The Dolorous Passion Our Lord Jesus Christ is a detailed account of Our Lord’s suffering and death on the Cross. It is worth noting that, without even attempting to suggest that the chronology of events and narration of the incidents which took place from the Last Supper to the Easter Sunday described in the Gospels are in anyway insufficient, the book dolorous passion indeed satisfies a curious and thirsty mind that earnestly desires to plunge deep into the mysteries and the extensive details of those most painful yet salvific hours. It will be prudent to introduce Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich who was highly favoured by her Heavenly Spouse, Our Lord to receive these most astonishing and mystical visions before I attempt to present the nature of the contents of the book.
It is impossible to summarize the mystical character called Bl. Anne Catherine Emmerich in a paragraph. A book of more than thousand pages could only give a brief description of her life. I will try to restrain myself from going into any details. Bl Anne Catherine Emmerich was born on 08th September 1774 at Flamske , a village in Minster, Germany. Her parents were poor peasants but distinguished for their piety and virtue. Since she was a child she had many extraordinary experiences. She used to be frequently visited by her Angel, Our Lady and Our Lord. Our Lord used to visit her in the form a little shepherded. She used to be highly knowledgeable of the matters of faith and many mysteries for her age and she was extremely pious from her childhood. Anne Catherine entered her novitiate on the 13th November 1802 in an Augustinian convent. I deliberately do not elaborate on the financial, spiritual and circumstantial difficulties she had to endure before finally being accepted by the Augustinian nuns. She was already experiencing mystical phenomena by the time she entered the convent. Immediately after her joining the convent she had started suffering from what looked like some great painful sickness which continued internally or externally till the end of her life. In 1803 she pronounced her solemn vows. She lived in a time when all the religious orders were facing great persecutions and her convent was shut down and was ordered to leave and flee. However she with the help of some benefactor found an extremely modest place of a widow to continue living faithfully to her vows. The great suffering and mystical experiences cuased from her contemplations on the Passion of Our Lord continued for a life time. Her internal suffering was externally manifested through the Stigmata she bore which bled greatly and caused her much pain. The eye witnesses often feared that she would die each time she was in suffering during her ecstasies.
She wanted to unite herself completely with the suffering of Jesus Christ and earnestly prayed to allow her to partake in that suffering and desired to know the details of His Passion. During the course of her life Our Lord granted the grace to see all that suffering and cruelty Our Lord endured for the sake of the human kind. These meditations and visions were recorded by the divine grace through Mr Clement Brentano, a prominent literary figure of the day. She was beatified by Bl. Pope John Paul II in 2004. I am not qualified to write in details about this mystical figure who in her complete self- abandonment to her divine spouse has earned the grace to reveal to us the terrible agony of our Lord, His infinite Passion and Death brought on by each person’s sins. We can nothing but thank God for this book that will melt a heart of stone.
I will attempt to write about the contents of the book The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the next post in which I am hoping to cover personalities that are mentioned in the Gospels but whose identities are not known or understood, Who are the Holy Women,Mary Magdalene, the Holy Mother of God , the disciples and the roots of many traditions that we follow fervently even today.
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