her, and her joy would be great. But all on a sudden she would
discover that she was still separated from it by a valley and then she
would have to descend precipices and follow indirect paths, labouring,
suffering, and performing deeds of charity everywhere. She had to
direct wanderers into the right road, raise up the fallen, sometimes
even carry the paralytic, and drag the unwilling by force, and all
these deeds of charity were as so many fresh weights fastened to her
cross. Then she walked with more difficulty, bending beneath her burden
and sometimes even falling to the ground.

In 1823 she repeated more frequently than usual that she could not
perform her task in her present situation, that she had not strength
for it, and that it was in a peaceful convent that she needed to have
lived and died. She added that God would soon take her to himself, and
that she had besought him to permit her to obtain by her prayers in the
next world what her weakness would not permit her to accomplish in
this. St. Catherine of Sienna, a short time before death, made a
similar prayer.

Anne Catherine had previously had a vision concerning what her
prayers might obtain after death, with regard to things that were not
in existence during her life. The year 1823, the last of which she
completed the whole circle, brought her immense labours. She appeared
desirous to accomplish her entire task, and thus kept the promise which
she had previously made of relating the history of the whole Passion.
It formed the subject of her Lenten meditations during this year, and
of them the present volume is composed. But she did not on this account
take less part in the fundamental mystery of this penitential season,
or in the different mysteries of each of the festival days of the
Church, if indeed the words to take part be sufficient to express the
wonderful manner in which she rendered visible testimony to the mystery
celebrated in each festival by a sudden change in her corporal and
spiritual life. See on this subject the chapter entitled Interruption
of the Pictures of the Passion.

Everyone of the ceremonies and festivals of the Church was to her
far more than the consecration of a remembrance. She beheld in the
historical foundation of each solemnity an act of the Almighty, done in
time for the reparation of fallen humanity. Although these divine acts
appeared to her stamped with the character of eternity, yet she was
well aware that in order