Anne Catherine Emmerich

The visions of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich

1. A description of the visions

Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich. The Life of Jesus Christ and Biblical Revelations: From the Visions of the Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich as Recorded in the Journals of Clemens Brentano. Edited by Carl E. Schmöger. Translated by an American nun. Vol. 1. Retypeset, Rockford, Ill.: TAN, 1986.

(p. 1) Of the visions of her childhood Sister Emmerich tells us: “When in my sixth year I reflected on the first article of the Apostles’ Creed, ‘I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth,’ there passed before my soul innumerable pictures of the creation of Heaven and earth. I saw the Fall of the angels, the creation of the earth and Paradise, that of Adam and Eve, and the Fall of man. I thought everyone saw this as we do other things around us, and I spoke of it freely to my parents, brothers, sisters, and playmates. But they laughed at me. They asked me whether I had a book containing all these things, and so I began to keep silence concerning them. I thought, though without much reflection, that perhaps it was not proper to speak on such subjects.

I had these visions by night and by day, in the fields, in the house, sitting or walking, and when engaged in all kinds of employments. One day at school, I happened to speak of the Resurrection, describing it differently from what we had been taught. I felt certain that everyone knew it just as I did. I did not dream that there was anything peculiar in my account of it. But the children gazed at me in wonder and laughed, while the master reproved me gravely, and warned me not to indulge such imaginations. My visions continued, but I kept them to myself. I was like a (p. 2) child looking at a picture book, explaining the pictures in its own way, but not thinking much about their meaning. They represented the saints or scenes from Sacred History, sometimes in one way, sometimes in another. They produced no change in my faith, they were merely my picture book. I gazed upon them quietly and always with the good thought: All to the greater glory of God! In spiritual things, I have never put faith in anything but what God the Lord has revealed to the Catholic Church for our belief, whether it be written or not. I have never believed so firmly what I have seen in vision. I looked upon the latter as I devoutly regard, here and there, the various Cribs at Christmas. I feel no annoyance at their difference in style, for in each I adore the same dear little Infant Jesus."

(p. XII) The visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich provide a wealth of information not found in the Bible. In these times of disbelief, when the Sacred Scriptures are so often regarded as symbolical narratives with little historical value, the visions of this privileged soul providentially confirm the Christian’s faith in the rock-solid reality of the life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, of His words, His deeds, and His miracles.

In addition, Sister Emmerich’s visions show how our sacred religious heritage goes back in an unbroken line all the way to the time of Adam, to the very beginning of the world – a line which no other religion but the Roman Catholic can claim. These revelations show how the Roman Catholic Church faithfully follows the teachings, and administers the Sacraments, of Jesus Christ Himself – (p. XIII) which teachings and Sacraments are in turn the perfect fulfillment of the Old Testament religion.

(p. XIX) [...] For some periods of Our Lord’s life it [i.e. The Life of Christ] consists of an almost day-by-day description of the three years of His Public Ministry, combined with a life of Mary, events from the Old Testament and a history of the establishment of the Church by the Apostles. [...]

Besides dealing with the most profound mysteries of Judaism and Christianity, the narrative synchronizes the major events of the Gospels with the feasts, fasts and Sabbaths of the ancient Jewish calendar and liturgy. It includes biographies of the ancestors and relatives of the Holy Family, John the Baptist, the Apostles and minor disciples, Mary Magdalen, Judas and Lazarus – to mention only a few – as well as a veritable encyclopedia of information regarding the culture, customs, political and religious sects, architecture, geography, agriculture, even the weather conditions of first-century Palestine. Twenty major journeys of Christ are recorded in detailed (p. XX) itineraria of the cities and towns of Galilee, Samaria, Judea, Gilead and (in the Third Year) Cyprus, Chaldea and Egypt. [...]

Among those who visited her [i.e. Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich] was one of the leading literary figures of the day in Germany, the poet, Clemens (p. XXI) Brentano. He was then at the height of a brilliant and worldly career as the author of various published works. His meeting with Sister Emmerich had a profound and lasting influence on his life. He immediately grasped the importance of keeping a written record of her experiences, abandoned all other projects and, having obtained the permission of her spiritual director, settled himself in Dülmen. For the next five years, from the autumn of 1818 until the day of her death, February 9, 1824, he dedicated himself to the more or less continual daily task of recording her life and visions. The notes preserved in his Journals form one of the most extensive records of its kind ever kept [...].

The purpose (p. XXII) of private revelations, as defined by St. Thomas, is not to prove or to add anything to the truth of Christian doctrine, but to offer men of a certain period and because of the circumstances of that period a direction for human action.

In this our 20th Century, their principal value lies, it would seem, in their ability to focus our attention on the myriad of explicit details which Anne Catherine witnessed in vision – details of the various episodes and events of Christ’s life which confirm and expand upon what we are given in the Gospels and which reveal many, many additional points which bear directly upon the establishment of our Religion and its many saintly practices, devotions, sacramentals, and liturgical events. The net effect of reading about these events, as the visionary was privileged to see them, is the confirming of our faith in what the Church teaches, as well as in her various practices and devotions. [...]

(p. XXIII) The narration was attended by many difficulties. There were interruptions, omissions, repetitions and an almost infinite complexity in the subject matter itself. Sister Emmerich’s visions of the public life of Christ did not begin at the beginning of the First Year, but at a point not clearly defined towards the end of the Third. There were (p. XXIV) several gaps, one lasting six months, only partially restored later from memory or repeated on dates out of sequence with the biblical period they referred to. In some cases the order was not determined by the historical chronology but by the liturgical seasons of the Church, to which Sister Emmerich’s whole life was attuned in a mysterious manner. Many visions of the Third Year were repeated annually during the long period of Septuagesima, thus occurring and recurring on varying dates in the Christian calendar. Each year during Passiontide, Advent and Lent, on the feast days of saints, or in relation to her ceaseless mystical labors of reparation, she saw and related other scenes of a liturgical or symbolical sort interwoven with those of the life of the Saviour.

It is not difficult to understand, therefore, that for some eighteen years following Sister Emmerich’s death, until the day of his own, the Pilgrim (the familiar name by which she called Brentano) engaged in repeated and never wholly successful attempts to organize the immense mass of writing he had preserved. Most of the material was never published by him. During his lifetime he brought out only The Bitter Passion (also known as The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ), based largely on a special series of visions witnessed during Lent, 1823. At the time of his death he had nearly completed The Life of Mary (also known as The Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary), a work compiled from various visions, mainly of liturgical origin, which was put into final form and posthumously published by his relatives. The longest part of his record, the day-by-day cycle of the three years of the public life of Christ, was beyond his power to compose and he referred to it, significantly, as his “lockjaw.” It is known that he remained dissatisfied with the final arrangement. As his life drew to a close he sought, in vain, to find someone qualified to complete the project, to whom he could impart the full knowledge of the problems as he alone knew (p. XXV) them. After his death manuscripts passed into other hands and in 1858/60 the three-volume Life of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was published for the first time at Regensburg by the Very Rev. Carl Erhard Schmöger, C.Ss.R., in an edition based on the Journals as Brentano had left them. This edition has remained the standard and the source for the many subsequent editions and translations, including the present English version. [...]

(p. XXVII) The remarkable visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich light up innumerable aspects of the Faith, bringing to life many things which the reader may not have sufficiently appreciated. Our Lord’s manner of healing and exorcising, His teaching on the connection between sin and physical maladies, His teaching on marriage and especially the role of the wife, Our Lord’s attitude toward material possessions and the poor, the religious status of pagans and the way in which Our Lord presented His message to them – these are a few of the fascinating topics covered in these pages.

But beyond individual insights into one or another aspect of the Christian traditions, there are two central insights to be gained from these four books – insights of paramount significance regarding the very definition of the Christian religion. These are: 1) The Church which Jesus Christ founded was the Catholic Church, a Church identical in substance and even in detail with the Catholic Church of today; 2) The Church which Our Lord Jesus Christ founded was the perfect fulfillment of the religion of the Old Testament, going back all the way to the time of Adam – thus the Catholic religion is the one true religion established and approved by Almighty God from the very beginning of the world.

Anne Catherine Emmerich saw and heard Our Lord teaching doctrines which are the same as those taught by the Catholic Church of today. As she sets forth these doctrines, the Catholic of today will have no difficulty in recognizing as Catholic Christ’s words on penance, mar- (p. XXVIII) riage, prayer, mercy, the Bread of Life, humility, love of the poor, gratitude to God, faith, avoiding the occasions of sin, amendment of life, Baptism, renunciation of all earthly things to follow Christ, and the punishment in store for those who do not accept Him and His teachings.

Moreover, Sister Emmerich clearly describes Our Lord as establishing a sacrificing priesthood, bishops, Sacraments, blessings, sacramentals (e.g., holy water, holy oils), the power of exorcism, the papacy, the Blessed Sacrament, and even the reservation of the Blessed Sacrament upon the altar. She saw Our Lord bringing His Apostles to His Mother to be adopted as her spiritual children, finally entrusting all Christians to her as He hung on the cross; and she saw Him celebrating the first Mass, on the evening of the Last Supper – with ceremonies strikingly similar to those of Holy Mass of today, including the ablution of the priest’s thumb and forefinger after the Consecration, and the placing of a particle of the Sacred Host into the chalice. The reader is also struck by the concrete way in which Our Lord perpetuated His Church; for this purpose He ordained and commissioned the Apostles to preach His words and administer His Sacraments, this commission to begin with the descent of the Holy Ghost on Pentecost. All these elements were present in the Church from the very beginning. They were not added onto Christ’s message by human invention at a later date; they came from Our Lord Himself. [...]

(p. XXIX) A second great insight to be gathered from these revelations is that while Our Lord was indeed the Founder of a new religion, this new religion was itself the accomplishment of the old religion, of the holy expectations of the Chosen People, the Patriarchs and Prophets, back through Noah all the way to the time of Adam who was the first human being to receive an intimation of God’s Promised Redeemer (Gen. 3:15). Our Lord Himself was the fulfillment of God’s Promise, and He left a Church, His Mystical Body, to continue that blessed fulfillment until the end of the world. [...]

(p. XXXII) As Anne Catherine Emmerich describes the words and deeds of Our Lord during His public ministry, culminating with the events of Holy Week and Pentecost, one sees that He is clearly conscious of accomplishing the Mysteries of Salvation for which Patriarchs and Prophets had longed during many ages. He speaks of Abraham, of the Promise, the manna in the desert, the destroying angel, and of the prophecy of Malachias regarding the “clean oblation.” Our Lord even visited the tomb of Abraham, the first Patriarch, the man with whom God had made the Old Covenant.

By God’s Providence there are numerous “coincidences” of time and place, recorded in the visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich, which link the Old Testament events to their fulfillment in the deeds of Jesus Christ. [...] As one reads Anne Catherine Emmerich’s accounts of the events of our salvation, the conviction grows that no aspect was accidental. God’s eternal plan was perfect in every detail, and Our Lord carried out to the letter those things which had been foretold of Him.

Deo Gratias.

2. The approval by the Roman Catholic Church

Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich. The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ: From the Meditations of Anne Catherine Emmerich. With a preface by Edmond de Cazalès. London: Burns & Oates, 1928. Repr., Rockford, Ill.: TAN, 1983.

(p. IV) Nihil obstat: George D. Smith, D.D., Censor Deputatus.

Imprimatur: Edmund Canon Surmont, Vicar-General, Westminster, 21 May 1928.

Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich. Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary: From the Visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich. Translated by Michael Palairet. With supplementary notes by Sebastian Bullough. London: Burns & Oates, 1954. Repr., Rockford, Ill.: TAN, 1970.

(p. IV) Nihil obstat: Ricardus Roche, S.T.D., Censor Deputatus.

Imprimatur: Humphrey Bright, Titular Bishop of Soli, Auxiliary Bishop of Birmingham, Birmingham, 2 June 1954.

Vols. 1-4 (p. IV) Nihil obstat: Em. De Jaegher, Censor Deputatus, Bruges, 14 February 1914.

Imprimatur: Arthur Edmond Charles De Schrevel, Vicar-General, Bruges, 14 February 1914.

Vols. 1-4 (p. XI) The publishers, in reprinting these volumes, do so in complete and willing conformity to the decrees of Pope (p. XII) Urban VIII respecting private revelations, persons not as yet canonized, and the prudence with which all alleged supernatural phenomena not attested to by the Church must properly be regarded. The final decision in all such matters rests with the See of Rome, to which the publishers humbly submit.

Like other private revelations, Sister Emmerich’s accounts of the life of Our Lord, His Blessed Mother, and other biblical personages should be treated with that respect and that degree of faith which they seem to merit when compared with the holy dogmas of our faith as derived from Scripture and Tradition, as well as when compared with our knowledge of history, geography, and science. These revelations are not, of course, guaranteed free from all error, as are the Sacred Scriptures. The Imprimatur which these books bear simply means they have been judged by ecclesiastical authority to be free of error in matters of faith and morals. Nevertheless, these revelations show a remarkable harmony with what is known about the history, geography, and customs of the ancient world.