other aroma, as Jacques Albergatiÿ expressed, than that of his holiness. However, on the doubts that doctors raised about the very subject of non-corruption, because of the blindness that they had noticed in the corpse, the sacred Congregation! refused to admit the fact as miraculous, contrary to what several others could say. Another thing is to conclude to the wonderful fact of the established holiness elsewhere, another thing thus archiving CHAPTER XXIX

RAYONMENT The radiation of the body can occur in contemplation and outside

de la contemplation. — It is often restricted to certain parts of the

body: head, hands, feet, eyes, mouth, chest. —

Instead of emanating from the body, the radiation can be extrinsic. —

Frequency of these manifestations at the death of God's servants, and also

à leur naissance. — The light is usually white, but sometimes

It has other nuances. — Explication rationnelle de ces prodiges.

I. — What we have said about mystical burning is closely related to the body radiation that we are going to talk about, and it happens frequently that the two phenomena are confused. However one can exist without the other, and since the first is an immediate effect of love, we had to mention it by describing the facts of the emotional order.

The mystical radiance usually emanates from the body of the saints as a luminous home, mainly in the hour of contemplation and ecstasy.

Holy Zite of Lucca! was locked in the most removed place of his house, to talk quietly with God and to steal the secret of the consolations from which it was flooded; but often, during the night, one could see the deaf light in the waves of this retreat, as if the sun

4 BB. 27 a.m., vol. 12, p. 508, n. 17: Tanta claritas sæpe emptybatter of nocte shone in it with all its brightness. One day St. William of Olive ‘started the divine office, a mysterious flame, which seemed to come out of his mouth and into it, surrounded him whole and hid him from all eyes. Saint Arsene *? also appeared on fire in the fervor of his prayer, and the same prodigy is told of two abbots of Ireland, Saint Fintan* and Saint Comgall#, Saint John of Saint Facond*, Saint Francis of Borgiaf and a crowd of others.

These illuminations still occur outside of prayer. The body of the glorious martyress Agnes, whom an infamous judge had condemned to a ignominy more odious than death, shines with wonderful claritys that dazzled satellites and libertines. God also made a garment of light that stole their nakedness from the eyes of the Gentiles, to two other martyr virgins, Saint Barbef and Saint Prisk*. Saint André Avellini came back, for one night

He began to perform the divine office. And behold, suddenly a light from heaven, in the manner of fire, surrounded him, and enveloped him for a long time, so that he could scarcely be seen by those standing around. Indeed, a heavenly splendor seemed to go out from his mouth and enter into it again.

? TnéoporEe STuDITE. A brother... watching through the window... saw the Old Man wholly as if made of fire.

He saw around him an immense light extending over a great space, so that his eyes were almost blinded.

4 BB. 10 maïi,t. 15, p. 581, n. 3: Cum $S. Comgall..., having wept(?) with tears, a light from above shone around him.

$ BB. 12 jun., t. 23, p. 131, n. 25: Magnum lumen tota cella diffusum reperit, atque in ejus medio orantem in ecstasi sanctum.

He found that Francis shone with light and that his face emitted rays like the sun.

7 S. AMBROISE, BB. 21 jan.,t. 2, p. 716, n. 8. But having entered the place of shame, she found the Angel of the Lord prepared there, so as to surround her with immense light, so that no one could touch or see her because of the splendor.

8 RIBADENEIRA, Lives of Saints, 4 Dec., vol. 12, p. 67.

9 BB. 18 jan.,t. 2, p. 549, n. 7. But Saint Prisca appeared white as snow, and her body shone so much that the brightness of her radiance dazzled those who looked upon her.

10 Brev. ROM. 10 nov., lect. 5. With an unaccustomed splendor marvelously shining forth from his body, he showed his companions the way amid the thickest darkness — [on a night] dark and stormy, [as he went] to hear the confession of a sick man. The rain and the wind turned off the light that lit the march. Not only did the saint not have his wet clothes, despite the rain falling torrent, but from his body escaped a miraculous splendor that guided his companions into these thick darkness.

IF. — Often radiation is circumscribed in parts of the body. The head is the ordinary seat of illumination. When Moses went down from the mountain, carrying the tables of the law, his forehead projected beams of light that dazzled and frightened the children of Israel, so that he had to veil his face to speak to the people. As a religious saint named Wolfram * celebrated the divine mysteries, his face became bright. In his ecstasy, the figure of St.Kentigern, bishop of Scotland, also appeared on fire. Twice a day, St. Otte ‘ was raised and supported in the air by the angels while she was praying, and her face shone with heavenly clarity. The fervor of Saint Philbert, the first abbot of Jumièges, was such that one night one of his religious saw his eyes shining like two burning lamps. These kinds of facts are innumerable, and one would not end if one undertook to tell them all, as Benedict XIVS remarked. Sometimes the light seems to escape from the hands. Saint Geneviève of Paris!, having entered the Basilica of Saint Martin, healed many possessed by the virtue of his prayer and by the sign of the cross. And these possessed cried with rage, when the virgin of the Lord lifted up her hands upon them, that they saw her fingers lit and burned like candles. The archbishop of Ragusa took the hand of Saint Philip of Neri to kiss her one day, and remained astonished when he saw it shining as gold and shining as the sun. Saint Marien of Regensburg®, Saint Felan of Scotland#, Saint Columban of Ireland and many others are told that at night their left hand became luminous and projected its rays on the book they read, or copied with the right hand.

Sometimes, but rarely, the radiation starts from the feet. A doctor from Paris, whom the disease held in his bed, wondered, not without some hesitation, how this flesh of mud and rot could one day shine like the sun. While he was turning over these thoughts, he began to look at his feet drawn out from under the blan[ket]... [gap in the scan] ...lived, appeared, and were counted among the miracles — it would never come to an end.

They confessed, in the hour of their torment, that the fingers of Genevieve's hands blazed one by one, like candles, by divine power, with heavenly fire, and, raging most foully, cried out that they were burning around them.

And having taken hold of his right hand, she reverently kisses it: which indeed she beholds more radiant than gold itself and more splendid than a ray of the sun.

# BB. 7 febr., t. 5, p. 367, n. 11. Yet he did not hesitate to write without any material light; since by divine mercy three fingers of his left hand were made to shine like three lamps.

Sometimes when he was in darkness, his left hand, like a most brilliant torch, was seen by the other monks to furnish light to his right hand while he wrote or read.

8 MonTALEMBERT. The Western Monks, vol. 3, p. 124. Being on a visit to his former master Finnian, our saint found a way to make a clandestine and rushed copy of this abbot's psalmist, by locking himself at night in the church where the psalmist was laid down, and by enlightening himself for this night work of light that escaped from his left hand. He understood the lesson Our Lord gave him to strengthen his faith!

The prodigy more frequently takes a form that manifests the purity of the soul, its illuminations and its ardour. Light emanates from the mouth with breath and speech. The sisters of Saint Colette? saw a trail of flame coming out of her mouth, while she was praying, going up to heaven. His entire oratory seemed on fire; but if he approached to extinguish this strange fire, he suddenly fainted. Only once was the veil covering it burned. In another encounter, one saw on her lips a shining sun that illuminated the oratory where she prayed. One day, when Saint Lutgarde® sang in the choir with his usual devotion, one of his companions saw a mysterious flame coming out of his mouth and getting lost in the air.

Other times, it's the heart that becomes the home where irradiation starts. Saint Colombini de Sienne ‘ vint frapper un

Caesarius of Heisterbach, Historiarum memorabilium, book XII [?], ch. 54, p. 896 (Poland [?], 1599 [printing]): A certain master of Paris, having fallen ill, while thinking about the glorification of bodies, and hesitating said in his heart: How can it be that these bodies, made of clay and subject to decay, will be able to shine in the future like the sun? — he looked at his feet, which he had uncovered from the bedclothes; and behold, so great a splendor went forth from them that his eyes, dazzled, could not look upon them; and presently, coming to himself, he gave thanks to Christ, by whose power, before he died, he was brought back to faith in the resurrection.

2 ÉTIENNE DE Juuiers, BB. 6 mart.,t. 7, p. 557, n. 83: Videbatur eisdem, quod realiter viderent quamdam facem igneam, ex ore ejus procedentem, lucidam et resplendentem, sic in altum ascendentem, quod cœlos tangere videbatur.. If anyone approached to extinguish that fire which had suddenly appeared, it suddenly vanished. Once, however, her veil was found burned... A certain religious woman also… once saw, while the mother was in the fervor of prayer, a kind of great and resplendent sun, illuminating the whole oratory, coming forth from her mouth.

When therefore one day at vespers she was singing in choir, a certain nun... saw with her bodily eyes a flame of corporeal light rise up from her mouth and pierce into the height of the air.

4 J. B. Rossi, BB. 31 Jul., T. 34, p. 386, n. 168: Cum vero... quietem evening at the door of a hospice and asked to spend the night there. The time was late, and everyone was asleep when it was introduced into the common room that served as a dormitory. Barely had the saint opened his tunic to go to bed, that from his chest escaped a wonderful splendor, comparable to that of the sun. Reawakened by this sudden clarity, the crowd of those lying all around look with admiration at the new host from whom these waves of light emerge, and take him as an angel in human form descended from heaven to honor this asylum of poverty.

IE. — The luminous effect, instead of emanating from the body of the saints, can be external and radiate on them from an extrinsic source. They are inflamed globes, rays or light-tracks that come to shine around them and surround them as a radiant aureole.

Saint Gertrude of Nivelle! said to the historian who kept this account, that being in prayer before the altar of Saint Sixtus, a martyr, she had seen a flaming sphere descend over her head, which filled for half an hour all the church with its clarity and then gradually ascended up to heaven. Another time, her sisters saw the prodigy renew itself on her in the same way. A reliable person, and in a great reputation of holiness, declared that he had seen a day of heavenly splendor coming on Blessed Ambroise of Siena?, capturus lectulum conscenderet, diducta manibus tunica, e pectore repente ux ingens irradiavit, quae per totum dormorium conclave fusa, æsquare solares radios viebatur. The crowd of those lying there, having awakened, cast their eyes upon the new guest, from where that woman was coming forth, and they marveled, saying that under human form they had given hospitality to an angel.

and little by little she withdrew to where she had come from. And afterward, with the other sisters looking on, it appeared again over her in the same manner.

? BB. 20 mart.,t. 9, p. 191, n. 53. Splendorem e coelo venientem super while preaching to the people, and hovering on his head until the end of his speech. At the beatification trial of Saint Louis Bertrand‘, an eyewitness, who had had the happiness of serving him the Mass for two years, said that he had very often seen a radiant cloud descending on the altar at the moment when the Blessed held in his lovable hands Sacrament, and formed luminous circles between the head of the priest and the host, which threw a sharp radiance. Blessed Angelo d'Acri? loved to prostrate himself from his first age before an image of the Virgin hanging from the wall, and several times we saw rays from this image and shine on the face of the pious child.

IV. — These supernatural manifestations often take place at the death of God's servants, and are one of the most common signs of holiness.

At the time when St.Medard*, Bishop of Noyon, returned his soul to God, the heavens simmered open and divine clarity shone, for nearly three hours, on the remains of the saint. Feeling near its end, Saint Severin*, the Apostle of the Norics, exhaled a last prayer, ‘and immediately a great light surrounded it, and when that light disappeared, his soul flew with it to the Lord. At the death of Saint Cheledoine, an incomparable splendour spread from the place where it came to exhale well in the distance throughout the region, to the point that it was believed first to be a great fire. At the very hour when Saint Louis Bertrand died, those who were present saw a light like a shining lamp appear.

Nor is it rare that these luminous phenomena signal the birth of the saints, and become a prophetic announcement of the salutary radiance that they will one day exercise in the Church. There are many examples. Let us mention only the names of St Wilfrid, St Petrone#, St Heibert5, St John of God, St Charles Borromee, St Brigide ® Abbess of Kildar.

V.—The supernatural light emanating from or surrounding holy bodies is usually white; but sometimes it has different nuances. The sisters of Saint Catherine of Bologna* saw one day, during the Mass and the singing of the Hours, his face all shining with a red light that dazzled his eyes; wonder all the more

1 GuiLc. As he passed from this world, a wondrous splendor arose from heaven, stretching from the place he had dwelt all the way up to heaven. Moreover, those who were present thought that there was a great fire in some part of Campania, from which so great a splendor was leaping forth.

2 BB. 10 oct., t. 53, p. 351, n. 229: Testati sunt se vidisse lumen ad instar lampadis lucidissimæ.

8 EADMER, BB. 24 apr., t. 12, p. 296, n. 4.

4 BB. 4 oct., t. 50, p. 427, n. 19.

5 BB. 16 mart.,t. 8, p. 462, n. 3.

6 Ant. GovEA, BB. 8 mart.,t. 7, p. 834, n. 2.

7 GiusANo, Vie de saint Charles Borromée, 1. 1, ch. 2, p. 6.

8 LAURENT DE DURHAM, BB. 1 febr., t. 4, p. 173, n. 6. |

9 J. All saw her the following day, while Mass and the canonical Hours were being sung in choir, her face shining beyond measure and kindled with a flame-like redness, so that they could not keep their eyes fixed on her — a marvel all the greater in that her complexion was usually dark and almost sallow, etc. — all the more astonishing since the servant of God, on account of her continual infirmities and frequent losses of blood, had a pale and yellowish complexion. Three days after his trip, Saint Volfheim', abbot of Brauviler, instead of the paleness of death, presented a face of pink colour, full of grace, and covered with small drops of dew.

Sometimes it is a luminous transparency that leaves or gives the different parts of the body their natural color. "As soon as Mother Agnes had expired," says her biographer®, "its face became very beautiful, shining like a sun, and all its body as white as the alabaster. The next day her face appeared laughing, and her mouth fresher and more vermilla than when she was alive... It would have been said that this virgin body was already in possession of the clarity of the blessed bodies resurrected. This beauty, writes an eyewitness, Mr. Branch, former parish priest of Langeac, gave its main shine during the great Mass of the funeral. For the vermilion of his face appeared with more vigour; the eyes and mouth were as laughing, and these wonders took their increase as the Mass progressed. The parts of his body that appeared to the opposite of the torches, though from a distance, were transparent, and the bones and nerves were seen inside, as they would have been seen through an incarnate glass."

The Blessed Catherine of Racconigi presents, in her lifetime, a fact of the same nature, pleasantly told by the naïve historian * of the daughters of the order of Santo Domingo.

"Having reached the age of fourteen," he wrote,

1 Coran. Though he had been dead three days, he appeared not pale as the dead usually are, but suffused with a rosy color, full of grace, and as if sprinkled with dewy drops of sweat.

3 De Lanraces, Life of Mother Agnes, 2° P., c. 21, t. 2, p. 40.

3 JOHN OF SAINTE - MARIE. ‘The Lives of the Holy and Slowly Weeping Daughters of graces of the sky bidding greatly on its natural beauty, bequeathing it to the will of men as angelic of body as it was from the soul. For on his joues, a vermilion was passed, mixed with a white which made her an exquisite beauty. All the neighbors of her neighbourhood, greatly surprised to see so many graces in her face, believed that she was hiding herself, and on this belief she asked how and with what ingredients she combed her face. She laughed at their request, and did not want to tell them the truth on the other hand, and replied that she could use nothing but chewed bread, hearing the Blessed Sacrament, which is in it these bright colors, especially since the great colors which it glitters in her soul, redone to the body, covered her with this vermilion and made them beautiful."

VI. — The rational explanation of these phenomena is in the relationship between the intimate illumination of grace and the external radiation of physical light. Saint Denis the Areopagit ‘ sees in the sun a perfect picture of divine goodness. Of all the symbols, fire and light are, in fact, those who express with the most vivacity the mystical action of the Holy Spirit on souls. The wonderful claritys we have just described are many ways in which God reveals and attests to his presence in the saints.

They can also be seen as an effect of the predominance of the soul over the body. It is a law of human organization, which the soul casts upon the flesh reflections of itself. When it undergoes the empire of the senses, all outside betrays this shameful servitude; if divine life reigns within, the expression becomes pure, luminous, radiant as the home from which it emanates. However, this brilliant irradiation, which is like an anticipation of the sovereign empire that the spirit will one day exert on the glorified body, is always miraculous. In the present conditions the soul can, by its own virtue, make shine upon the organs something of its purity, of its serenity, of its intimate 1llluminations; it cannot, without coming out of the providential and present order of nature, spread upon them waves of light. This is even more obvious when the radiation is extrinsic.

The most difficult thing is to ensure with certainty the reality of the miracle. According to Benedict XIV, the testimony of several eyewitnesses, or even that of one person, but recommended by his holiness and prudence, offers sufficient guarantees; and, well-known, the fact must be regarded as miraculous, mainly if he accompanies a divine work, such as prayer or preaching, if it results in the effects of grace, and especially if the subject is recommended by pure and holy morals?.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE SENSES The wonders of mystical life on speech and song, — sight, —

hearing, — smell, — taste and tact. — Tous ces prodiges en Catherine

Emmerich. — Explanation of these facts by the nature of the human compound

et par le miracle.

I. — Under the mysterious action of grace, the soul transforms; the soul in turn, by the influence it exerts on the body, tranfigures it by throwing it a reflection itself. It is, so to speak, a whole new order of sensations that is established!. This spiritualization of the body by the soul has its ordinary and regular effect on the physiognomy; but when it pleases God to derogate from the common order, it still extends beyond, sometimes operating on one sense, sometimes on another, a miraculous transformation that alters their natural conditions of exercise. We must point out the main ways in which these wonderful effects occur.

1 Jos. Lopez EZQUERRA, Lucern. myst. In many and various ways such sensations are perceived in the soul... Some indeed occur through the external senses: to the sense of smell are presented most sweet odors, far surpassing all those of this world; to hearing, wonderful and harmonious strains; to taste, inexplicable sweetnesses, especially in the receiving of the most holy Eucharist; to touch, most delicate sensations, which reach even to the joints and marrow of the bones and refresh them; to sight, finally, lights, splendors, and objects of such great beauty that they surpass the very idea and desire of them. Mystical life often communicates to the organ of the word a suavity, a flexibility, a power that hold prodigy. Among the preachers of the Gospel, one ‘of the most famous by the sensitive virtue of his voice is undeniably Saint Anthony of Padua! Although he was born and raised in Portugal, he spoke Italian idiom with such purity, the timbre of his voice was so brilliant and his accent so unctuous, that the crowds ran into his speeches, attracted as much by the charm of his diction as by the sublimit of his doctrine and the vehemence of his movements. Nature had given Saint Vincent Ferrier a beautiful and powerful voice; but one can look as an emanation of the inner grace the ease with which one varied the expression, rendering it at his will, and according to Islands circumstances, grave, piercing, graceful, sound. What is evident from the wonder is that, in the immense multitudes that he was often forced to speak in the open air, the farthest listeners heard as distinctly as those around him.

Saint Mary Magdalene de Pazzi received, in her ec[stasies]... — 'The Lord had poured upon him such grace that, with a most eloquent tongue and a most clear voice, uttering his words as if by a kind of trumpet, he was heard and understood by all.' Nor is it without cause for wonder that, though he had been born and raised for a long time in a distant region, he was able to pronounce what he wished in the Italian tongue so elegantly, as if he had never set foot outside Italy.

for, as the matter required, he produced a sharp, deep, thin, or sonorous voice... His speech was heard distinctly no less by those who were very far off than by those who were nearest.

3 V. In these same ecstasies she sometimes spoke in the form of a dialogue, now with the eternal Father, now with the incarnate Word, or with the Spirit, the Virgin Mother of God, or other saints; and she would ask and answer in their person, or in her own person, as the matter required. Nec erat difficult to distinguish in cujus persona loqueretases, an admirable ease to express the most diverse roles. She had dialogues with the people of the Holy Trinity, with the Blessed Virgin and the saints; and her voice rendered, through varied and suitable intonations, the words of each of the interlocutors. When she represented the person of the Father, they were serious, majestic, solemn accents; when she gave her voice to the Word and the Holy Spirit, the tone was still full of dignity and majesty, but sweeter; finally, if she spoke in her own name, her voice became so humble, that it was hard to hear it.

Another wonder, which relates to the miraculous transformations of the voice, is that of several martyrs who have articulated sounds and made words heard after having had the tongue cut off. St Peter of Damascus! celebrates aloud the sacrifice of Mass, despite the amputation of his tongue. Others, like St.Terentian?, St. Maximus and St.Anastasius#, St.Eusebius#, St.Aiou de Lérins® and his companions, St.Leger‘, also spoke, after having suffered the same torment, either to their judge or to the friends and infidels who approached them. Saint Raymond Nonnat, a prisoner in the Moors of Africa, freely preached the word of God, although his lips were closed with an iron padlock. After the wonders of speech come the wonders of singing. They take place in ecstasy or outside of ecstasy, and in various ways. Sometimes it is the human voice that improvises charming melodies, harmonious echoes of the intimate drunkenness of the soul. After the singing of the Matines, when everyone had withdrawn from the church, Saint Christine the Admirable! sang songs of incomparable sweetness. Sometimes harmony seems to form elsewhere than in the gossip, in the heart, in the chest. Sometimes it's still the modulations of the human voice, but with I don't know what comes from the angel and the sky. In delights that followed cruel stomach pains, Blessed Humiliane Cerchi? sounded a delicious song that seemed to rise from her soul, so subtle, so delicate, that to grasp it it was necessary to apply the ear to her lips, and yet could not be distinguished from any of the words.

Other times, they are heavenly accords of an indefinable suavity, where neither human sounds nor words are detached. Such an inimitable harmony that one could hear one day in Saint Christine the Admirable, * during one of her jubilation passages, and which came out, not from her lips on which one could not grasp the slightest breath, but from the depths of her throat, between the chest and the gossip; like again the enchanting melody that escaped from the heart of another saint of the same name, almost at the same time and from the same country', Christine of Stommeln?.

It is also a mysterious bird that alternates by its rowing with the sweetest radiances of the human voice. What is told in the life of Saint Rose of Lima * is an inexpressible charm; the following trait, which we borrow from the story of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, is no less suave. "One day she seemed to be turned against the wall of her room, one of her wives, named Elizabeth, who was sitting next to her bed, heard as a sweet and exquisite melody that escaped from the gossip of the sick woman. A moment later, the Duchess changed her place, and turning to her companion, she said to her: "Where are you, my beloved? "Here I am," replied the following, adding, "Oh! Ma'am, how deliciously you sang! "What!" said Elizabeth, "did you also hear anything?" And on her answer, "yes," the sick woman said, "I will tell you that a charming little bird came to sit between me and the wall, and he sang to me for a long time in such a sweet and sweet way, and so glad my heart and my soul, that I had to sing too. He revealed that I would die in three days."It was probably," said an ancient narrator, his guardian angel who came in the form of this little bird announcing eternal joy to him."

IT. — The sense of sight is often transformed, in the saints, in a miraculous way. Blessed Mar1 Christine the Admirable died in 1224 in Saint-Trond, the city of Belgium, about thirty-four leagues away from Stommeln (Stumbela, whose Germans did S{ommeln), in the Rhine Prussia, where the second Christine was born around the year 1242. — Cf. D. Papebroch, BB. 22 jun., t. 25, p. 239, n. 4. — Et 24 jul.,t. 32, p. 659.

? PIERRE DE Dacre. The aforesaid sound was heard as if it were in Christina's breast.

? Léonarn Hansen. BB. 26 aug., t. 39, p. 932, n. 162-164.

# From MonracemBenrt, Hist. of St.Elisabeth, c. 29, p. 532. Warrior of Ypres! saw the director of his soul at a distance of five leagues. Blessed François Dyrrachin?, of the order of the Minor Brothers, hears, from the kitchen where he held his office, ring the bell which gives, in the church of the convent, the signal of elevation. Immediately he bowed down, and, turning his eyes and heart in the direction of the altar, he struck his chest, and by his sighs, by his tears, he expressed his sorrow that he could not worship the divine Eucharist more closely. What a wonderful thing! The three walls that separate the holy man from the place where the sacrifice was made open, and San regard extends freely to the adorable victim that the priest raised in his hands.

Several saints judged the bad state of consciousness by the ugliness of the soul that passed over the figure of sinners. A quality person led a day to St Joseph of Copertino ? a young gentleman who wanted to see him. "What Ethiopian are you bringing here?" said the Blessed. Don't you see how black it is?"Then turning to the young man, he said to him, "Go on, my son," so go wash your face."He understood the warning, and went and confessed and came back to the saint, who kissed him this time, saying, "It's good!You are beautiful now, my son. Wash yourself often; yesterday you were as ugly as an Ethiopian."To anyone who approached him in a state of sin, he repeated these words! "Go, wash yourself; you have the whole face defiled with ink."

In her ecstasy, Saint Mary Magdalene of Pazzi* continued her external occupations for hours. The nuns, wanting to experience if, in this state, she saw with the eyes of the body, veiled them, or closed the shutters of the windows; and she continued her work with the same ease and perfection, not ceasing to sew, to paint images, or to make charming little works that were kept long after her death.

Especially with regard to sacred objects, among which we must place in the first line the Eucharist, the mystical transformation of the body view occurs. It is an experience that the ecstatics recognize, especially in their transports the Holy Eucharist, and distinguish the consecrated hosts from those that are not. The number of saints and saints who saw the eyes of the body Our Lord on the altar and in the tabernacle, in a form distinct from the Eucharistic appearances, is considerable. Blessed Lucie de Narni* saw the consecrated hosts all radiant with light. She thus distinguished a consecrated host among twelve others which were not there, and which a new confessor presented to her, to assure herself by this experience of the spirit which enlivened. On another occasion, Our Lord revealed to him his presence on the altar in the form of a little child who had a light on his face like that of the sun. We will not insist on these kinds of wonders so multiplied in the lives of the saints, especially as we have spoken about it elsewhere, dealing with the body apparitions of the Savior.

HIT. — Mystical life also sometimes communicates in the sense of a wonderful impressionnability. In the ecstatic Mary-Dominique Lazzari', the fineness of this organ was extraordinary, for from her bed she heard, so that she could reproduce it in full, the sermon preached at the parish church, five or six hundred steps away. Most often these are transitional miraculous facts, such as the one reported by Saint Séverin of Cologne®. At the time of the death of the thaumaturge of Gauls, Saint Martin de Tours, and when the angels carried his soul to the stay of the blessed, he heard their harmonious songs and told his archdeacon that the great bishop came out of this world and ascended to heaven. Blessed Davanzato* was recreated, towards the end of his life, by angelic concerts which his ear was alone to grasp; to make them hear the cleric who served him as a companion, he put his hand in his hand, laid his foot on his foot, and immediately, as two sound bodies that communicate their vibrations, one and the other were equalIV. — The sense of sanctity receives admirable influences. It often allows the servants of God to recognize the virtues and vices of those who approach them, as reported by the holy Abbé Oyent!, Saint Philip of Neri°, the venerable Mother Agnes and many others. Saint Hilarion ‘ guessed by the only smell of the body, clothes, or objects that had been touched, of what demon or vice one was enslaved to. Saint Joseph of Copertino*, whose angelic purity exhaled a heavenly fragrance, felt an extraordinary infection at the sole sight of those who sinned against this virtue. He was reduced to taking tobacco, thus trying to shake his sense of smell and to chase out a smell infected by another that seemed more bearable to him. As soon as she heard words that offended God, Saint Brigitte © felt in her nostrils a horrible stench of sulfur, which she had all the sorrows of the world to endure.

Holy things, he still escapes for the saints from the sweet emanations that embalm them.

"Many times," wrote Jeanne-Marie de la

At the approach of any person whatsoever, by the fragrance of odor and the breath of stench, he discerned the marks of merits so well that he knew at once to what virtue or vice each one was subject.

2 ANTOINE GALLONI. BB. 27 May, vol. 19, p. 469, n. 39: This was among the many admirable things in Philip, that, as he detected virginity and the other virtues by their fragrance, so too he detected by divine gift unchastity and things of that kind by their stench.

8 DE LanrTacrs, Vie de la mère Agnes de Jésus, 3° P., c. 1, t. 2, p. 75: If anyone came to find her, whose life was broken or her heart spoiled, she felt her smell unbearable.

4 S. JÉROME, Vita S. Hilarionis, n. 28. Migne, Patr. lat.,t.23, col. 42.

It was enough for him to have seen a lustful man to recognize him by his stench... so great a stench that he could not expel it, even with tobacco applied.

If someone spoke, and some vicious or deceitful words which offended God, he immediately felt in his nostrils a horrible stench of sulfur which he could scarcely bear. Cross ‘, as soon as I had received the holy host on my tongue, it seemed to me as a ray of sweetest honey, which filled my mouth with unexpressable sweetness. This suavity was accompanied by a delicious smell that was like the quintessence of the most pleasant scents. This sweetness and smell spread first in the high regions of the soul, then throughout the body, filling me with a feeling of ineffable well-being, and communicating to me a wonderful force." — "Only the approach of the Blessed Sacrament, adds his biographer*, developed in her the most varied perfumes; it was sometimes that of the most fragrant flowers, sometimes that of the balm, sometimes as a compound of all the perfumes together... This phenomenon often operated dice before communion of the wonderful effects on his body. She had barely begun to smell these heavenly fragrances, which she fell into ecstasy."When she attended Mass, Blessed Jeanne d'Orvieto* often smelled a pleasant smell, that her soul was as liquefied with sweetness. In receiving the divine host, Saint Catherine of Siena {aspired to a delicious smell that made her almost faint.

One day when she had just communed, Saint Catherine of Genoa found herself embalmed with an ineffable smell and so sweet that she thought she was in heaven. In her humility, she urged the Lord not to give her such sensitive and external graces.

Saint Charles Borromeo, one day entering the church

1 WEBER, Jeanne-Marie de la Croix, 1. 8, p. 221.

2 Ibid., p. 212.

3 JRAN DE SAINTE-MARIE, Lives of the Holy and Blessed Daughters of Saintde, vol. 2, p. 1928.

# RAYMOND DE CAPOUE, BB. 30 April, vol. 12, p. 907, n. 181: Sæpius sentiebat tantum odorem et tam suavem, sumendo supervenerabile SecrRDenR, of Sommasque, where the remains of Saint Jerome Emilian were resting, was warned by a very sweet smell of the presence of this precious deposit, to which he gave special marks of his veneration.

. When Blessed Hermann Joseph heard Mary's name in the office, and he prostrated himself on the ground, he breathed such a fragrance of flowers and aromatics, which he could no longer rise up. At the end of Laudes, during the song of Benedictus, he smelled like incense, and every day, when after the meal he was psalmodifying, according to the custom of the monastery, passing from the refectory to the church, the psalm Miserre, he experienced exhalations of such suavity that he seemed to enter heaven.*

Smells are still a sign that God gives his servants of his miraculous presence. It was by such a favor that Saint Rainier of Pisa devastated the true visions of perfidious illusions; he recognized the divine intervention of a perfume from which he was all penetrated.

More than once, they give the saints a vivid testimony of the divine predilection that surrounds them. The Blessed Angel of Foligno', pressed for the desire to go to God, asked with instance for the grace to come out of this world: God answers his prayer by making him feel unspeakable suavity, which communicates to him a foretaste of heaven.

V. — The sense of taste, despite its seemingly exclusive relationship with animal life, can have a part in the supernatural manifestations of mystical life.

When St. Brigitte came to do some sin of speech, she immediately felt an extreme bitterness in the palace, which did not cease until after she had confessed. Saint Felix of Cantalice # articulated the name of Jesus with incomparable delight, as if he had had honey in his mouth. His glorious father in religion, the Seraphic Francis d'Assisi#, trembled at ease by speaking or hearing this blessed name, and he passed his tongue on his lips as if he had enjoyed a delicious liqueur.

The object of the experimentation of these supernatural sweets is the divine Eucharist. Blessed Mary Magdalene of the Ursins ° had an inexpressible flavour as she approached the Blessed Sacrament. Saint Marguerite de Cortonef recognized to taste the consecrated hosts. Holy Angel of Foligno! smelled the hosty spreading on his tongue not with the taste of bread or none of the meats that one eats, but with a taste of unknown flesh, an exquisite flavor, which was nothing comparable to the world. She would have kept this heavenly food for a long time in her mouth, if she had not obeyed the recommendation that she should swallow with promptness; but swallowing herself gave her a sense of ineffable pleasure that made her whole body tremble. Catherine de Saint-Augustin?, a Quebec hospital nun, enjoyed similar favours every time she communicated.

We will later point out the benevolent virtue attached to the contact of the saints; it is currently only a question of the influence produced on this meaning by mystical life.

Almost all ecstatics have in their transports the ability to distinguish with tact sacred or holy objects. What we are going to bring back from Anne-Catherine Emmerich will suffice to show how this wonder is realized.

VI. — No one, perhaps, possessed to the same degree the gift of distinguishing holy things with the help of external senses. In her, this grace seemed as permanent as it was universal. "The sound of the holy bells was for his ear essentially different from any other sound, even as harmonious. She tasted the water's blessing and distinguished the holy water from the water that was not, as surely and as easily as another person distinguishes water from wine. It recognized the bones of the saints by the smell, as well as by the will and touch. She had such a keen sense of the priestly blessing, when it was sent to her from the furthest distance, that when it was given to her from the nearest point to her; either in ecstasy or in a watchful state, she inadvertently followed the priest's consecrated fingers as a holy power from which the strength and blessing flowed in her... She saw what was holy in the form of light, rays of light... She felt and perceived the action of this light as something that relieved her, strengthened her, brought her joy and attracted her greatly to herself; just as, on the contrary, she was suddenly and unintentionally repulsed, she felt filled with disgust and horror, when a profane object on which sin and curse were weighed was carried into her neighbourhood, or when she came to a place where some guilty act had been committed, or on which the consequences of unexplained crimes were weighed {.»

She assured that no one had ever had the gift of recognizing the relics to the degree that God had given her. It distinguished with no less security the holy objects. One day she was already holding relics in her hands, she was presented with an Agnus Der. "This is good and touched by the strength of above," she said; "it is blessed: but here, in relics, I have the strength itself." And speaking of a blessed cross, "The blessing, she says, shines like a star in it!" It is necessary to honor him greatly; but the priest's fingers, she added, turning to his confessor, are still above. This cross can perish: the consecration of the fingers is ineffaçable; it is eternal; neither death nor hell can annihilate; in the very sky it is still distinguished. It comes from Jesus, who redeemed us."

Mother Mary of Jesus, better known as Madame du Bourg, also possessed to a rare degree, even outside of ecstasy, the gift of discerning relics.

VIT. — If we pay attention to the role that the senses play in our knowledge, we will easily find the reason for the supernatural abilities that they acquire in mystical life. The organic impression, in our opinion, is basically only a signal that determines in the soul the consciousness of intellectual life. By the sensation itself, the mind exercises its perceptual power over the bodies; by language, which is ultimately only a sensation, it enters, according to the common law, into the consciousness of the ideal world; thus most of its intimate operations, if not all, are carried out under the excitement of a sensitive sign, which proceeds more or less from external senses. The two elements of which man is composed, each taking their part in the acts of man, unite and complement each other in a harmonious whole. But these natural relationships are not necessary, either in their substance or in their modes. According to the current law of human organization, the senses can only accuse the presence and physical actions of the surrounding objects on our body; but obviously it depends on God to link the knowledge of invisible and supernatural things to such or such organic impression. At present, no doubt, this connection is not in nature; but what follows, if not that it is extranatural and miraculous? The miracle, in fact, seems to us to be the only plausible explanation of the phenomena we have just reported.

We do not think there is any point in mentioning here, if not in passing and without discussion, the way in which some authors, faithful to the very end to the peripatetic theories, have explained these supernatural sensations, namely, by miraculous injection in the sense of material species or ghosts responding to the physical objects lacking outside. According to Joseph Lopez Ezquerra', who points out these interpretations in his MYSTIC LAMP, the feeling of much more probable and who recommends the authority of St.Thomas?, is that these impressions are rather a redundancy of the upper part of the soul on the sensitive part; and this is basically what we have just said. According to the common law, it is the body that seems to give to the soul; here, it is the soul that gives to the body: in one and the other case is reCHAPTER XXXI

THE RENOVATION OF THE HEART Influence of mystical life on the heart. — Renovation of the heart in the

Venerable Mechtilde, Saint Gertrude, Saint Mary Magdalene of Pazzi, the

bienheureuse Jeanne de Valois, sainte Catherine de Ricci. — Extraction

physical heart in the Blessed Osanne of Mantua, the Blessed

Catherine de Racconigi, the Blessed Marguerite-Marie Alacoque, the

Venerable Mother Agnes de Langeac.—A gift that Our Lord makes of his

heart to Saint Lutgarde, Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Michael of the

Saints. — Interprétation du prodige.

I. — The heart is the center, the very source of vitality. Holiness, which cleanses and transforms external senses, cannot fail to manifest itself in this main focus. This is evident from the very organization of man. The heart, in fact, is in us the organ that responds to the emotional life; the soul undergoing a transformation in its life of love, the backlash cannot fail to resonate on the body organ that attests to the intimate impulse and marks its measurement by its own action and by the very intensity of its movements. It is therefore no doubt that mystical life does not involve a renewal of the heart and that God does not fulfill this desire expressed in the past by David, and so ardently repeated by all the saints: "My God, create a pure heart in me."

This creation, the penitent king and all those who have recited

1 Ps. L, 12 : Cor mundum crea in me, Deus. his prayer meant a graceful influence that would contain or suppress fleshly instincts, and multiply in the soul the ardour and the impulses of love. God, whose inventions are indefensible and the infinite power, pleased to fulfill to the letter in some of his saints this vow to obtain a new heart, removing from their chest the heart that was already beating there, to renew it or to replace another purer and more burning one. Sometimes even Jesus Christ seems to exchange his own heart for the hearts of his lovers. Of all the mystical wonders this one seems to us one of the most wonderful. It is important to report and discuss its significance.

IL. "The venerable Mechtilde of Spaheim!" one day received the heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary with a legend that recalled her merits and benefits. Another time?, the same saint expressed in prayer an ardent desire to possess the Beloved of his soul. Suddenly the divine virtue attracted his heart so powerfully, that he seemed to him to ascend to the very side of the Saviour, from whom she received a sweet and sweet kiss. By this kiss, Jesus intoxicated his heart so much and poured upon her so much grace, that all the members of the pious virgin seemed to have become so many sources that watered the saints; so that all, moved with extraordinary joy and holding their hearts in their hands, like ardent lamps filled with heavenly blessings, which, from Mechtilde, flowed upon them, all gave to the Lord immortal thanksgiving.

Saint Gertrude, his companion and sister in religion, reports in the fifth book of his REVELATIONS* that Our Lord appeared to Mechtilde at the time of his death, and that, reminding him of the insignia he had given him a few years earlier, to give him his heart as a pledge of his love, the joys and consolations that this gift had spread in his soul, he said to him with a face full of blessing: "Where is my present?" To which she answered by offering her heart, which she plunged into the heart of her Beloved. And Our Lord, in turn, applying his sacred Heart to the heart of the virgin, absorbed it entirely by the virtue of his divinity, and fortunately put it into possession of eternal glory.

Saint Gertrude' tells us again of herself that she had received on several occasions a similar grace from the divine Savior, who sometimes simply gave her her heart, sometimes, by a more touching testimony of their mutual familiarity, exchanged her for her.

Our Lord promises Saint Mary Magdalene of Pazzi* the gift of her heart, and he indeed places this blessed heart between the arms of this faithful lover, who bursts into transports of love and thanksgiving.

Dans une apparition à la bienheureuse Jeanne de Valois”, gnissimi, quo ante aliquot annos... cor suum donaverat sibi in pignus amoris.. Then, greeting her most tenderly, he said: "And where is my gift?" To this she offered and immersed her own heart in the heart of her beloved. The Lord too, applying his most holy heart to hers, having absorbed her wholly by the power of his divinity, happily joined her to his glory.

1 Revel. 1. 2, c. 23, p. 141. By offering your deified heart..., now giving it freely, now exchanging it for mine as a greater token of mutual intimacy.

2 V. Then the Lord promised to give her his own heart, just as once St. [name missing]... Catharinæ Senensi.. Opening her arms and raising herself toward her Bridegroom, she received his heart... And she showed such great joy that, as if no longer able to breathe, she seemed about to depart from this wretched life.

3 Procès de canon. BB. 4 febr., t. 4, p. 583, n. 8: Vidit Christum ejusque Matrem... prædictas epulas, duo scilicet corda in disco, sibi offerentes. Wishing likewise herself also to offer her heart in accordance with Christ's request, she put her hand into her bosom; and not finding it there, she was greatly astonished, while sweetest Jesus smiled gently at her. But it is no wonder that she did not find it, since Our Lord and His holy Mother, who had promised her a sweet feast, presented to her on a plate two hearts, inviting her to join her own to them. She carries her hand to her side and sees, with a stupor that repeats her ecstasy, that she no longer has a heart in her chest, while the Saviour smiles at her surprise with an incomparable suavity. What is surprising, says her historian, that she did not find where she sought his heart united by love to the Heart of Jesus and living rather in Jesus than in his own body?

"Saint Catherine of Ricci! addressed the Most Holy Virgin and urged her to obtain from her son Jesus a new heart, all divine and all heavenly. It was the 6th of June of the year 1541, at the age of nineteen, that she received this favor, the Day of the Feast of the Corps of Our Lord. On the morning of that day, after receiving Holy Communion, she was delighted in spirit in heaven. There, it seemed to her that the glorious Queen of Angels presented her to Our Lord Jesus Christ her son and prayed to him with humble instances to kindly grant her the grace to change her heart, as she had long desired. The Son of God shuddered to hear the prayer of his august Mother. Then, in one of her intoxication of love, as the blessed ones experience, she felt something mysterious to accomplish within her in the region of the heart, and waves of unknown life suddenly spread within herself. The divine Redeemer had just taken away his heart and given him a new one, formed on the model of that of his most holy Mother, the Virgin Mary. An immense, indistinguishable rejoicing of Catherine, seeing herself in possession of another life, of another being far superior to that which she had before. It was not an illusion produced by her presence in the sojourn of the blessed; for after her ecstasy, having regained her senses and touched earth, she saw well that it was a blessing, a real gift of divine munificence."

If the prodigy did not exceed the proportions we have just described, it would certainly be extraordinary; but at last it could be brought closer to several other supernatural manifestations by which God and the Redeemer give expression to their merciful love for the creature. What disconcertes human thought is that, in many, this renovation seems to be accomplished by a material extraction from the natural heart, and the substitution, after a more or less considerable time, of a new heart, and, in addition to an encounter, of a heart that Our Lord has claimed to be his own.

Let's mention it, because here we need facts.

III. "Blessed Osanne of Mantua!" asked God's kindness to change her heart. Jesus, accessing his prayer, opened his chest to him, removed the Heart Island, and after showing him the stains and the defects, he disappeared, taking him into his hands. Osanne thus remained for some time deprived of this organ of life. After a short wait, his Husband returned, holding a new heart from which came from all sides of the rays.

1 Fr. SyLvesTRE. Joined to Christ in heavenly marriage, desiring that her heart be stained by no blemish of earthly love.., she asks of him, with the utmost faith, for another heart. He receives the bride's most holy prayers with a ready and kindly ear: for, descending to her in the greatest splendor of heaven, having opened her side, he tears out his heart with his own hand, to no small delight of Osanna... For a little while after her heart had been plucked out, she remained lifeless, utterly unaware that the Bridegroom (for he had hidden himself) had carried it off. After a brief delay he returned, bearing another heart which sent forth blazing rays on every side, and he placed it in the spot of the former one. Then he addresses the bride: 'I have done, dearest bride, what you had asked of me.' Tantoque Christi desiderio touched, by flame, and 1 nent in place of the first, saying, "I have done, my dear wife, what you have asked me to do: in your turn now to love me with all your strength, to obey me and to honor me."The servant of God was confused with thanksgiving, and from that moment she felt in her renewed heart incredible for divine things, and her transports to Our Lord were such that she spent three years without regaining the free use of her senses. - Blessed Catherine of Racconigi had renewed her heart up to five times in a miraculous manner. Let us listen to Fr. John of St. Mary's, in his naive and manipulated style.

"Like another Saint Catherine of Siena, whose most perfect imitation she pursues, our Blessed often sees in her mouth this jaculatory prayer of the royal prophet: O God, create a pure and worldly heart, and renew your Holy Spirit within me. She once said this verse with so many larines and sobs (it was the third day of August, the eve of our Father Saint Dominique, at the prime hour, 1512), that Our Lord, having compassion for the one who so ardently claimed his help, appeared to him with a group of saints who accompanied him. He gave his blessing and long maintained several great secrets which he revealed to him. After quoy, she, urging a pure and clean heart, lued her from the chest, which was found covered with dust and looked like languishing everywhere, except for one place of iceluy, where there was written in letters of silver: JESUS, SPES MEA, Jesus, my hope. Jesus Christ hurled him into his hands, and in the presence of this comfrer Lives of the Holy and Bountyful Daughters of the Golden of Santo Domingo, t.4,19, c. 6; p. 433-436. Hi heavenly papagnie which encircled him, and after having changed these letters of silver into golden characters, he handed him over to his first place.

"Since such a favorable visit, Blessed Catherine, growing every day into a greater awareness of God's infinite perfections, she also believed in more vehement desires to keep her heart pure and clean, which housed in the same purity. To the desires were joined the prayers, and to the prayers, tears and sobs, asking again the same favor, which she saw received from her Husband on the aforementioned visit. What finally she had, the following year that was 1513, a day of Saint Catherine, martyrdom. Our Lord Luy appeared accompanied by his holy Mother, Saint Catherine the martyrdom, and several other saints; and then, coming in love with her, he put his hand on his chest, and licked his heart for the second time, and immediately disappeared. She fell full of pain, and though she had no heart, Jesus Christ, who is not attached to the laws of nature when he acts by his extraordinary power, made her return to soy, and regained her heart without having a heart, within ten whole days, suffering however incredible pains. At the end of it, Our Lord Luy appeared to be head, holding in his hands the heart which he had snatched, so beautiful, so pure and clean, that he no longer seemed to be that which he had seen; and then gave him away as before in his place.

"With more magnificence and effect, Jesus Christ took away and cleared the heart for a third time, the thirtieth of his age, the year of salvation 1516, on the fourth of May, the day of the glorious Ascension. At this feast, contemplating the glory of her Saviour ascending to heaven, she was suddenly surprised by a certain part of her heart, wishing that he would follow Jesus Christ in his triumphant entrance into heaven... "Me voicyy, Catherine," said Jesus Christ, "I want to take with me the heart that burns with love for moy. On this he opened his chest, and took away his heart for the third time, and held him with silk within fifty-five days. Unheard of, and more than wonderful, the play on its side was so wide and large, that it sucked and breathed air by icelle.

"The day of Saint John the Baptist came, when the number of the days mentioned ended, his seraphim and his guardian angel appeared, warning that she was preparing for the visit of Jesus Christ, who soon had to come down to bring back her heart... However she responded to her guardian angels, a great light melted in the chamber, and in the middle of it, Jesus Christ appeared. At the same time, Blessed Catherine threw herself on the floor, stretched out her arms on the cross, and worshiped her Savior. He lifted her up himself, and with his right hand he gave the heart to his natural place. Then he read out these beautiful words: "You know, my dear wife, that I am the eternal wisdom that has done and perfected all things of nothing, and that it is in my will to do and redo the hearts of my friends and elect: now that this heart, which you have offered me so many times and consecrated me, I make it more beautiful, purer and more ardent than ever it has been."

A fourth and fifth time, the Saviour rips out his heart from this admirable virgin, not to renew him, but to make him a victim of reparation. She herself admitted that after the last extraction, she had been seven Days for heartless!.

Let us now hear the Blessed Marguerite-Marie Alacoque tell us how this amazing wonder is accomplished on her own. "Once then," she wrote, "Being before the Blessed Sacrament, I found myself fully invested in this divine presence, but so strongly, that I forgot about myself and the place where I was, and I abandoned myself to this divine Spirit, giving my heart to the strength of his love. He made me rest for a long time on his divine breast, where he discovered to me the wonders of his love and the inexplicable secrets of his sacred Heart, which he had always kept me hidden until he opened me for the first time, but in such an effective and sensitive way that he left me no place to doubt it. ISl asked me my heart, which I begged him to take, which he did, and put it in his adorable, in which he made me see it as a small atom that was consumed in this fiery furnace, from where, taking him as a fiery flame in the form of a heart, he handed him back to the place where he had taken him, saying to me: "This, my beloved, is a precious pledge of my love, which contains in your side a little spark of his brightest flames, to serve you as a heart and consume you until the last moment... And for the mark that the great grace which I have just made unto thee is not an imagination, and that it is the foundation of all that I have yet to do unto thee, though Jj-ai closed the plague on thy side, the pain shall remain unto thee forever..." After such a great favor, pursueth the saint, and which lasted so long a time when I was born, whether I was in heaven or in the earth, I remained many days as any burning and intoxicated, and so far out of me that I could not return, to say a word, but with violence. This plague, whose pain is so precious to me, causes me such ardour, that it consumes me and makes me burn.There are few mystical favors in which the venerable Mother Agnes of Langeac did not participate; the one we are talking about did not miss her. Here's what we read in his story!.

"At the beginning of the year 1626, as she was praying after the Vepers, she was in a more wonderful delight than the ordinary, where she seemed to her that her husband took her heart and took it away. After that, she was long dead. At the last sign of Complies, she heard a voice in her interior that said to her, "Arise, my dear daughter, go and sing the praises of your divine Husband."And then it seemed to her that her heart was restored to its place, and suddenly she felt her strength restored as before. This same favor has been granted to him several times."

IV. — The prodigy grows again, when this renewal of the heart takes place by substitution of the very heart of Jesus Christ.

Saint Lutgarde® had received the gift of healing by the simple touch all kinds of infirmities; but the help of the unhappy becoming an obstacle to the life of prayer, she asked that this grace be withdrawn from her, and that in exchange God give her the intelligence of the psalms, in order to be able to recite the office with more devotion. This prayer was answered, and yet the wife of Christ was not yet satisfied. Then the Lord said to him, "What do you want? "What I want is your heart! "And I desire yours even more. "Let it be so," cried Lutgarde, "that the love of your heart be the love of mine, and that I have no more my heart than it is in you!" And this happy communication was immediately fulfilled.

Saint Catherine of Siena ‘ once with a repetition of fervor the prophet's prayer: 'Create in me, my God, a pure heart.' Immediately she saw her divine Husband coming to her, opening her left side, extracting her heart and moving away. The vision passed, she realized that it had not been purely symbolic, for she could not grasp in her chest any sign that accused the presence of the heart. Having gone to find her confessor, she did not hesitate to declare the miracle to her, and as she laughed at it and rebuked her from her credulity, considering that it was impossible to live without a heart: "Nothing is impossible to God," replied Catherine, and I cannot help but believe that my heart has disappeared from my chest."And for several days she was heard repeating that she lived without a heart. At some point, Jesus appeared to him again in the light, having in his hands an august human heart, red and luminous as the flame. At this sight, the humble wife bowed down in a holy simmering. The Lord came to her, opened her for the second time on the left side and placed in the place the heart which he held in his hands, saying, "My dear daughter, I have taken your heart; now I give you mine, that it may be your life from now on."After these words, he closed and solidified the opening which he had made in the flesh, allowing the edges of a scar to stand as a sign of the miracle "that his sisters, the Blessed Raymond of Capua, have assured me, as well as many others, to have seen with their eyes, and whose existence she herself has confessed." From that day on, it was impossible for him to say again the prayer which had been constantly on his lips: "Lord, I recommend my heart to you!" and he seemed that his chest had become a furnace whose ardour doubled with the sight and approach of the Holy Eucharist, in such a way that his companions then heard as a sound and harmonious sparkling fire! escaping from his heart.

Let us mention among these wonders, more multiplied than we think?, a last example that we borrow from the life of Saint Michael of the Saints.

"The fact that we have to tell," writes his biographer, "is one of the greatest proofs of love that Our Sergneur has given to some of his most faithful servants. F. Michael had given himself to God so perfectly since his childhood, that he could say from then on... that his beloved was all his own and that he was all his beloved.... But as love is one of those things that never say: It is enough, it seemed to him that he did not like beautiful4 RAyMoND DE CAPOUE, BB. 30 apr., t. 12, p. 907, n. 481: Videndo vel sumendo Sacramentum altaris, novum et indibile gaudium generabatur in mente ipsius, ita ut sæpius cor ejus gæ audio saltaret in corpore, faciendo streptum sonorosum sive sonantem, quem clarissime audiebant sociæ circumstantes.

2 Cf. IMBERT- GOURBEYRE, the Shohahetiôn, 2nd P.,ch.5,t. 2, p. 57. blow his God, and all his desires were to love him more and more.

"As he was one day praying, in this usual disposition of mind, not satisfied with his love for God, he asked Our Lord Jesus Christ to change his heart and to give him another more tender and more sensitive to the attractions of divine love. This loving petition was so pleasant to Our Lord, it was so well received and so widely answered, that never could the beggar have imagined what singular mark of friendship his divine Master wanted to give him. Ge sovereign Lord took away the heart of his beloved Michael, and instead of that heart which he took and hid in his chest, he put his own heart, leaving the Brother so happy, so rich in this exchange and so much burning with love, that it is impossible for a pen to trace these mysteries.

« Cet admirable privilège, Fr. Michel himself told his confessor, F. Francis of the Mother of God, who deposited him under the oath, and he was not only a witness above all suspicion, but a man of merit distinguished by his virtues and doctrine.

"Although this fact did not need further evidence... it nevertheless pleased Our Lord to make him known in another way for the honor of his servant and faithful friend. There was in Seville a nun of the Order of the Decadals, the venerated Anne of Jesus, who ended her days in this city with a great reputation of holiness, which Our Lord himself confirmed by performing some miracles at his intercession on the day of his funeral. This servant of God wanted her good Master to burn her heart so much of her pure love that she could love her as much as the seraphim. In the pious tyranny of her fervour, she asked nothing less of her sweet Jesus than the gift of her own heart. And it seems that this good Master did not offend this boldness, since he said to him, "I will not give you my heart, because Michael has it, and I possess it."One day the same servant of God was in prayer, Our Lord showed him the F. Michael, and she lives in her chest, instead of the heart, the child Jesus all surrounded by flames."

V. — Voilà le prodige. Now it's about explaining it.

In any way that it operates and is heard, one cannot fail to see in this change of heart the testimony of a renovation of the emotional life of the soul.

But isn't there a mere symbol there? The extraction of the heart, the concession of a new or renewed heart, especially what brings the wonder to its peak, the substitution of the very heart of Jesus Christ, is all of this happening only, or is it necessary to see physical, concrete realities there? Should these narratives be strictly taken to the letter?

In order to respond more accurately and accurately, these multiple and diverse points of view should be considered separately.

The truthfulness of the accounts made before, once admitted, it becomes unquestionable that the extraction of the heart was material, real. How else can we explain the scar that closes the opening, as we have seen in Saint Catherine of Siena; the pain that follows the operation, as in the Blessed Marguerite-Marie; this blissful wound by which Blessed Catherine of Racconigi aspires the outside air for more than fifty days? The alternative is inevitable: one must suffer the fact or contest the narration.

But a reasonable mind does not dispute without just grounds of mistrust. What can these motives be? On the one hand, witnesses and sources do not appear to have, apart from the fact that they bring in, anything suspicious. So it would remain the very fact, which would be blamed for its impossibility or its strangeness. However, in the order of quota, there is nothing necessary. God could have organized man without making him a heart: why would he be forbidden to keep his life after taking away this main viscera? This would obviously be a departure from the current and ordinary laws of the human organism; but this derogation does not constitute an impossibility; it bears another name, familiar to believers: it is called the miracle.

A strange miracle, perhaps. — To this it is said that all miracles are more or less strange in relation to the current order, and that God has no more to take advice from the creature to redo or modify it, than to give it the being and its first form.

If it is admitted that extraction is physical and real, the renewal or change of the heart presents no difficulty, especially to those who consider that this result responds to the desires of the saints and sets forth the fundamental reason for the prodigy.

But, in fact, what is the relationship between this reorganization of the body heart and Mystics, the holy and supernatural life of the soul?

Apart from the reason for meaning that we have indicated, there is another more direct one that derives from the very nature of man. Man consists of a double element, soul and body, so united and organized that the body has life and action only by the soul, and that the soul enters into consciousness of its most intimate operations only with the help of the body. The soul is the life of the body, and the body is the instrument of the soul. Seeing and loving is the whole life of the soul, it is the whole soul. The conscious life of thought has the brain as the instrumental organ; the heart is the instrumental organ of conscious love. No doubt, the heart does not make more love than the brain does the thought: thought and love have their sources in the soul; but it is echo that returns from the body to the soul of this double operation, that man receives the attestation and the feeling: from this point of view, the heart is to love what the brain is to thought‘. Whether the right or wrong disposition of these organs is a help or an obstacle to the free exercise of psychological functions, it is a mystery for no one. The material organization of the heart, having its impact on the emotional life of the soul, the more perfect this organization will be, the more it will contribute to the inner perfection of love. . The substitution of the heart of Jesus in the heart of man is less easy to explain. It is at first unacceptable that the holy humanity of the Saviour should be dispossessed of his own heart, so that he ceases to be hypostatically united with the person of the Word. It is no less so, that the heart of such or such a saint passes into the breasts of Christ, so much so that the Incarnate Word claims it as part of his divine personality.

Moreover, it is difficult to hear how the Saviour's physical heart can, without ceasing to belong to him, become another's heart, more so than many at a time. At most it could be admitted that Jesus Christ then gives his heart, in the same way that he gives his body in Eucharistic communion, communicating under a symbol while remaining entirely himself.

The most natural interpretation would it not be, that by replacing his Heart with the pre-existing heart, Our Lord makes to the blessed creature whom he stripes and enriches in this way a double gift: to his soul, that of dispositions and feelings that reflect the intimate affections of his divine soul; to his body, that of a heart in harmony with the inner state, as his sacred heart harmed with the impulses of his soul!?

The learned Pope Benedict XIV adopted this interpretation by declaring venerable Michael of the Saints. This is what we read in the Life of this servant of God, concerning the miracle that we have already reported?: "Some first believed that this exchange had been real, real, physical. It even seems that Fr. F.-Joseph de Jésus-Marie, who wrote in 1688, shared this view and relied on evidence that we could deduce, if we wanted to get out of the limits within which our plan obliges us to confine ourselves. Nevertheless, this fact, regarded as rare and prodigious, was examined with som by the sacred congregation of the Rites, according to the rules of the severe criticism that such matters require and which are in the habits of this respectable tribunal, true areopage of the Catholic Church. And since the historian does not walk a sure step only when he follows this infallible guide, according to his judgment, 1 must warn, in closing this account, only when N. S. Pope Benedict XIV declared the heroism of the virtues of Blessed P. F. Michel, il fit

1 P. SERAPHIN, Study on the Heart of Jesus, n. 14, p. 459: Jesus Christ, unable to give this soul the very substance of his Divine Heart hypostatically united to the person of the Word, by an excess of love gives him all the affections.

? Louis DE Saint-Jacques. Life of Saint Michael of the Saints, ch. 4, p. 87. of his virtues an eloquent panegyric in the church of the convent of Saint Charles of the Spaniards, and in this discourse he says, with this profound knowledge which is his own, that the exchange of the heart of Jesus with that of his faithful servant was a mystical and spiritual exchange; and this is now the opinion of those who regulate themselves on the infallible judgment of the Church,"

The personal authority of Pope Benedict XIV, of glorious and scholarly memory, provides sufficient support for an opinion that it is not important to decide, without the need to resort to pontifical infallibility, which does not seem to have been exercised on this occasion.

Thus, to sum up our assessment of the phenomena that are the subject of this chapter, the renovation of the heart can be accomplished in a mystical way, and we are not obliged to assume more whenever the statement of facts does not seem to require it. But when it emerges from authentic and sincere testimonies that in order to more effectively warn of the intimate transformations that he operates in his saints, Our Lord extracted from their breasts, by a real and physical action, their hearts, to modify or replace him, nothing prevents us from taking these narratives to the letter. That if the substituted heart is the very heart of Jesus Christ, the alleged reasons make it difficult to hear this substitution of a real and physical exchange, and bring it back to internal transformations: CHAPTER XXXII

ENLARGEMENT OF EXTERNAL INFLUENCES Dispensed from the law of gravity.— Suspension, ascension, ecstatic flight.

— supernatural agility outside of ecstasy. Courses aériennes de sainte

Christine l’'Admirable. — Energy of this ascental attraction. —

Marche sur les eaux. — Explication de ces phénomènes. — Facilité de

pénétrer les corps solides. — Immovability, invulnerability, and physical unalterability. — L'incombustibilité. — The privilege of being invisible and the way to explain it.

I. — We have just studied the intrinsic transformations that the saints receive, in their bodies, from mystical life. We still have to consider the miraculous actions they exercise outside and the reactions they escape. In relation to the middle, all privileges are, in fact, reduced to this twofold point of view: freedom and influence; freedom from external servitudes; and, around oneself, extranatural influence on the surrounding beings. The first of these aspects provides the subject matter of this chapter, the second will be the subject of the next chapter.

The most numerous and surprising exemptions concern the law of gravity.

Body beings are connected like rings of a long chain by actions and reactions that extend and pass through to the last limits of the physical world. At each point in the material space is the result of the reciprocal actions of the parts which make up it on each other.

Considered in general, this primordial law of matter which puts its constituent elements in relation to dependence, liaison or, as the scholastic philosophers express, continuity, bears the name of attraction; and, applied to the relationship with the mass of the objects that are surrounding it, this is what we call gravity. All bodies are subject to the imperative attraction that pushes them towards the center of the earth, until the balance is established between action and resistance; the living bodies themselves undergo it. However, organic life is a kind of struggle and reaction against this enslavement of matter by matter, and, the more powerful and clear the principle of life, the more the body he animates and commands seems to be subtracted from the outer servitudes. A valiant soul communicates to the members and organs something of the prestyness and agility of the mind.

In mystical life, this spiritualization is often carried to the miracle. Leaving aside the ordinary phenomena which result from the simple influence of the soul on the body, as an easy, light, precipitated walk, of quick and sharp movements, under the impulse of an inner transport: facts besides which we have pointed out the wonderful character by talking about ecstasy and jubilation; — at present, we only want to mention these derogations from the physical law of gravity that vital action is not enough to explain.

II. — They occur mainly in ecstasy, and to varying degrees. It is little ecstatic that had been seen, once or another, in their ravishing, raised above the ground, suspended in the air without support, floating sometimes and swinging at the slightest breath. "In the delight," wrote St. Térèse!, "my body became so light, that he had no more gravity, at this point, that sometimes I could not feel my feet touching to the ground."When Mary of Agréda® was seized by ecstasy, her body also rose as if it had not had any natural weight, and a breath, even far away, made her oscillate and move like a light feather. Hundreds of such examples could be cited. In particular, there are several holy priests, among them St. Peter's of Alcantara %, St. Philip's of Néri', St. Francis Xavier®, St. Joseph's of Copertinof, St. Paul's of the Cross, whom they had at the altar of these aerial ecstases.

Sometimes this is not a simple elevation above the ground, but a real ascent in the air. Dominique of Jesus Mary, a Carmelite religious, so famous by his ecstasy, rose to the point that his brothers could barely, by extending their arms, touch the soles of his feet. St Peter of Alcantara * sometimes reached, in his trans1 His Life, ch. 20.

2 XIM. SAMANIEGO, Life of the Ven. Mother Mary of Jesus, ch. 9, p. 87.

3 Fr. Before he had come to the communion of the most holy Body, he was, in a violent rapture, raised more than a cubit above the ground for three hours, etc.

4 BarnaBri, BB. 26 maii, t. 19, p. 584, n. 359: Cum pridie Sacrum faceres atque in aere sublimem te viderem.

ÿ Bounours, Vie de S. Francis Xavier,,,,. 6, D. 557: From time to time, during the sacrifice of the Mass, when he had just pronounced the words of consecration, he was seen raised in this way.

6 Pasrroviccni. He saw him... at the elevation of the consecrated host being raised three palms above the ground.

7 SrraMBt, Vie du B. Paul de la Croix, 1. 2, c. 3, t. 1, p. 301: The servant of God slew in the air at the height of two palm trees, twice, before and after the consecration.

Often in rapture he was raised from the ground; and at times to such a height that the religious could scarcely... touch with their hands the soles of his body hanging in the air.

.Ÿ Fr. Lauhent, BB. 19 oct., t. 56, p. 764, n. 239: Ita ut.orans in choro et in Dei FRMÉRRaNoNE absorptus usque ad net pritus ardore ports, jusqu'aux lambris du chœur. One day of Ascension, while she was psalmodating in the garden between two of her companions, Blessed Agnes of Bohemia, suddenly delighted, slew in their eyes in the air, where they soon lost sight of her; and it was not until after an hour that she appeared again, the face radiating with grace and joy. Several times, during his contemplative prayers, Saint Colette disappeared entirely in space to the gaze of his sisters.

Some ecstasy prints the body a rapid and impetuous movement that has been described as theft. St Peter of Alcantara*, hearing singing in the garden of the convent, by a brother who was exercising at the office, the first words of the Gospel according to St John: IN PRINCIPIO ERAT VERBUM, is suddenly delighted out of himself; and, gathering himself in ball by a sort of irresistible instinct, no longer touching to the ground, he sneezes, crosses with incredible speed, without injury n1 accident, three very low gates that led to the church, and comes to rest in front of the great altar, where his brothers who ran after him find him abated in ecstasy. He often kneeled at the foot of the trees, and there, seized by the ecstasy, he rose, with the lightness of the bird, to the highest branches. Blessed Philippin #, also of the order of Saint Francis, remained suspended in the air, over the great oaks, like an eagle that glides freely.

These wonders overabound in the life of Blessed Joseph of Copertino!. He was seen flying to the vaults of the church, on the banks of the pulpit, along the walls where the crucifix hanged or some pious image, towards the statues of the Blessed Virgin and the saints, hovering on the altar and around the tabernacle, slinging in the air and at the tops of the trees, standing and swinging on the smallest branches with the lightness of a bird, crossing a leap of great distances. A word, a look, the slightest incident relating to piety threw him into these transports. We would like to be able to describe some of these scenes that the world would tax strange and ridiculous, and that we find admirable, because they attest to the wonderful power of holy souls on the body and on nature, and even better on the heart of God, who frees them at his will from vulgar servitudes; but these prolonged descriptions are not part of our purpose.

IL. — Supernatural agility is still manifested outside of ecstasy, and in the multiple forms we have just described. Marguerite of the Blessed Sacrament ? passed almost instantly from one point to another. She was found in the choir, in the infirmary, in the exercise room, without even the doors being opened, and several times her sisters saw her lifted up above the ground, as if her body no longer had gravity. One day when she was going to pick a grape for a sick woman, they saw her raising as effortlessly as far as the height of the fruit, detach her and even dream that, fulfilling the functions of sacristine, she climbed and stood on the windows, on the cornices, on ornaments in relief; that she cleaned everything in places humanly inaccessible, without feeling any fear or worry, accustomed that she was from childhood to be assisted by her good angel, and feeling moreover carried and supported in the air by an invisible virtue.

Not only the agility and the simple ascension meet outside of the ecstasy, but also the flight in what it has most wonderful. Saint Christine, nicknamed the Admirable, offers us an incomparable example. We do not have to discuss here the historical character of the amazing eccentricities attributed to this saint, which the Bollandists themselves call paradoxical; 1 it suffices for us that these scholars have accepted the accounts that concern her and declared them, at least in the part we claim, worthy of respect and debt." To omit such accounts for fear of the scandal that unbelief can cause, would be to yield to a human respect that should have stopped us for a long time and which seems to us as contrary to piety as to science. Here is in a few words the preciseness of this singular existence.

Christine ? was born in Saint-Trond, in the province of Liège, in the mid-19th century. Orphan early, she remained with two sisters, her eldest, and was busy keeping herds in the fields. But, activated by contemplation, the ardour of his soul became so intense that his body could not resist it. She fell ill and died. The next day his body was taken to church for the funeral ceremony. At the AGNus Der of the Mass that was celebrated for her, she was suddenly seen moving, rising up in her coffin and flying like a bird to the vault of the temple. Everyone fled terrified, with the exception of the older sister, who remained there still, but not without fear, until the end of the Mass. At the priest's command, Christine went down without harming herself and returned home, where she took her meal. with her sisters. She then told the friends who had come to question her, that soon after her death the angels had taken her successively to purgatory, to hell, to heaven. There, the choice was given to him to remain forever in this place or to return to the earth, to work there, through his sufferings, for the redemption of the souls of purgatory, which she had accepted without hesitation!

He was not to miss purgatory, for therefore begins the strangest life for this admirable virgin. The presence and smell of men is unbearable; to avoid it flees into the deserts, flies on the trees, at the top of the towers, at the gables of the ‘churches, on all high points. She is believed to have been possessed, pursued, reached to a great extent, and bound with iron chains. But she emerges and resumes her air races, going from tree to tree as would have been a bird. Hunger, however, the press; she then invokes the Lord, and, against all the laws of nature, her breasts distill an abundant milk which she feeds for nine weeks. A second time, it falls into the hands of those who pursue it, but it escapes them again and comes to Liège to ask a priest for the divine Eucharist. With this heavenly food, she comes out of the city, carried away by the spirit with the rapidity of a whirlwind, crosses the Meuse, light as a ghost, and resumes her wandering life, far from human homes, at the tops of trees and towers, often on the piles that bordered the hedges, on the thinnest branches, where she rested and swung like a passerine.

Shameful of these apparent extravagances, which the public attributed to a legion of demons, his sisters and friends paid for it to recover a wicked man, very strong, who went after him. He failed to reach her with his hands, but he joined her close enough to break her leg bone with a clump, and it was in this state that he brought her back to his sisters. Out of compassion, they took her on a cart to a doctor in Liège, recommending her both to heal her and to hold her captive. He locked him in a cellar that had no opening other than the entrance, tied him strongly to a column and closed the door, after having applied suitable bandages to the fractured limb. As soon as he had withdrawn, Christine rejected this device, considering it unworthy of resorting to a doctor other than the Savior Jesus. His hope was not deceived. One night God's spirit came to melt on her, broke her chains, healed her from her wound; and she, free, ran and stumbled from Joy in that dungeon, praising and blessing Him for whom only she had resolved to live and: to die. Soon, her mind feeling narrow between these walls, she manages, with the help of a large stone, to open a way out, and, quick as the trait that escapes from the powerfully tense arch, she sneezes outside and regains her freedom.

Resumed a third time, she was bound with chains to a wooden bench, so closely that her flesh was soon taken off. When she was filled with sufferings and the torment of hunger came to her, she again resorted to the Lord, and they saw her breasts pouring out, as we have already told, a clear oil of which she watered her bread and anointed her wounds. Waiting for this spectacle, her sisters, previously inhumane by unbelief, took away her chains and allowed her to follow freely the spirit that was enthralling. Indeed, she continued her holy follies for many years, for he passed forty-two years between his first resurrection and his death, which came about the year 1224!

IV. — This ascending power sometimes occurs with such energy that no obstacle is able to contain it. What we have just told Christine the Admirable would be sufficient to prove it; but this is not the only example. Let us still point out St Joseph of Copertino?, in whom seem to gather all the wonders of ecstatic life. One day of the Immaculate Conception, 1 mvite the Guardian Father to say again with him: PuccarA Maria! "Mary is beautiful!"And as soon as he repeated these words, the saint, entering into ecstasy, seized his superior in arms and took him with him in the air, one and the other saying in concert: PuLcHRA Maria! PuzcHRA Maria ! Another time, he is brought with him a gentleman with dementia, so that he may obtain his healing from God. The saint made him kneel down, and put his hand on his head: "Lord Baltazar," said-1l, "be fearless; I recommend you to God and his most holy Mother."At the same time he uttered the usual cry which proclaims ecstasy: "Ah!", grasped this man by his hair, rose up with him in the space, where he kept him suspended for a while; when his feet returned to earth, the sick man was healed.

V. — Aerial ascent is not the only form of supernatural agility; it also occurs by walking on the water. The Gospel! offers us the first examples. It is known that the Saviour was walking on the waves as well as on the dry land, and that he granted the prince of the apostles to come to him on the troubled waves. The miracle has been reproduced a thousand times on the sea, on lakes, rivers and rivers, to attest that God is pleased to free his saints from natural bondages.

The Roman Breviary ? reports, among the most brilliant miracles attributed to Saint Raymond of Pégnafort, his crossing of the Majorca Island in Barcelona, that is to say, an area of sea of one hundred and sixty miles, which he and his companion crossed in six hours, without any other nacelle than his coat.

Saint Hyacinthe, not finding a boatman to cross the Vistula, brought himself the sign of the cross and entered resolutely into the river, whose waters became firm under his feet. But his companions, less confident, dared to follow him. He therefore returns to them, and, extending his coat on the waves, he brings them up to the other bank before the eyes of a large crowd. The Church immortalized this miracle by consigning it in the bubble of canonization ! and in the legend of the Breviary ?.

In another encounter, the same saint renews this wonder in an even more brilliant way?. The Tartars had come to climb the city of Kiev by storm and were already giving up all the looting, when the saint, who was at the altar, was warned that there was not a moment to lose, if he wanted to save himself with all his community. He goes in this opinion, and without leaving the sacred clothes, he takes in his hands the holy ciborium and starts to get out. Towards the middle of the church, he hears a loud and complaining voice that starts from a statue of the Virgin, in alabaster, of the weight of eight to nine hundred pounds: "My son Hyacinthe, shouts to him, you would give up the desecrations of the Tartars! Emporte-moi avec toi. "Glorious Virgin," replied the devotee, "this image is so heavy; how can I carry it?" "Take it, my Son will lighten the weight of it." The saint, holding the Holy Eucharist with one hand, seized the statue that had become as light as a reed; charged with this double treasure, he passed safely with his own through the barbarians who already invaded the monastery, and arrived on the banks of the Dnieper. There he made a boat to his brothers from his chape, and he walked through the river dryly in all its breadth, printing on the waters the trace of his steps. We would have many other facts similar to

1 CLÉMENT VIIL Bulla Canoniz:. 1594. — Bull. p. 6.

? BREvV. Rom. 16 aug., lect. 6. Among which (miracles) that notable one, that he crossed the river Vandalum near Visogradum, swollen with water, using no boat, his companions also having been carried across with his cloak spread out upon the waves.

But the truth of the history is as follows... While he himself was performing the sacred mysteries at the altar, behold, suddenly, from a sudden incursion of the Tartars, a clamor arose in the city. Having taken the most divine Sacrament from the sacristy, he began to flee. And when he had crossed the middle of the church, an image of the glorious Virgin, made of alabaster stone, weighing four or five talents, began to cry out after him in a loud voice. Substracta fratris am cappa, siccis pedibus in alteram partem fluminis trajecit. tell, for they abound in the lives of the saints; but we must close these accounts to seek interpretation.

VI. — We will not stop at the rationalistic and fanciful explanations of Gôrres, who, with a seriousness to which his readers are not bound, tries to bring back these miracles of holiness to a physiological transformation where "the element of the air takes over in man over others", where "the bird develops in him, so to speak, prevails over the brute, and, emerging from his envelope, flies joyfully towards the higher light that lukewarms". With Joseph Lopez Ezquerra?, reproduced by Scaramelli*, we like to see in this release of earthly attractions an early and miraculous communication of the agility of glorious bodies. It is in contemplation that these phenomena occur regularly; out of there, they are only temporary exceptions; and contemplation, to the feeling of mystical doctors, is a kind of prelude of eternal bliss: that is why it begins in the body what glorification will consume there for eternity.

VIL. — The miracle of agility attaches itself to that of the Mystical Father, 1. 4, ch. 23, t. 2, p. 367.

3 Luc. myst. Tr. 5, c. 30, n. 339, p. 127: We also see in this elevation as it were gifts of the body, since there is found, though imperfectly, IMPASSIBILITY; for it suffers neither pain nor discomfort, nor does the prick of a needle cause it pain; [garbled: SUBTLETY?], because it becomes as it were transparent and crystalline, and appears more heavenly than earthly; AGILITY, for it is raised on high from the earth, and remains elevated there for a long time, and at the slightest breath, having wholly lost its weight, is moved about; CLARITY, because it remains beautiful, ruddy, and shining.

3 Dirett. Mist. Tr. 3, c. 30, n. 276, p. 246 : L-altra authority, appoggiota al commune parere de Dottori mistici, à quella.. cioè che la contemplazione é una beatitudine imperfetta dell-anima... If scorge di fatto nei corpi di quei Servi di Dio.. Ma più chiaramente si scuopre in essi la dote dell’ agilità in quelle stupendi elevazioni, per cui si sollevano prestamente in alto, e vi perseverano lungo tempo sospesi, divenuti mont nétration des corps solides. After his resurrection, the Saviour appeared to his disciples, although the doors of the house where they were gathered were closed! Saint Raymond de Pégnafort also entered his convent, the doors being closed. St. Dominique and a conversant brother of the Order of Citeaux who accompanied him arrive one evening in front of a church they find closed. They kneel at the door; but they hardly began their prayers that they saw themselves, by a mysterious favor, brought into the holy place, where they spent the night blessing the Lord.

This gift, which suppresses all the resistances of matter, seems to us to consist in premature enjoyment of the bodily subtlety promised to the blessed. This clearance of outer space is like a prelude to the complete freedom of glory #.

VIII. — Independence vis-à-vis external elements is still manifested by resistance to the actions they exercise.

Sometimes it is a immobility that makes all impulses and efforts futile. One day, Blessed Gilles, of the Preachers' Brothers, remained suspended in the air by ecstasy, his companion, and the people of the house where they were trying to bring his body to the ground; they did not even manage to make him change so little position. Saint Lucia, the martyrdom of Syracuse, threatened with infamous places, became so immobile that neither the executioners who had ordered him to be removed, nor several pairs of oxen to whom they tied with ropes, could ever cause her to be stirred.

Sometimes it is an invulnerability in the body against which the weapons and all the devices of torture come to break. Among the wonders of this kind, without many in the acts of martyrs, may we simply recall the wheel of Saint Catherine*, who flies in bursts at the prayer of this famous martyrdom. At other times, it is the poison that loses its virtue on the bodies of the saints, as we see in St.Antoine of Padua, who, after having made the sign of the cross on it, eats, in proof of the Catholic faith, the poisoned food which the heretics present to it, and does not receive any damage; in the martyr Saint Victor, who twice suffered victoriously the same ordeal, in the name of Jesus Christ; in the Blessed Apostle Saint Paul, who, bitten by a viper in the island of Malta, shakes it on the fire and does not feel any harm; in a great number of other saints, in whom the word of the Savior was fulfilled: "In

1 BREv. Rom. 13 dec., 6 lect. He ordered Lucy to be dragged to where her virginity would be violated. But it came about by divine power that the steadfast virgin stood so firm that she could not be moved from the place by any force.

2 Brev. Rom. 25 nov., lect. 6. A wheel is prepared, fitted with numerous sharp blades, so that the virgin's body might be most cruelly torn apart. Quæ machina brevi, Catharinæ oratione, confracta est.

3 BB. 13 jun., t. 23, p. 217, n. 6. They therefore urge her to take the food set before her, promising that if it does her no harm, they will adhere forever to the faith of the Gospel. The food having been taken, he appeared sound and felt no harm at all in his body.

4 BB. 14 maii, t. 16, n. 266, n. 4: Tunc jussit confici venenum mortiferum et dari in carnibus a malefico, ut ederet ab eis.. And manducavit my name, they shall take the serpents, and if they drink any deadly drink, it shall not harm them."

This privilege is like a trial of glorious impassability for elected officials.

IX. — Among the natural agents, the most energetic is fire, Fire itself respects the favors of grace. We cannot count the number of martyrs that the flames dared to reach. Some, thrown, as in the past the companions of Daniel *, in burning furnaces, leave without having lost a hair; such as Saint Victor #, Saint Ephyse#, Saint Christineÿ. Others, like St. John the Evangelist, are immersed in boilers of boiling oil and regain the vigor of youth; these, like St. Clement of Ancyra? and his companions, are watered with oil, pitch and sulphur, and remain intact; these, like St. Polycarp # and St. Agnes °, are placed on stakes whose flames, instead of consuming them, surround them with a protective rampart, or turn against those who light them.

The prodigy is not only found in martyrs, but also very frequently in the multitude of other saints. [It is some who carry in their hands, on their breasts and their clothes, coals or burning irons, which, without extinguishing if cool, temporarily suspend any combustive and deleterious action, so

4 ScARAMELLI. Direct. myst. Tr. 3, n. 276, p. 246. One sees in them a certain indefinable quality of impassibility.

2 Dan. 1m.

3 BB. +4 maii, t. 16, p. 266, n. 3.

# Marc. BB. 15 jan., t. 2, p. 285, n. 32.

5 BB. 24 jun., t. 32, p. 527, n. 45. : 6 TerTuLz. De Præscript. hæret. c. 36, p. 285.

7 BB. 93 jan.,t. 3, p. 80, n. 34.

8 BB. 26 jan. , t. 3, p. 319, n. 43.

9 S. Amen. BB. 21 Jan., vol. 2, p. 716, n. 11. It is said, among other things, of Saint Duthac!, Saint Lambert, Saint Jole. Several, yielding to a secret inspiration of the Holy Spirit, accepted the test of fire; sometimes as testimony of the divinity of the Gospel, as St Boniface, ‘, of the order of the Camaldules, who, in order to convince the king of the Russians of the truth of his preaching, passes through sound and except an immense fire; sometimes, in proof of their innocence, as the Empress Saint Cunegunde, who justified himself from the infamous accusation of having failed in the conjugal faith by walking bare feet on burning ploughs; sometimes as a sign of some providential design, for example, Saint Christine the Admirable $, who, having accepted, as we have said, to return to life to dedicate himself to the relief of the souls of purgatory, entered in burning furnaces, in boilers full of boiling water, suffered from such pains, which she had made lamentable cries, and yet came out without any trace of burn.

Ectatics seem to be particularly exempt from the law of combustion. Isl often came to Saint Catherine of Siena ? to fall into the fire during her transports and to stay there even for several hours without having any harm, without his clothes being damaged. The ecstasy often carried St Joseph of Copertino® to the taber1 BB. 8 mart., vol. 7, p. 798, n. 1. . 2 BB. 19 mart., vol. 9, p. 37, n. 5.

3 BB. 9 jun.,t. 22, p. 251, n. 1.

4 S. PIeRRE DAMIEN, BB. 19 jun., t. 24, p. 760, n. 6.

5. BB. 3 mart.,t.7, p. 271, n. 2.

6 Thomas DE CANTIMPRÉ, BB. 24 jul., t. 32, p. 652, n. 11. 7 RavmonD DE CAPOUE, BB. 30 apr., t. 42, p. 894, n. 127: Ipsam de igne trahens, invenit et corpus et indumenta in nullo penitus læsa fuisse ab igne ; imo nec vestigium nec odorem ignis apparere in eis. And what is more... it is believed that he was in the fire for several hours.

8 Pasrroviccai. BB. 18 Sept., vol. 45, p. 1021, n. 29-34: Tabernaculum sannacle, in the midst of candles and lamps lit, and never took fire to his clothes. One day when he prayed in the church of a convent in Naples, he was suddenly heard shouting and he was seen stinging towards the altar, flying, with his arms stretched on the cross, between the candles and the flowers: "He burns, he burns!" cried the frightened nuns; but he, without having disturbed anything and without the flame having reached him, returned from a light flight to the ground, repeating with transport these words: "Ah! the Blessed Virgin! ah! the Blessed Virgin!" A fire had just burst at the monastery of the Rosary and threatened the church where St. Peter of Alcantara was in prayer. The brothers, approaching the Blessed, speak of taking away the Blessed Sacrament elsewhere: "Do not be afraid," he said to them, "God will help us."Then, rising up, he heads towards the neighbouring hermitage, where fire was the most ravaging, enters in the midst of the flames, removes from it some tables half consumed; and the flames, as docile to his command, decrease and extinguish, without having dared to reach it.

It should not be concluded from these facts that ecstasy regularly communicates non-combustibility; experience demonstrates, on the contrary, that this privilege is only the exception. If the ecstatics are subjected to the action of fire, they feel nothing, to the truth. in full transport; but as soon as they return to themselves they experience, as everyone else, the pain of burning, and they keep track of it on their limbs. To cite but one example, St Michael of the Saints? had custom in his ecstasy to extend his arms on a cross; yet one day, while he was at the altar, hesit, nec tamen ullum e cereis ardentibus quorum altare plenum erat interim dejecit, nec ulla ipsius dressendi pars igne contacta est.

1 F. LAURENT. BB. 49 oct., t. 56, p. 726, n. 1921.

? Louis pe SAINT-JACQUES. The life of Saint Michael of the Saints, ch. 6, p. 107. he was suddenly delighted, and his hand met a lighted candle whose flame caused a deep wound in the flesh.

X. — On the independence of the outside world, we have yet to point out a final prodigy, that of escaping sights through invisibility, a prodigy no less admirable than those we have just told, and of which a number of examples are cited.

Violent, Queen of Aragon, with a sense of curiosity easy to conceive in a person of her sex, asked St. Vincent Ferrier ‘to visit his room. The man of God refused to lend himself to such condescendingness, and the sovereign, eagerly supporting this refusal, ordered that the cell be opened to him with force. But by a just punishment of her indiscretion, neither she nor her escort could ever see the saint, though he was present. As she asked the brothers who accompanied him where Father Vincent was, strangely surprised, they replied that he was there before his eyes. Then, addressing himself, "Good Father," they said to him, "why do you do so to His Majesty, when she does you the honor of coming to you?" You don't tell her anything; you don't even stand up to greet her. "You know, my friends," said Vincent, "that women are not allowed to enter our cells. It is no exception, even for the queen; and as long as she remains here, by a miracle of God, her eyes will not see me."The queen hastened to go out, and Vincent followed her. She was then able to see it, and, bowing down to her feet, she asked her forgiveness with great humility. "If your fault, " he said, "had no excuse for a woman's ignorance, you would have been punished otherwise. Try to behave better with God's servants from now on, for he severely avenges the wrongs that are done to them."

This is what Father Tannoja says in his note on Brother Gérard: "Brother Gérard, constantly surrounded by priests and gentlemen, could no longer find the time or the way to gather. Having therefore asked Father Juvenal, the rector of the house, to be able to make a retirement feast, he granted it to him; but the next morning, when he needed him, he sent him to his room, and he was not found there; he went to the choir, no brother Gérard; he went through the whole house, and he was not met anywhere. On these facts comes the doctor Santorelli, to whom Father Juvenal hastened to say: "We have lost Brother Gérard." Santorelli answered him: "Perhaps he was hidden under his bed; let's go see."And taking a brother with him, he will examine everything by himself, but without more success. "It is nothing," he said then; "when the hour of communion has come, you will see him come out of his retreat." Indeed, he appeared precisely then; immediately the Father Rector calls Gérard and asks him where he had been. « À ma chambre, » répondit-il. "How, in your room!" replied the Rector; "we were there twice without being there." Gérard was silent with a smile; but having received the command to explain such a strange thing, he said with simplicity: "Fearing to be distracted in my retreat, I asked Jesus Christ the grace to become invisible."This answer struck Fr.Juvenal and Santorelli with astonishment; but the Rector said to him somewhat angry: "What are these mysteries? For this time, I forgive you; but be careful in the continuation to make similar prayers."

* Memories on Life and the Congress of S. Alph. de APTE t. 3, AppenGérard had only twelve palms in square: there was only one poor bed and a small table, without any other furniture that could have prevented him from seeing it. It is therefore necessary to exclaim 101, with the king-prophet, that "God is admirable in his saints, and that he knows nothing to refuse their prayers".

We find similar accounts in the lives of St Stephen the Thaumaturge, St Coengen*, St Bonne de Pisa, St Anthuse, Blessed Névélo de Favence, and others that we could name, and whose gestures are reported in the particular histories and hagiographic collections, mainly in the ACTA SANCTORUM of the Bollandists, our favorite source, where we drew almost all the previous examples.

Sometimes these are not only temporary disappearances, it is the gift of invisibility permanently and at the will of the will. Léoncef, the disciple and the biographer of St Stephen the Thaumaturge, held from his master that some anachorets obtained from God, through their prayers, to be able to avoid the will from human eyes, and he cites the name of a cenobite called John, who enjoyed this favor and had used it to himself. The Greek anthology reports that the priest Saint Lucien, martyred in Nicomedia under Maximian, could at his option, when he went out into the city, show himself or wipe out, in such a way that he was seen by some, while he remained invisible to others.

It is said of Blessed Hermann Joseph of Steinfeld! whom he also possessed in the usual state the gift of invisibility. His brothers often passed before him without seeing him, and more than once, after seeking him vainly in every corner of the monastery, they suddenly saw him appear before them, at the moment when he liked to show himself. The Blessed Mary Raggi?, of the Order of Santo Domingo, seems to have Joui of the same privilege.

Gorrres takes himself to doubt the authenticity of these facts, doubtless afraid of the implausibility of the theory which he imagines to explain them; for, according to this author, as well as, "to become visible, the spiritual powers must clothe a body, so that the senses can grasp them with the help of the veil that covers them; if, on the contrary, the mind wishes to subtract from the gazes of the envelope that hides it, it must be taken away from itself, and that instead of wearing it, it clothes it in some way and embraces it on the contrary, so that it passes, so to speak, in the spirit and participates in its invisibility." We understand well how the mind hides itself and reveals itself both in the material forms that it animates and moves; but, we will simply confess, we understand less, or rather we do not at all, how the body can shelter and erase itself behind the mind. It is a great complicating thing, if not making it intelligible.

Nor did it happen to him only once that, though present, he was not seen by those present, so that the truth of so great a miracle (which is also confirmed by witnesses) could be concealed by no evasion.

3 JOHN OF SAINTE-MARIE, Lives of the Holy and Blessed Daughters of Santo Domingo, 1. 2, p. 556: To these miraculous graces we can add the graces that God gave to make herself invisible when she wanted to. We do not believe him, if the experiences had been palpable and she herself had confessed.

3 Mystique, |. 4, ch.8,t.9, p. 105. The natural explanation of these facts, too numerous for it to be reasonably allowed to question their authenticity, which is not important, because who dares to deny their possibility? — the natural explanation, in our view, is to admit that God suspends one of the physical laws under which the vision is operated, either at the very centre of radiation, by preventing the action of the elements that determine it; either in the environment, by modifying irradiation; or at the point of arrival, by suppressing organic impression or sensation. All these relations of material order, freely established and freely maintained by the Creator, can be changed by a sovereign act of his free will. In cases where the vision takes place in one, and not in the other, the miracle seems to be circumscribed in the subject which does not see, and to be reduced to a momentary modification which would prevent the perception of the senses. CHAPITRE XXXIII

EMPIRE ON THE NEXT BEINGS God renders to the saints the empire of innocent man over creation. — Their miraculous interventions on the inanimate nature: the enormous displaced masses; — the flood contained and the dry lakes; — the storms calmed or raised on the sea and on earth; — the lightning of the sky, the rain and the salutary sources; — the multiplication and transformation of food; — the recomposition of fragile objects broken. — Prodigies on the fields, the harvests, the flowers, the fruits. — Miraculous influences on animals: sermon of St. Anthony of Padua to fish. — Empire over wild and other animals, — on birds and insects. — The ordinary theatre of supernatural interventions of holiness is man in his body and soul. — Miraculous effects on souls are exercised by prayer, — speech, — contact, — simple island aspect, — or by various other wonders. — Conclusion of the presentation of mystical phenomena. I. — We have just seen him, God has a thousand ways of freeing the saints from outer servitudes; we would like to sum up in this last chapter the positive and supernatural influences that he allows them to exert on the surrounding beings. God partially renders to his servants the empire that innocent man had over nature, and sometimes adds to the primitive sovereignty that we lost by sin. All creation is at the service of the elect, "and whatever this advantage seems to us, let us say with Bossuet!, this 1,447 Serm. for the feast of all Saints. Vives, vol. 8, p. 23. is not a thing to deny to the blessed that to command all creatures, since they have the happiness of being born to possess God. So they are not all more vehemently inclined than to serve them; all the effort made by natural causes, according to what the Apostle says, is only to give the world the children of God... They constantly complain about the disorder of sin, which hid from them the true heirs of their master by confusing them with the vessels of his anger. All they can do is wait for God to discover it on this great day of judgment... They will not fail to come to it to fight with him against the fools, but rather to render obedience to his children. That if, in this interval, there are some that more visibly bear on their forehead the mark of the living God, the fiercest beasts will throw themselves at their feet, the flames will withdraw for fear of harming them, and I do not know how impatience will bring forth in a thousand pieces the wheels and the easels destined to torment them."

We speak of these privileged ones "which more visibly bear on their forehead the mark of the living God," and of the wonders that they operate "in this interval" that precede the supreme glorification. To further clarify the reason for these wonders in their innumerable forms, let us note that they all tend to this triple goal: to rescue man, to suppress evil, to show with honor holiness itself; that they can therefore be realized wherever the needs and misery of man meet, the turpitudes and audacity of the wicked, the reparations, praises and divine ardour of the holy souls. We do not have the pretension, we do not say to tell all the facts: this undertaking is above human forces; no. not even to describe in their entirety the variety of aspects to which they relate: we nevertheless hope to point out fairly faithfully the main forms, so that we can hear how glorious is the supernatural influence which the friends of the Lord exert around them.

IT. — Their miraculous interventions in the inanimate world are frequent. They have been seen, effortlessly lifting huge masses and even moving mountains, containing in their overflows the torrents and rivers, calming storms, conjuring storms, calling from the sky the lightning that consumes, and more often the rain that refreshes and fertilizes; springing rocks or a dry land of clear fountains, multiplying food or transforming them, adjusting the debris of a fragile object.

Citons quelques exemples et quelques noms.

Saint Vincent Ferrier! takes in his hands and places on a tank a piece of wood that ten men would have had difficulty raising from the ground. On another occasion, he carried to the convent, without any fatigue, a beam that a pair of oxen could not have dragged, by a sloppy, who, after this task, was immediately healed.

These facts are greatly multiplied in the Acts of the saints. At the request of a priest of idols who could not accept the mystery of a God incarnate, and who wanted, to believe in it, a sign of heaven, Saint Gregory the Thaumaturge* made

1 Procès. BB. 2 apr., t. 10, p. 132, n. 59: Dixitque præfatum lignum fuisse tantæ magnitudinis quod vix decem homines potuissent illud a terra tollere ; ipseque solus illud in planitiem deduxit.

2 Jbid., n. 57. He led him to a certain beam, which a pair of oxen could not have moved. And so the aforesaid witness, taking up the beam, carried it to the monastery without any difficulty, and was forthwith healed in his leg.

3 S. GRÉGOIRE DE NYssE, De Vita S. Greg. Thaum. Patrologia Graeca, vol. 46, col. 918: For when the bishop demanded that a certain huge rock, which lay visible before their eyes, be moved without any human hand, and, by the power of faith alone, at Gregory's command, be transferred to another place, without any delay the great [Gregory] is said to have at once commanded the rock as though it were a living thing to pass instantly from its place to another, by a mere word of his faith — an enormous rock that stood before them; and the pagan was converted. Once, the same saint wanting to build a church in a convenient site, but too tight between a rock and the sea, came, at night, to kneel in this place and remind the Lord of his promise to move the mountains to confident prayer. The next day, the obstacle had receded, leaving the necessary space for the temple location. The liturgy consecrates this memory by making read at the mass of this pontiff the place of the Gospel where Our Lord said to his disciples: "I assure you, whoever will say without hesitation to this mountain: Arise and throw you into the sea, what he has believed will indeed be done;" and, in the Breviary, by commenting on these same words, by the account made of this prodigy the venerable Bede.

III. — Saint Gregory of Nyssa, to whom we owe a long and enthusiastic panegyric of the illustrious thaumaturge of the Bridge, reports two other miracles also recorded in the legend of the Breviary, and which find their place here. A river, which the rains of the mountains frequently transformed into a devastating torrent, had broken its dikes and carried desolation throughout the country. The grieved inhabitants came and begged the holy bishop, whose credit they knew from God, to help them in such urgent calamity. He greeted them kindly and went with them, holding pious speeches, to the place where the eruption was taking place. There, after ardent prayer to Jesus Christ, he thrust his staff into the wet earth, commanding the waters to respect this barrier. The waves stopped, and the stick, taking root, soon became a large tree that firmed the shore and prevented flooding. These kinds of wonders often occur in the lives of the saints.

The other fact is no less wonderful. Two brothers disagreed about a pond that was part of the paternal inheritance, one of which coveted possession. All means of conciliation became unnecessary, and the two parties, exasperated, were determined to resolve the problem by means of weapons. On the eve of the day fixed for the fratricidal battle, the man of God carried himself on the edge of these waters, the object of the quarrel, and spent the night there in prayer. In the morning the lake had disappeared, and instead extended an uncultivated land on which the enemy brothers kissed and swore an unalterable affection.

IV. — Others calm the fury of the sea by their command or prayer. At the time when St. Gobin* and his companions were about to embark to reach the coasts of France, a violent storm broke out: the holy priest ascended to the altar, and to the secret of Mass, the winds and the waves suddenly calmed down. Saint Francis Xavier ÿ went to Cochin on a Portuguese ship which was attacked in the Strait of Ceylon by the most horrific storm. After hearing the confessions of the passengers and

1 S. GRÉGOIRE DE NyssE, De Vita S. Greg. Thaum. Patr. gr., t. 46, col. 926 and 927: On the day before that on which the battle between the two sides was to be joined, when the man of God had remained at the banks of the pool and had kept vigil through the night, he performed a certain Mosaic miracle in the water..., reducing that whole lake to [uncertain: "Rouen"] and dry land, he showed it at daybreak.

2 B.B. 20 Jun., vol. 25, p. 21, n. 4: Cumque pervenisset ad secretæ Missæ having exhorted them to trust, the blessed apostle withdrew into one of the cabins, and on his knees before his crucifix he brought up to God the most ardent prayer. Then, returning to the tillac, when the ship was already giving against the benches that border the island, 1 asks the pilot for the lead wire which is used to probe the sea, unfolds it on the waves with this invocation: "Great God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, have mercy on us!" — And at the same time the ship stops and the wind calms.

More than once the storm was put in the service of the saints to punish those who despised their exhortations or prayers. [It is told, for example, of the holy priest Senzio!, in great honor to Spolestus, that the ship which refused to receive him, he and his companions, was forced by a violent torment to return to the ground and take them on board. Thus God seems to be at the command of his faithful servants.

On earth, they also dissipate or conjure the storms. "As a day of summer the time was ready for a furious storm that threatened the wheats and the vines with great damage, one of the sisters having pointed out to Mother Agnes the evil that it was able to do to the poor people, she kneeled down, touched with compassion towards the poor whom she loved so much and animated by a lively faith in divine goodness. And as soon as with these provisions of her heart she had lifted up her eyes in heaven, he began to lighten up, and the cloudy thickness, which caused fear of the storm, melted into a sweet dew."

: Sometimes 1 they cause these atmospheric revolutions in particular purposes that God second with tender care. Among these features, let us recall that of St Scholasticus, narrated with so much charm by St Gregory the Great, from whom the Church borrows the entire legend of the Breviary? on the angelic sister of St Benedict. Scholastic lived in a solitude not far from Mount Cassin, and she came every year to spend one day with her brother, to open her soul to him and talk with him about divine things. In the last visit she made to him, when, in the evening, Saint Benedict wanted to retire with the religious whom he was always accompanied at the place of the appointment located not far from the monastery, his sister, who had probably had some revelation or feeling of his next death, urged him to prolong during that night their pious talks. The founding austere, afraid of the consequences that a similar condescendency might have for monastic discipline, remained inflexible. Then the virgin, leaving her head in her hands, began to pray to the Lord with a great abundance of tears. When it rose up, the sky, until then serene, covered itself with dark clouds, and at the very moment a violent storm burst. The lightnings, the thunder, the rain falling by torrents no longer allowed Benedict to set a foot outside. "God forgive you, my sister," he said, "but what have you done? "Well!" she replied, "I prayed to you, and you would not hear me; I prayed to God and I listened. Now go out, if you can, and give me leave to go up to your monastery."It was necessary to resign and spend the whole night in spiritual conversation. Thus God fulfills the desires of those who love.

V. — A few examples are given where their invocations have drawn the flashes of lightning from the sky. King Ochozias instructed an officer at the head of fifty men to bring Elijah to him, because he had dared to predict him a near death. Arriving with his company at the foot of the mountain where the prophet stood, the officer shouted to him: "Man of God, the king commands you to come down. "If I am a man of God," said Elijah, "let fire come down from heaven and devour you and your soldiers." Ochozias sent a second squad, who did likewise and had the same fate; and a third, whose leader was more wise and happier. When he came before Elijah, he kneeled and begged and said to him, "Man of God, take pity on your servants; you have cast fire from heaven upon the first two officers and the fifty men whom they commanded: let it not be so of us."And the angel of the Lord said to Elijah, "Follow him without fear."The prophet arose, went down with this captain, and stood before the king, saying to him, "This is what the Lord says: Because you have sent to consult Beelzebub, the god of Accaron, as if there was no God in Israel that you could ask, you will not lick yourself from this bed, and your death is certain."

These rigors are rare; much more often the saints bring down from heaven, instead of the burning fire, a beneficent rain. There are many examples: the reader will settle for the following trait taken from the source where we have drawn so many others, the life of Mother Agnes de Langeac. "One day," says his pious and naive biographer*, "our wife of the Son of God was saddening much of what was being made to eat meat because of some infirmities... The superior, having compassion for her pain, said to her laughing and to satisfy her a little: "Sister Agnes, I promise you that if it rains today, you will eat more meat again."This good mother spoke of rain on the occasion of a very great drought that made the poor people understand a year of sterility and famine. Sister Agnes, considering that getting the rain of Our Lord was the way to no longer eat meat and at the same time to provide the poor people with bread to eat, conceived a great desire for this precious water, and together a firm hope that her divine Spouse would give to her prayer. In these movements she said to her prioress: "My mother, please remember what you promise. "Yes," replied the prioress, "I promise you that if it rains today, I will take away the meat from you..." Before the end of the day there fell a great rain that lasted all night. Thus God gave to the desire of this humble soul and fervently gave what the public prayers of the entire provinces could not obtain from his mercy."

The miracle is found in the opposite direction in the life of Saint Philip of Neri. During one of his pilgrimages, a violent storm seemed imminent, and his companions only thought of running away to shelter themselves. The blessed father assures them that they have no fear of rain, and, on his word, most remain with him; others less confident save themselves in all directions. But soon a torrential rain falls on all the runaways, while not a drop reaches those who continued their journey next to the saint.

A benefit of the same order, though in a form

1 J. All those who followed Philip completed the rest of the journey safely, so that not even a single drop of water touched them; but the others who had abandoned him, although some of them were not far off, were drenched by a heavy downpour, [paying the penalty(?)] of their unbelief and stubbornness — and [this type of miracle], which is found just as frequently in the Lives of the Saints, is that of springs produced through the faith and prayers [of the saints]. According to the correct remark of P. Victor of Buck!, one of Bollandus' recent continuators, the Christian custom of putting fountains under the patronage of a saint is a happy hijacking of pagan superstition, which saw tutelary deities there. Therefore, the saints of sources who are more or less involved in the worship that is given to them should not be regularly honoured. However, the narratives which attribute to them the very origin of many fountains are so multiplied that it would be indecent to revoke them all in doubt. Among many names are Pope Saint Clement*, Saint Venant, Saint Julien du Mans, Saint Ethelburge, and venerable Mother Agnes.

VI. — The faith and charity that give rise to the arid soil of fountains are manifested even more often to provide man with the food necessary for his life. The facts of their multiplication are innumerable, and among the saints famous by their alms, 1 is not in whom does this kind of miracle meet. Not to mention the Saviour $ that rassifies the multitude in the desert, once with five loaves and two fishes, another time with seven loaves and a few small fishes, the only nomenclature of the names to which to honor this wonder

1 BB. 24oct.,t. 58, p. 763, n. 2.

2 Brev. Rom. 23 nov.. lect. 5.

3 Brev. Rou. 17 maii, lect. 5.

4 LeruaLp. BB. 27 jan.,t. 3, p. 378, n. 8.

5 CAPGRAVE, BB. 11 oct., t. 53, p. 650, n. 2.

6 Lucor, Life of the Ven. Mother Agnes, 2 P., c. 2,t. 1, p. 322.

7 Licny, Hist. of the life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, ©. 24,n.7,t.1, p. 271: Miraculous multiplication, ordinary fruit of alms. It is perhaps the most common of all wonders. It is not all written; but one can doubt whether, among the people who make great alms, it would be found who did not experience it more than once.

8 Matth. xvi, 9 and 10 would not end, from the prophet Elisha, multiplying oil in the vessels of the poor widow, to the holy priest of Ars? dilating by the blessing of his word the dough in the kneading. Among so many traits we will mention only the following one, collected from an eyewitness, * but whose translation we borrow from the most illustrious biographer of Saint Dominic.

"At the end of a laborious day, Blessed Dominique came to the convent of Saint-Sixte, where he had once transferred the first nuns of his Order, and he gave them a great lecture. "Then he said to them, 'It will be a good thing, my daughters, that we should drink a little.' And calling Brother Roger, he ordered him to go and get wine and a cup. When the brother brought them, Blessed Dominique told him to fill the cup to the edge. Then he blessed her, for the first and after him all the brothers who were present. And there were twenty-five of them, both clerics and laymen, and they drank as much as they pleased, and the cup was not diminished. When they had all been drinking, Blessed Dominique said, "I want my daughters to drink too."And calling Sister Nubia, 1l said to her, "Go in the turn, take the cup, and give drink to all the sisters."She went there with a companion and took the cup full to the edge, not a drop of which spread. The prioress sought the first, then all the sisters as long as they wanted, and the blessed father often repeated to them: "Drink at your ease, my daughters."They were then one hundred and four, who drank all and as much as it pleased them, and nevertheless the cup remained full, as if l'on

1 IV Reg. 1v, 1-7.

* Moxnin. The parish priest of Ars, c. 8,t. 1, p. 237, 9th ed. in-12.

# Sister Cecile's relationship. Cf. Vie de saint Dominique.

* LACORDAIRE. The life of Saint Dominic, c. 12, pp. 450 and 451. would have only poured the wine into it, and when it was brought back, it was full to the edge."

Not only do the saints multiply food, but more than once they transform it. The miracle performed by Our Lord at the wedding of Cana was renewed by his servants. "One day, during the absence of her husband, St.Elisabeth of Hungary! ate only her poor meal of dry bread and water. The duke, having appeared unannounced, wanted, as a sign of friendship, to drink in his glass; he found there, to his surprise, a liqueur which seemed to him to be the best wine that could be drunk in the world. He immediately asked the echanson from where he had taken it, and he replied that the duchess had been served only with water."The acts of Saint Elouan of Ireland ?, too rich perhaps in miracles of all kinds, report that this saint abbot changed the water drawn from the fountain into a milk which had all the flavor of honey and the intoxicating strength of wine. St. Brigide?, famous abbess of Ireland, by a simple sign of the cross, turns water into beer.

VII. — Let us also point out a series of wonders, among so many others that we are obliged to pass in silence, and which attest to the power of holiness on the material world: it is the recomposition in their first unit of fragile objects broken or damaged. An American nigger, carrying a basket full of eggs to the market, was thrown to the ground by the violence of a passerby, and in the fall all the eggs were broken. Great desolation on the part of this poor girl, who had no other resources to live for several days. On these facts, the apostle of the Negroes, Blessed Peter Claver, "of the company of Jesus, came; and, touched with compassion, he said to the slave, "Put your eggs back in your basket, and weep no more." Then, as to help him to gather it, he began to touch them from the end of his staff, and as he touched them, they became as whole as before. The negress thought to be the toy of a dream, but it only made it more ardent to take back one by one its miraculously restored eggs. At the last, she raised her head to thank her benefactor; but he disappeared immediately.

The venerable Agnes de Langeac ?, being still in the paternal house, let down a dish of earth that broke into several rooms. The fear of giving her mother the opportunity to be angry made her use of her Husband by this cry of the heart: "Jesus, help me!" At the moment all the parts of the broken dishes came together, without any sign of breakage. Gregory the Great * recounts a similar trait of Saint Benedict still a child.

VIII. — The fields, the crops, the flowers and the fruits are too close to man to have not been the subject of miraculous interventions by the saints. The facts still take all forms here. These are ravaged or sterile fields that cover themselves with harvests!, cut stems® which, joined to the trunk, immediately resume; flowers f, which hatch in the middle of winter; fruit?

1 P. Fceurtau. La Vie du V. P. Claver, 1. 4, p. 287.

2 Dr. LanraGes, Life of Venus. M. Agnès, 1r° P., c. 17, t. 1, p. 293.

3 Dialog. 1. 2, c. 2. Rising from prayer, he found the vessel beside him so whole that no trace of a fracture could be found in it.

# RIBADENEIRA, Lives of Saints, 17 Nov., S. Aignan, t. 11, p. 318.

5 TuroBaLD. BB. 11 oct., t. 53, p. 683, n. 7.

9 BB. 9 jan.,t. 1, p. 577, n. 7.

7 Da Lawraxors, Life of the Ven. Mother Agnes, 3° P., c. 20,t. 2, D. 467. Picked out of season with stripped branches; trees! that dry out by miracle. It is said of Saint Aldhelm* that, while preaching to the people, his staff, which he had planted on the ground, became a large tree full of sap, rich in branches and foliage.

One day that Saint Louis Bertrand* was on his way to his missions in America, a Spanish who accompanied him began to whisper about having to run the empty stomach. To satisfy him, the charitable missionary sank with him in a thick wood where soon a shrub, the only of its kind in the whole forest, was offered to their eyes, full of beautiful and tasty fruits, and, at the foot, a source of clearness and delicious freshness. After eating and drinking at his own will, the saint's companion wanted to take away these wonderful fruits; but he vigorously opposed them, and, as this man had sneaked a few of them in his besace, he took them away with words of blame and threw them away, his humility did not want to leave any trace of the miracle that his charity had just accomplished.

To punish the peasants who were working on Sundays, St.Leufroi, abbot of the Cross, in Normandy, asked the Lord that this land be struck with sterility, which indeed happened, if one believes his biographer. IX. — A charming book would be written about the wonderful power of God's friends over animals. A few traits will suffice here to make it appear how they are restored to the empire that innocent man had over the beings of creation. Saint Blaise, bishop of Sevaste, and the Seraphic Francis of Assisi ? enjoy in this regard an exceptional celebrity. We completely ignore their many exploits, the details of which would take us too far. Citons d’autres noms.

Saint Anthony of Padua, repelled by the heretics of Rimini, who welcomed his word with contempt, one day went by divine inspiration to preach to fish, to the place where the Marecchia flows into the Adriatic Sea. He called them from God, and in his voice they flocked by many troops near the shore. "It was a beautiful and admirable thing," it is said in the chronic naïves of the Friars Minors, "that at once one saw on the water an almost infinite quantity of fish from the sea and the said river, which gradually resembling one another, according to their species and qualities, sanctifying themselves, of an admirable order, so that the little ones came near the shore, and so the largest and largest, from hand to hand, so that it was very pleasant to see. After they had accommodated themselves well, the saint gave them the following sermon: My brothers the fish, who are creatures of the common Creator like us, are also obliged to praise him, as you have received from him l ́estre and life, and which he has given to you as a dwelling the noble element of fresh or salted water, according to your natural necessity and maintenance. Îl has then given you in icelle given cachots and retreats to guarantee you

1 BB. 3 febr.,t. 4, p. 343 et seq. aguets de vos poursuivants. It has also rained that this element fust transparent, diaphanous and clear, so that you can more easily cognoistre what you must kiss or flee: for which he similarly gave you aislerons and strength to lead you where you would like; but especially luy are you greatly obliged that you alone from all the other fust creatures saved from the universal flood: for which you are creused in number on all others. You were chosen to save the prophet Jonah, and kept three days in your belly, making him alive on the earth. You paid the cens and tribute to Our Lord Jesus Christ and to his first apostle, St Peter. You have also always been his meat during his life and after his death when he resurrected. For these and other reasons I do not remember now, you are completely obliged to thank God. — The fish consented to these words with all the gestures that they feared to show, lowering their tests, stirring their tails, and indicating that they would come near. For which signs, the Holy Father turned to the rebellious and diamond-like hearts of heretics, and said to them in the presence of a great multitude who were gathered there for the coming of such a quantity of fish, who were not moving, waiting for the saint to fire them: God be praised for the fact that the fishes mesmes are willing to hear his word! What other testimony do you want more evident from the word of God? Are you not ashamed that you are less cognizant than the fishes that have no reason? "So when all the inhabitants there were present, without further delay, converted to the foy, and the Catholics confirmed themselves much more. But the fish did not move, and their numbers were always increasing, without in any way confounding their order, until they had all had the blessing of the Holy Father, after which they separated themselves, and went every one of them where he savoured, and St.Antoine, returning to Rimini, converted there the rest of the heretics who were there, who were not found in the miracle."

No matter how strange it seems, this miracle is as unquestionable as touching, and it is enough for a moment of reflection to understand that this delicious sermon was less for the inhabitants of the wave than for the heretics. At this place, a chapel was erected that Daniel Papebroch! visited in 1660, as he himself recalls, by publishing, without any reservation, this part of the Acts of the illustrious converter.

X.—In the end, is this wonder more surprising than that of wild beasts becoming, under the gaze or hand of God's servants, harmless and gentle, like our domestic animals? But who knows that this phenomenon occurs quite frequently in the Acts of the Mariyrs? Among many others, Saints Abdon and Sennen?, St Julien * and his companions, the Samaritan martyrs *, St Asterius and those who died with him for faith.

Martyrs are not the only ones who are impelled by these wonders. Saint Jacques de Tarentaise © sniffs a bear with a yoke in place of the ox he devoured. Saint Humbert, founder of the monastery of Maroiles, also charged a bear with the burden of the horse he ate. Saint Macaire of Alexandria ‘ returns the view to the little hyena, who was repainting the next day and depositing, in witness of his gratitude, a skin of sheep at the feet of the saint. This one accepts the present only after having made the beast promise to no longer touch the sheep of the poor; to which she commits herself by bowing her head. When Saint Louis Bertrand met tigers in his apostolic races, far from receiving any harm, he seemed to be the object of their protection. A deer fed in her solitude St. Ivan ° hermit. A wild deer that had been sent to the Carmelite nuns of Livorno, who, in his fury, broke his bonds and cast fear through the whole monastery, became sweet as a lamb in the presence of Saint Mary Magdalene of Pazzi*.

Saint Martin de Porres is famous for the compassionate kindness he had for the animals and for the friendly attraction he exercised over them. Among several other features, the following one is mentioned. "One day the sacristan brother complained to the blessed that the mice were eating all the ornaments of the church; he wanted to destroy them, but the blessed man prevented them: "No, no," he said, "these are the creatures of God; they are excusable when they have no other thing to eat."Then he took a large basket, which he put in the midst of the sacristy, and then he called them. In his voice, all the mice came out of their holes and came together in the basket. He carried them into a corner of the garden, where he fed them, forbidding them to do no damage, and they were docile to his orders. Even today, in America and Italy, one places his image in the buildings that one wants to protect against the ravages of rodent animals, and they say that they still respect him as during his life."

Saint Francis of Solano!, Franciscan religious, also an apostle and patron of South America, defended the ants who spoiled everything in the infirmary of the monastery of Lima and made it intolerable for them to stay, to molest no sick person from now on, or to touch their food; and his orders were fully respected.

XI. — The inhabitants of the air, like those of the earth and the waters, recognize this empire of holiness. A raven brought half a loaf of bread to Saint Paul every day for sixty years, the first hermit, and when St.Antoine came to visit him, the miraculous giver brought a double ration, that is, a whole loaf.

The birds surrounded Saint Francis of Solano, of which we have already spoken, and perched on his head, his shoulders, his arms as freely as on the branches of the trees, they listened in silence, and in the attitude of deep attention, the exhortation that he made them to celebrate with their songs the goodness of the Creator, mixed their pleasant ramage with the accents of his voice; then each came to take in his hand the crumbs of bread that he served them. When he died, there were many of them, although it was

1 BB. 24 juil., t. 32, p. 882, n. 147 : Infestantes conventus Limensis valetudinarium formicas ita solius voluntatis imperio abegit, ut deinceps nullam infirmis molestiam nec eorum alimentis damnum inferrent.

2 S. JéroME. Vita S. Pauli. Migne, Patr. lat., t. 23, col. 25.

* BB. 24 Jul., vol. 32, p. 882, n. 147, p. 885, n. 169. in the winter season, which made hear in the window of his cell the most suave melodies, as a proof doubtless of the bliss that God had just granted to the saint, their friend.

Swallows once troubled Blessed Francis of Fabriano ‘ while he was at the church to make his prayer. He recommended that they go and not return to the house or to the temple. They flew away immediately and did not return all year round.

All we do is mention the famous miracle by which St James of Nisibe dispersed the army of Sapor II, king of Persia: at his prayer, a swarm of specks arose, which, attached to the trunks of the elephants, to the ears and nostrils of the horses, put all the legions in disarray. We know this charming peculiarity of the legend of Saint Ambrose, still in his cradle, of a swarm of bees that comes to rest on his lips, in omen of his eloquence and holiness. According to Hispanic traditions, ‘ the miracle would have been renewed in favor of St. Isidore of Seville.

What is told of Saint Rose of Lima is as graceful as it is wonderful. His room was filled night and day with mosquitoes that covered the walls, flew into the air, entered and went out like living waves, but never sting it, nor even rest on it. In the first light of dawn, she invited those who had stayed at night in her cell to unite with her to praise God. "Come, my friends," she said to them, "let us bless the almighty God together."And immediately they tried to buzz into a sort of harmonious concert, to turn into a choir; after which they ran to their pasture. In the evening, the same praises began again until the hour of sleep; Rose then gave the signal of silence, and everything remained silent until the morning.

XII. — Holiness exercises its empire and marks its imprint on all nature, for the glory of God and for the good of man; but the privileged subject of its salutary influences is man himself, man in his body and soul.

Who would dare to enumerate the wonders accomplished in favor of man in the circle of his bodily life, either to free him from Satan's rule, to heal him from his infirmities or to remind him of death, or finally to deliver him from some material servitude? It is a well-known fact for anyone who is not entirely foreign to religious history, whom the saints command in masters to the demon and cast him out of the bodies he tyrants; we only need to remember the apostle Saint Paul!, Saint Anthony?, Saint Bernard *, Saint Philip of Neri. Miraculous healings occur and are told everywhere; the very resurrections are so many, that no Christian thinks of questioning them, nor the other miraculous interventions which have as their object the bodily necessities of man. And since it is for the believers that we write, and among them no one ignores these things, why should we insist?

Psychological and moral influences are neither less numerous nor less certain. The radiance of Ja holiness is above all spiritual. From these pure souls which God illuminates, directs and pacifies, escapes a grace of light for the spirit, of flexibility for the will, of calm for passions; it is an admirable emanation that spreads outside I do not know what perfume of God, makes it penetrate into souls and makes them enjoy the indefinable enjoyment. The lightened darkness, the calmed worries, the defeated resistances, the faint temptations, the hatred giving way to charity and egoism to love, the magnificent impulses succeeding with shameful weaknesses: these are the ordinary effects that the trade of saints has on souls. We do not believe it necessary to discuss the details of these invisible and intimate wonders. What we are going to say about the various ways in which they can be realized will draw enough characters.

XIIT. — The saints touch souls only through God; that is why prayer is the normal and ordinary means that they use to reach them. Even when they resort to other expedients, they start regularly or end up with this one, which is the primary source of their power, and which most often suffices alone. Among countless examples are the following, taken in the life of St.Dominic.

"There was in the convent (of St. Sabine) a young novice, a Roman citizen, named Brother James, who, shaken by a violent temptation, had resolved to leave the order after morning, when the doors of the church were opened. Dominique, who had had the revelation of it, brought the novice at the end of the mornings and gently warned him not to yield to the tricks of the enemy, but to persist courageously in the service of Christ. The young man, insensitive to his opinions and prayers, rose up, took the habit off the body and told him that he had absolutely resolved to leave. Le

1 LACORDAIRE. Life of Saint Dominique, c. 12, p. 453, 3rd ed. very merciful Father, touched with compassion, said to him, "My son, wait a little; after that you will do whatever you want." And he began to pray, prostrated on the ground. Then we saw what the merits of Blessed Dominique were with God and how easily he could obtain from him what he desired. In fact, he had not finished his prayer, that the young man fell in tears at his feet, urging him to return his clothes to him that he had left himself in the violence of temptation and promised him never to leave the order. The venerable father therefore gave him the habit, not without warning again to remain firm in the service of Christ; what happened, for this religious lived for a long time in order with edification. D

XIV. — After and with prayer, the word is the sign and as the sacrament that carries miraculous grace in souls. This is how St Thomas de Villeneuve proceeded!, whose exhortations had a powerful virtue to give peace to souls, to calm the most vivid angers and the most inveterate hatreds. He began by speaking to God, and then spoke to men, and as soon as he had opened his mouth, all the resistance fell. 11 So was St. Elizabeth of Portugal?, whose birth inaugurated the role of peacemaker she had to perform among the princes of her house. The holy priests whose word relieved souls, triumphed over their obstinacy or weaknesses, are of all time in the Church of God. The wonder is that often they make peace before receiving any confidence and without making any reference to the punishments they deliver ÿ.

1 BB. 18 sept., t. 45, p. 868, n. 162-164.

? BB. 3 jul.,t. 29, p. 173, n. 5: p- 178, n. 29 ; p. 180, n. 48.

3 FAILLON, Vie de M. Olier, 4e éd., 2° P., 1. 8,n. 7,t. 2, p. 288. XV. — These supernatural graces are sometimes communicated through contact. Saint Philip of Neri! makes faint the most horrible thoughts of despair by a simple touch; it dissipates ? the fears and obsessions of which a young man was assailed, taking his hands and approaching them from his chest; other times, it presses against his heart, and this embrace calm at the moment all the temptations of the flesh and ignites in the soul the flames of holy love. He also sometimes gave freedom of mind to the tempted by giving them bellows, as if to strike the demon and force him to distance himself.

What is said about Saint Mary Magdalene of Pazzi* is even more extraordinary. It was enough to approach and touch the edge of his clothes to be delivered from evil thoughts and impressions.

XVI. — The only aspect of God's servants produces a radiance of grace. Marie-Madeleine de Pazzif, of which we have just spoken, inspired by her presence a feeling "i alive of purity, which her sisters dared to appear

1 GALLONI. BB. 26 maïi, t. 19, p. 481, n. 76 : Sebastianum manu leniter apprehendit. Quo attactu illud confestim factum est, ut æger a summa desperatione atque tristitia ad magnam animi tranquillitatem lætitiamque.… traductus.

2 Jkid., 491, n. 118 : Tum Philippus, manibus ejus pectori admotis.…., bonum habere animum jubet. Remansit alumnus, abeunte Philippo, ingenti lætitia perfusus.

3 J. BARNABEI. BB. 26 maii, t. 19, p. 524, n. 24. Nec defuere, qui ex ejus pectore tantum virtutis hauserunt, ut ab impugnationibus dæmonum extemplo se liberos esse intellexerunt, etc.

4 GazLont. BB. 26 maii, t. 13, p. 479, n. 71. Colaphum infligere consueverat, dicens : Non te cædo, sed diabolum.

5 V. Cepari. BB. 25 maii, t. 19, p. 293, n. 208 : Sunt etiam quæ affirment, quod tentationibus pulsatæ conabantur ei appropinquare et vel extremam vestem leviter contingere, eoque se liberas sentiebant.

6 V. Cepari. BB. Ibid. The nuns learned by experience that they could not remain at ease in her presence if they had contracted even the slightest stain... just as those stained by sin could not stand before her... while on the contrary, for persons afflicted or tempted, the sight of her was the greatest comfort — [that is,] before her, whenever they had contracted the least soiling, and persons in a state of sin could not bear her gaze. On the contrary, those who struggled against evil or suffered from some affliction felt comforted and strengthened as he approached.

His contemporary and his emulation, Saint Catherine of Ricci, also possessed to a high degree the gift of moving souls through the expression of his physiognomy and the softness of his gaze. Here are two lines that we follow textually from the last biographer of this kind saint.

"While his master was at the speaker's conference with the saint, a young man (a true debauchery, who accompanied him) wanted to approach the gate, not enough to hear their conversation, but enough to see Catherine's face distinctly. God's grace seized him immediately, but in the most amazing way for a sinner like him. The spectacle of this sweet physiognomy fills his soul with I do not know what heavenly anointing that seemed to carry all his thoughts, all his affections above the perishable things of this life. It was not an illusion, his heart was now acquired to virtue. Returning to Lucca, he filled the theatre with his former miseries of the spectacle of his piety and works of Christian perfection.

"Another young man, no less dissolute than the previous, having come to visit two of his sisters, nuns, in Saint Vincent, they called Mother Catherine, so that she would address to the visitor, according to her habit, a pious exhortation for the salvation of her soul. Barely she was at the gate of the speaker, that, raising her eyes on the young man's face, and penetrating her eyes, she took great sadness and deep pity.

1 H. Bayonne. Life of Saint Catherine of Ricci, ch. 15, t. 1, p. 267-268. for her soul, in view of the horrors of which she was defiled. Then, after having stayed for a while in this melancholy attitude, she withdrew without saying a single word. The sisters, astonished and all confused with this silence and sudden departure, which looked like an insulting process, waited for a few moments, and finally called her again. She came back, looked at the young man again with sadness, and, a moment later, withdrew, keeping the same silence. More and more astonished and confused, the sisters returned again to the charge, and made her pray for goodness to go down to the parlor. But this time, Mother Catherine made them say that she was suffering. Then the poor sisters, all disconcerted, took to their brother such strange conduct and so contrary to all his habits. The unfortunate young man, no longer holding on to it, discovered to them all the mystery. He confessed to them that from the first moment when his eyes had met the gaze of the saint, he had seen all the crimes, all the abominations of his life, all his ingratitudes toward God pass through as in an accuser mirror, and that at this spectacle, penetrated by the most intense contrition, he had promised the Lord to serve him faithfully every day of his life. His sisters hastened to come and tell the things to Catherine, who assured them that not only would their brother be a faithful Christian, but that, filled with the ardour of the Holy Spirit, he would become an instrument of salvation for many souls."

XVII. — Finally, it is by wonders of all kinds that escape by their variety from a concise and complete enumeration that the saints shake souls and bring them back to God. Suffice it to recall the miraculous way in which St Joseph of Copertino ‘removed from Lutheran heresy the Duke of Brunswick, John Frédéric. This prince, then twenty-five years old, visited the main courses of Europe in 1649. The reputation of the religious saint, spread to Germany, led him to Assisi, with the aim of seeing him and maintaining him out of pure curiosity. So he came to the monastery with two gentlemen attached to his person, one Catholic and the other Protestant, and expressed his desire to speak to Father Joseph and to leave immediately afterwards. He was received with honour, and the next morning he was brought to the door of the chapel where the Blessed said Mass, but without the latter being warned. He soon became in a strange way. At the fraction of the host, he found it so hard, that he made vain efforts to break it. Stunned, he puts it back on the patena, staring at it, and, after a few moments, bursts into sobbing; then, pushing the usual cry of ecstasy, he rises up in the air, his knees folded, retreats without turning away from a distance of five steps, and, after a new cry, approaches the altar, resumes the hostia, and arrives this time, albeit with great difficulty, to divide it.

After the Mass, the prince asked him by his superior for the cause of his tears: "Those whom you sent this morning to my Mass, he replied, have a hard heart, because they do not believe all that the Holy Church believes our mother; that is why the tender Lamb became so hard this morning in my hands, that I could not break him."Villarily struck by the fact and this answer, the Duke showed himself less in a hurry to leave. On that day, he wanted to have an interview with the Holy One, which lasted from dinner until Complies' hour, and the next day, to attend his Mass again. [He witnessed a miracle that decided on his conversion. At the elevation, the cross marked on the hostia appeared to all eyes in a black color, while the celebrant, suddenly delighted in ecstasy with his ordinary cry, slew from the height of a palm above the altar's footstep, and thus remained suspended in the air, with his arms raised, with the holy host, for about half an hour. At this show, the duke began to cry with warm tears, and the Protestant gentleman whom he accompanied shouted in spite: "Unhappy that I came to this place! In my country, I had a quiet mind; here, I am plagued by the furies and scruples of conscience." Joseph, who saw everything in a higher light, assured one of the religious, his confidant, that the Duke would arrive at the true faith: "Let us rejoice," said 1l, "the dew is wounded." Indeed, he strove with the prince until the hour of dinner; and in the evening, after Vepres, when he saw him returning to his room, he ran to meet him, passed his own cord around the body, writing in a great transport of mind: "I gird you for heaven. And now go and worship St Francis, attend Complies, follow the procession devoutly, and do what the religious will do."The prince, docile, humbly executed the whole, declared that he was a Catholic, and entered with his own hand into the registers of the Cordigeres of Saint Francis. Before publicly abjuring heresy, he wanted to go back to his state and settle matters. But the following year he returned to Assisi, as he had promised, and abjured himself on his knees before the Blessed Sacrament, in the presence of the two cardinals Facchinetti and Rappaccioli, in the hands of the Blessed who, by his prayers, had won his soul and given this glory to God. XVIIL — We have completed the exhibition of mystical phenomes. After studying contemplation and its successive degrees as the main purpose and object of mystical life, we have tried to enumerate the countless modes under which this life is still revealed in souls or radiates outside independently of contemplative act, bringing these various forms back to the triple intellectual, emotional and organic point of view.

It is up to the reader to decide whether we have been complete, methodical and faithful. Whatever the appreciation of men, God will be the only one who knows what has cost us effort, combination and patient research this complex and endless exposure. May this labor serve his glory, the utility of souls, and our eternal reward.

After finding the facts, the only thing left to recognize is the causes. The regular cause, we have not stopped making it heard, it is God. But the demon tries to counterfeit the divine work, and the nature itself, especially in man, sometimes presents analogies that remind it.

In our last part, we will discuss the distinctive features of divine action, demonic counterfeits and human analogies. Only then will the title we have given to our work be fully justified, which seems to us to formulate the theological doctrine on matter. TABLE DES MATIÈRES

DEUXIÈME PARTIE

—_——

LES PHÉNOMÈNES MYSTIQUES

DISTINCTS

DE LA CONTEMPLATION

PRÉAMBULE

Pages. These phenomena are grouped under the three intellectual, emotional orders, A 2 VE PR 1 I. MYSTICAL PHENOMENES IN THE INTELLECTUAL ORDER

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J° LES VISIONS

Des Visions en général. CHAPITRE PREMIER | I. Various points of view under which phenomena are grouped

de l'ordre intellectuel... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Il. Visions; their concept. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 HT. Three species: body vision, imaginary vision, intellectual vision . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 IV. These three kinds of visions, far from excluding, are often me ... Jées together. ... : + to 4 sos of the 4th of so 4th 4 bones 6 V. Leur excellence respective. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 VI. The degree of holiness they assume in the subject that they have to + DECO has to RE 10 VII. Conduct to be maintained in visions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Elles constituent de vrais miracles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Différentes Espèces de Visions.

1. La Vision corporelle.

Pages. CHAP. Il I. What it consists of, and if it addresses all the senses . . . .

20 ee Il. Two ways of doing this: through prestigious action on

Organs, or by I appear real and truly out of sight THE 0

an organized or fantastic body . . . . . . . . .

21 IIT. Precautions not to confuse body vision with

vision imaginaire . . . . . . . . . NS Semen

2. La Vision imaginaire. CHAP. III I. What it is, and how it differs from natural imaginations. Il, Sa Courte durée. à: : 44 4 à ea un à 4 à eu a me ed HI. It occurs frequently during sleep time. . . IV. When she arrives on the night before, she doesn't always take

l'aliénation des sens. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . V. It is representative or symbolic. . . . . . . . . . . VI. The elements that contribute to its formation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3. La Vision intellectuelle. CHAP. IV LSANOUOR TS ES SAR RMS MAUR ES HAN CU ER II. How it stands out from the natural conceptions of the entendements sr y Lun as ne a ie D à ll. And visions either bodily or imaginary . . . . . . . IV. It occurs in the states of ecstasy, sleep and sleep. V. Its two elements: the first is the object manifested: the intellectual knowledge of the object presupposes that it is present in mind. VI. Does this encounter take place with the help of mental images,

perception immédiate?. . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . VIT. What is seen is often inexpressible . . . . . . . . . VIII. The second element is supernatural light IX IS6S (LOIS HORS ES uses where in JA LCR rt late A 4th @/ hi X. Sa pleine certitude, et son origine exclusivement divine. . . . XI. Sa nature |

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 + +

The objects of supernatural vision.

4. Dieu. CHAP.. V. I. List of objects of supernatural vision. . . . . . .

67 IT. Body Appearances of God in the Unity of His Nature; Their

formes diverses

67

69

76 V- Imaginary Visions of God One and Trinity Pages VI. Are they personal or impersonal? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 VII. Intellectual Revelation of God, in the unity of its nature and

the variety of its attributes, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . And the very mystery of the Trinity... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 IX. The three dark, luminous and glorious visions of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2. Jésus-Christ. CHAP. VI

I. Apparitions of the Savior before his ascension. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Body Appearances since he ascended to heaven in his

State-de-DiDIPesrce Eh 4 to 6 of 4 GO rer 8 ua of the I. As he was on earth, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Infirme, pauvre et pèlerin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 VI. The Eucharist is the ordinary theatre of these manifestations . . 105 VII. Imaginary visions and the various forms in which the

Sauveur 5'y révèle. . . . . . . . . . ... . . . . . . .. 106 VII. Visions intellectuelles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 IX. Jesus Christ appears personally in the visions intelECHOS ue SR A RE SR AA GE RS In 114 X. Different opinions on the personal character of body appearances. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The reason for the excessive sentiment of the Scholastics on this point. 120 XII. The imaginary visions themselves can be personal. 123

3. La Bienheureuse Vierge Marie. CHAP. VII 1. Most pilgrimages in honor of the Most Holy Virgin

have as legend some appearance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Special demonstrations to almost all founders or reformers of religious orders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Faveurs accordées à quelques saints privilégiés, en particulier

to the Ven. Mother Agnes de Langeac. . . . . . . . . . . . + 131 IV. Formes diverses de ces apparitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 V. Leur caractère personnel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435

4. Les Anges. CHAP. VIII I. Angels manifest themselves in intellectual vision, 138 If. En vision imaginaire, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 If. En vision corporelle . . . . . . ER 441 -IV. Nature and shape of the bodies they possess . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442 V. The circumstances in which they appear. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444 VI. They appear at the altar during the holy sacrifice and distribute the Holy Eucharist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444 VII. They warn God's friends of the hour of death, assist

at their last moments, and carry their souls to heaven. 44% VIII. They visibly fight the enemies of God and his saints,

and assist in battles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

5. Les Bienheureux. Saints rarely appear in intellectual vision. . . . Fréquence des visions imaginaires, . . . . . . . . . . . . . Et des visions corporelles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The causes and circumstances that determine them. IV. Leurs formes diverses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ….. . . Are these apparitions personally accomplished by the VIs. What bodies revere the saints in their apparitions? Has

6. Les Ames du Puryatoire. Visions of Purgatory granted to several holy souls . . . L. Special adaptations made to the living. IT. Once delivered, these souls no longer return, except for IT. bendre:BATETS to be free from a DB ns 4 RE ce at The forms in which they manifest themselves. . . . . . . . IV. Do they appear in person or are they represented by v. ATOS & 4th HR DOES NS SLR MNT E THE They do not inform the bodies in such a way as to make them alive, unless there is a resurrection. A very authentic history of a similar resurrection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7. Les Démons. Glory struggles of the saints against Satan Saint Anthony . . . . . . . RE: Sant Guihlat: 4%. or 4 to aa eh NCA Various circumstances in which demons appear: to frighten and recollect repentant souls, . . . . . . To disconcert the holy resolutions, . . . . . . . . . . . To prevent healthy influences, institutions and reforms; to inspire, without their knowledge and against their will, the horror of sin; finally to disturb the soul in the hour of death. Where do they take the bodies they possess? . . . more likely to mislead . . . . more abject. vacarm . Bu Ts

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8. Les Damnés. CHAP. XII JII. Appearances of the damned to the living. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IV. The forms to which they can be recognized.

9. Les Vivants. CHAP. XII

quitte jamais Lima. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..

sa chambre, pendant qu'il apparaît à un malade.

that she is seen dead in her monastery . . . XV. Psychic condition during bilocations . . . XVI. Explanation of the phenomenon: angelic substitution, XVII. Body duplication and duplication ee XVIII. L'âme séparée du corps . . — XIX. Reality of the double presence and in Body and € in soul.

10. Les Créatures non raisonnables. CHAP. XIV If. Germination and IS ABS: Of mother Se A IV. Images and statues . . V. The holy relics. . . . k to VI. The sun of Anna-Maria Taigi, sr. of VII. The bells that ring themselves at VIIT. The candles and lamps miraculously lit J1o THE SURNATURAL PAROLES CHAP. XV Pages. I. The supernatural words differ from the visions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296 IL. It is not required that they be understood by the person who

ÉNLONdE se Se de Net ann are Die ee 298 III. Like visions, the words are of three orders: atrial, imaginary, intellectual. Perfection relative de ces

LOIS ESDÉCES. à 4 LL en 4 ue ee me 4 a . . 298 IV. The earful words, from whom they come, and their mode

4 ns darbie ED AE due GE of 300 V. Imaginary words, their various ways of occurrence, their distinction from supernatural vocal lyrics and

purely natural inner words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . They make themselves heard during sleep, in the night before, with

or Without suspension of senses; never at the highest point of

lextasées says to Ge NÉ RER AUS 306 VIL, Their CUS Su 4 large good SR an Rent 308 VIII. Concepts of intellectual words, and the marks that distinguish them from similar visions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The secret of their realization in the spirit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The classification made by Saint John of the Cross of Words

mystiques en successives, formelles et substantielles . . . . 311 XI. The successive words both natural and supernatural. . . . 314 XII. The illusions to which they expose and the signs that distinguish the true . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The formal words, their extension. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Substantial words; they embrace the three genres,

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322

III LES RÉVÉLATIONS CHAP. XVI I. Notion et classification. . . . . . . . . . . nr Ne Se de 325 IT. The revelations are made by vision, by words or by instinct. 396 IT. They are public or private: the mystic only deals with

of the second species. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326 IV. Existence of special revelations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327 V. Scope of the approvals that the Church sometimes gives them . . . 329 VI. Do these revelations impose faith on those who receive them,

and others who come to know them? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Danger of private revelations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hence he follows that we must neither desire nor ask for these kinds of

DETANCULSL Sun LAS M'idian die or D Me 334 IX. Even less should it be made the rule of its conduct in

outside the control of the authority. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . «+ 336 X. Prophecy: its two elements: vision and expression . . 339 XI. The inner illumination it assumes and its degrees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Prophecy can be fulfilled with or without ecstasy, but always with calm and dignity Pages. XII. Value of the prophecy taken in itself... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Difficulties in hearing it: memorable examples and causes

de ces fausses interprétations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347 XV. The discernment of spirits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Its forms and degrees. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354 XVII. The revelations can absolutely have as organs the

sinners and imperfect ones; in general they are sharing

desta:Sdintete.s.é = 5 0 528 Roues Date se ins 357 XVIII. These donations are not permanent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

IVo INFUSED INTELLECTUAL APTITUDES

49 La Science. CHAP. XVII I. Espèces différentes et degrés divers de ces aptitudes. . . . . . 361 Il. Miraculous introduction to the first elements of instruction. 362 II. Transitional aid for special needs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Science infuses in Adam and Solomon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Deux autres exemples de science universelle : Grégoire Lopez et

ABIedd Mae: 2 SL Ar Rene are 367 VI. Partial infusions: philosophy and the natural sciences. . 373 VAL: Fa médecins. 22 Sum DOES THE WATER IN RANCE € 374 VIII. Supernatural knowledge, mainly theology

HV HQUO 2 40e ee re mime rte AU 375 IX. Dogmatic and moral theology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378 X. Science of the Divine Scriptures granted to a large number of

saintes femmes, . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . 379 XI. To several illustrious doctors: Saint Gregory the Great, Rupert, Saint Thomas of Aquinas... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

20 Les Arts. CHAP. XVIII

I. Reflection of supernatural life on organs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Poetry in the Bible, 388 He. And in the annals of holiness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389 IV. Music: the inspirations it receives from religion and religion

LÉ 0 CT PR 392 V. The inspired songs spoken of in Scripture, and the melodies of the SAINS: 5 + 8 4 this to 8 ad does pa 393 VI. Painting and what it owes to mysticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397 VII. Sculpture and Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 VIII. The Sacred Eloquence, with its various supernatural forms. . . 401 He. THE MYSTICAL PHENOMENS OF THE AFFECTIVE ORDER

ne ms

I DE L'EXTASE

Notion et formes diverses. CHAP. XIX Pages. I. Distribution des matières . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . « + 407 IT. L'extase; sa notion. . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408 HIT. The element that characterizes it on the side of the soul: the supernatural elevation and its three degrees. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410 IV. The part of the body: the suspension of the senses and its various forms. 411 V. L'extase proprement dite. Does she go so far as to separate the soul from the

corps? Doctors and facts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412 VI. Natural fainting, which should not be confused with

FORIASO SE US DM RS MM du se à DS due 417 VIT. The ecstatic fainting and the means to recognize it, 419 VII. The two general forms: ecstasy and delight. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The existence of ecstasy, and the conditions of virtue it requires

in the Sujets » ae Lt Smart" . + + + 422

Causes et Effets. CHAP. XX I. In the soul, ecstasy is born of love. . . . . . . . . . . . . 425 IT. The two principles of ecstatic attraction, goodness and

DÉAULÉ SE ne Din As ae notant ie à a À . + 427 UT. Its forms from the point of view of the cause which determines it in

the soul: admirative ecstasy, love, joyous, painful. 428 IV. Causes in the body. Is the alienation of senses a consequence of inner absorption, or a special gift? . . 430 V. Effects of ecstasy in the soul: freedom and merit during

PEXTASE re As A RTS D D Six RE 431 VI LHOTOISMÉ), LL ss LEE Led eRA Ent Are 436 VII. L'impatience de mourir. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437 VII. Effects on the body: organic impassability, expression of

la physionomie, J'agilité . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 438

Le Temps. CHAP. XXI I. Ecstasy occurs during sleep or the night before . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . It is, in general, irresistible, unforeseen, sudden, transioOIPO LR ass ns SM re sie a Me LU 447 UE Its duration. How is the common doctrine on the

short duration of rapture with the long ecstasy of the

SAINE EINE UE SU UAUR de Can Ed has me 449 IV. The end of ecstasy by natural awakening. The phases of this rePR 452 Pages VT. Conditions du rappel. . . . . . . " . . . . . .. Seams 497 VIL The conduct to be held towards the at in the long ravis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

ISLAND JUBILATION AND MYSTICAL EMBRAMENTS CHAP. XXII

I. Jubilee has its principle in love, . . . , ,°. . . . . . 464 II. It translates into the drunkenness that transports. . . . . 0." + + 464 III. She exhales herself by shouting, singing, extraorOIRAITOS SU SN Ne a Mn an 466 IV. Les embrasements. Simple internal heat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jubilation et embrasements de saint Philippe de Néri. . . . . 478 VIIL. Explication de l'incandescence mystique . . . . . . . . . . . 476

III° LES SOUFFRANCES MYSTIQUES

The gift of tears and mystical diseases. CHAP. XXIII

1. The Law of Christianity on Reparation by the Cross. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Various forms of mystical suffering . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 IT. Le don des larmes. Différentes sortes de larmes, . . , . . . . 480 IV. Sources des larmes infuses , . . . . . M An Ci cd. , + 481 V. Les maladies mystiques. Leurs causes . . . . . . . , . . . . 485 VI. The three signs to which they are recognized:

of which they occur, their dun

EHELS.. to Le da pa ++ to ; , + + 486 VIT. Quelques traits. … + 2 2 5-8 4 nie ea us , . «+ 487 VIIL. Admirable painting in St. Lidwine., . . . . . . . . . . 498

La Stigmatisation.

4. Ses formes diverses. CHAP. XXIV

J. What stigma is . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500 II. Its various forms: it is apparent or invisible, . . . . . . 501 IT. Permanente ou périodique et transitoire, . . , . . . . . . . 503 IV. Simultanée ou successive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505 V. The stigma of the hands and feet, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The wound on the side... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . La couronne d'épines. . . . . . . . . . Dole Pr VIII. Blood agony and sweat... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514 EX LA HAgeHAUOR:.E 5 to Sue to 4 to Gen Dar D 1st 6 to 516 X. Successive reproduction of the other scenes of the Passion. . . . . 516 XI. Plastic formations on the flesh, Dh Rod 523 XIL. Inlays and interior inscriptions: FRS 524

He 30 . . 9..Causes and Subjects. CHAP. XXV | Pages. I. Interprétation. rationaliste . . . . . . . . . . . .. ES 531 IL. It is free and disagrees with the facts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

l'explication du rationalisme. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538 IV. The two most famous stigmatized: Saint Francis of Assisi

et sainte Catherine. de Sienne. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539 V. Subjects of stigma: the perfection it requires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nombre des stigmatisés. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 550 III. MYSTICAL PHENOMENES RELATING TO THE BODY

The Abstinences and the Watch. CHAP. XXVI I. Admirable abstinences of the saints . . . . . . . . . you DS 553 I. The Eucharist is their place of bodily food. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The conditions and signs of miraculous abstinence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Freedom from the law of sleep among contemplatives. 559 V. Caractère surnaturel de ces insomnies . . . . . . . . . . . . 561

—— L'Odeur mystique. CHAP. XXVII I. Frequency of this prodigy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 562 IT. The smell sometimes exhales from diseased bodies and necks. from wounds to 4 4 had died to 4 tears 564 II. It is usual in stigma and mystical ring. . . . 564 _IV. It often breaks out at the death of God's servants and declares itself, even after years and years in their relics does SR ED NU PUR A 566 V. It makes itself felt at great distances and also

la simple pensée. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 568 VI. Ces odeurs se rapprochent rarement de senteurs connues. . . . 569 VII. The explanation of these phenomena is only possible by referring them to the miracle, especially if we consider the circumstances which

les accompagnent... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 572 VIII. Signification mystique. . : : . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575

. FRERERA CHAP: XXVIII I. These phenomena are rare in the M of the saints; they are reported

cependant plusieurs . . . . . . : . . . . . . . . . . .. 677 II. There are many of them after death. Écoulements sous forme de

milk, water, sweat, blood, manna, balm. . . . . 6580 IT. Usually these liqueurs have the appearance of fragrant oil and

médicinale. . . . .... . .. . . . . . . . . . . . .. 583 (IV. The odoriferous and salutary oil that comes from the tomb of Saint

Nicolas de Myre Pages. V. Raison et sens mystique de ces écoulements . . . . . . . . . 587 VI. Surnaturel de ces faits : précautions à prendre. . . . . . . .. 588 VII. The miracle is even more obvious, if the body is preserved in

perfect integrity and flexibility. . . . . MR si. 590

Le Rayonnement. CHAP. XXIX I. The radiation of the body can occur in contemplation and out of contemplation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

hands, feet, eyes, mouth, chest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Instead of emanating from the body, the radiation can be extrinsicCHUE. 5 dd near die god Dr Ge to 598 IV. Frequency of these demonstrations at the death of the servants of

God, and also at their birth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The light is usually white; but sometimes it has

d'autres nuances. . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 600 VI. Explication rationnelle de ces prodiges. . . . . . . . . . .. 602

La Transformation des sens. CHAP. XXX I. The Wonders of Mystical Voice on Speech and Song, 604 TO A PES 608 WHO RSS RSR Len ee dd Aer doubt 611 IV: L'od0fAte) ex ro à 2 ua Ba & ue 4 LU Deere 612 V: Lé-cout et le tdtiz sn es si mr mm teste a 615 VI. Tous ces prodiges en Catherine Emmerich . . . . . . . . . . 616 Vil. Explanation of these facts by the nature of the human compound and

Dar lé muracle.sé ts Sri RS Dee nié A AT AUS 618

Renovation of the heart. CHAP. XXXI L. Influence of mystical life on the heart. . . . . . . . . . . 620 IT. Renovation of the heart in the Ven. Mechtilde, sainte Gertrude,

Saint Mary - Madeleine de Pazzi, B.C. Jeanne de Valois,

sainte Catherine de Ricci. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 621 III. Physical extraction from the heart in the B. Osanne de Mantoue, la

B. Catherine de Racconigi, the B. Marguerite-Marie Alacoque,

Mother Agnès de Langeac. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The gift Our Lord makes of his heart to Saint Lutgarde,

to Saint Catherine of Siena, to Saint Michael of Saints. . . 629 V. Interprétation du prodige. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 633

Affranchissement des influences extérieures. CHAP. XXXII I. Dispense from the law of gravity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Suspension, ascension, vol extatique . . . . . . . . . . . . 639 III. Supernatural agility out of ecstasy. Air Races of Holy 100 TABLE OF CONTENTS IV. Energy of this ascental attraction. . . . . . . . . . . . . V. Marche sur les eaux . . . . . . . , . . HIER SNA es VI. Explication de ces phénomènes... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VII. Easy to penetrate solid bodies. . . . . . , . . . . . . . VIN. Immovability, invulnerability, body unalterability . . . EX: Non-combustibility in its use at 44 2

quer 2 0 0 6 + eo

Empire over the surrounding beings.

XXXIII

God renders to the saints the empire of innocent man on the

ETAMMONE AND THE DIE DE DUN DRE CNE

660

Their miraculous interventions on inanimate nature:

masses énormes déplacées. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. IX. Miraculous Influences on Animals: Saint's sermon

Antoine de Padua aux poissons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

X. Empire over wild beasts and others, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XI. On birds and insects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XII. The ordinary theatre of supernatural interventions of holiness is man in his body and soul . . . . XIII. The miraculous effects on the crowns are exercised by prayer, XIV a: Droles: Se ge NM dre ee SN are ne Eten XV: Hé CONLELZ 2 his LUS AM SLR da XVI. Le simple aspect, . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XVII. Or by various other wonders. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XVII. Conclusion of the exposition of mystical phenomena. . . . . . Digitized by Google hs Lo

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA wils v.2 183 R35 Ribet, M. J. su Mn

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