while her face resembled that of a
man about to expire under torture, and a bloody sweat often trickled
over her chest and shoulders. She generally perspired so profusely that
her bed and clothes were saturated. Her sufferings from thirst were
likewise fearful, and she might truly be compared to a person perishing
in a desert from the want of water. Generally speaking, her mouth was
so parched in the morning, and her tongue so contracted and dried up,
that she could not speak, but was obliged by signs and inarticulate
sounds to beg for relief. Her constant state of fever was probably
brought on by the great pains she endured, added to which she likewise
often took upon herself the illnesses and temporal calamities merited
by others. It was always necessary for her to rest for a time before
relating the different scenes of the Passion, nor was it always that
she could speak of what she had seen, and she was even often obliged to
discontinue her narrations for the day. She was in this state of
suffering on Saturday the 8th of March, and with the greatest
difficulty and suffering described the scourging of our Lord which she
had seen in the vision of the previous night, and which appeared to be
present to her mind during the greatest part of the following day.
Towards evening, however, a change took place, and there was an
interruption in the course of meditations on the Passion which had
latterly followed one another so regularly. We will describe this
interruption, in order, in the first place, to give our readers a more
full comprehension of the interior life of this most extraordinary
person; and, in the second, to enable them to pause for a time to rest
their minds, as I well know that meditations on the Passion of our Lord
exhaust the weak, even when they remember that it was for their
salvation that he suffered and died.

The life of Sister Emmerich, both as regarded her spiritual and
intellectual existence, invariably harmonised with the spirit of the
Church at different seasons of the year. It harmonised even more
strongly than man's natural life does with season, or with the hours of
the day, and this caused her to be (if we may thus express ourselves) a
realisation of the existence and of the various intentions of the
Church. Her union with its spirit was so complete, that no sooner did a
festival day begin (that is to say, on the eve), than a perfect change
took place within her, both intellectually and spirit