Page:Lifeofsaintcatha.djvu/138

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

"Promise me that you will grant it." And while her hand was extended, she appeared to feel a sharp pain which obliged her to exclaim, with a sigh: Praise be to our Lord Jesus Christ ! She was accustomed to this aspiration in her most poignant sufferings. Then her Confessor went to see her, and required her to narrate the whole vision. She was obliged to obey, and after telling what we have related above, she added: "When I implored your eternal salvation with earnestness, God promised it to me, but I desired to retain a testimony of it, and I said to him: "Lord, grant me a token of what thou wilt do," and he replied: "Reach here with your hand." I extended my hand; he took a nail, and putting the point in the middle of my hand, he pressed on it with such power, that it seemed to me that my hand was transpierced; I felt just such a pain, as it seems to me, would be felt, if a nail had been driven with a hammer. Hence, thank God, I now have his holy stigma in my right hand; no one sees it, but I feel it very sensibly and suffer from it continually,"

In continuation of the same subject, I will here relate what occurred a long time after, at Pisa, and in my presence. When she came to this place I, with certain other persons, accompanied her. She received hospitality at the house of an inhabitant, near the little Church of St. Christina. On Sunday I celebrated Mass there, and gave her the holy Communion. She remained afterwards a long time in ecstacy, according to her custom; her soul which sighed after her Creator, separated itself, as much as it could, from the body. We waited until she had resumed her senses, in order to receive some spiritual consolations, when on a sudden we saw her body that was prostrate on the ground, rise a little, kneel,