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Often, while yet very young, she used to be awakened out of her sleep by bands of suffering souls, and to follow them on cold winter's nights with bare feet, the whole length of the Way of the Cross to Coesfeld, though the ground was covered with snow.
She was in her sixteenth year, when one day, whilst at work in the fields with her parents and sisters, she heard the bell ringing at the Convent of the Sisters of the Annunciation, at Coesfeld. This sound so inflamed her secret desire to become a nun, and had so great an effect upon her, that she fainted away, and remained ill and weak for a long time after.
The following is the account she herself has given of the circumstances under which so mysterious a favour was bestowed upon her: 'About four years previous to my admittance into the convent, consequently in 1798, it happened that I was in the Jesuits' Church at Coesfeld, at about twelve o'clock in the day, kneeling before a crucifix and absorbed in meditation, when all on a sudden I felt a strong but pleasant heat in my head, and I saw my Divine Spouse, under the form of a young man clothed with light, come towards me from the altar, where the Blessed Sacrament was preserved in the tabernacle.
Lidwina began her ecstatic journey by following her good angel to the chapel of the Blessed Virgin before Schiedam; Anne Catherine began hers by following her angel guardian either to the chapel which was near her dwelling, or else to the Way of the Cross of Coesfeld.
Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich2 was born at Flamske, a village situated about a mile and a half from Coesfeld, in the bishopric of Munster, on the 8th of September 1774, and was baptised in the church of St. James at Coesfeld. Her parents, Bernard Emmerich and Anne Hiller, were poor peasants, but distinguished for their piety and virtue.
Then her mother said: 'Your desire to leave your father and myself, and enter a convent, gives us much pain; but you are still my beloved child, and when I look at your vacant seat at home, and reflect that you have given away all your savings, so as to be now in want, my heart is filled with sorrow, and I have now brought you enough to keep you for some time. Anne Catherine replied: 'Yes, dear mother, it is true that I have nothing at all left, because it was the holy will of God that others should be assisted by me; and since I have given all to him, he will now take care of me, and bestow his divine assistance upon us all. She remained some years at Coesfeld, employed in labour, good works, and prayer, being always guided by the same inward inspirations.
When in her eighteenth year she was apprenticed at Coesfeld to a dressmaker, with whom she passed two years, and then returned to her parents. She asked to be received at the Convents of the Augustinians at Borken, of the Trappists at Darfeld, and of the Poor Clares at Munster; but her poverty, and that of these convents, always presented an insuperable obstacle to her being received.
Whilst there she went once to kneel and pray for some hours before the miraculous Cross of the Church of St. Lambert, at Coesfeld. She besought the Almighty to bestow the gifts of peace and unity upon her convent, offered him the Passion of Jesus Christ for that intention, and implored him to allow her to feel a portion of the sufferings which were endured by her Divine Spouse on the Cross.
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