Chapter 1
Chapter 1 A listing of the showings This is a revelation of love which Jesus Christ, our endless bliss, made in sixteen showings.
The first showing is of His precious crowning with thorns.
In it are contained and specified the blessed Trinity, with the Incarnation, and the uniting of man's soul with God. There are also many fair showings and teachings of eternal wisdom and love. In these, all the showings that follow are grounded and joined.
The second showing is of the discoloring of His fair face, a token of His most valuable passion.
The third showing is that our Lord God Almighty, Who is All-wisdom and All-love, does or brings about all that is done, just as truly as He has made all things that exist.
The fourth showing is of the scourging of His tender body and the abundant shedding of His precious blood.
The fifth showing is that the fiend is overcome by the precious passion of Christ.
The sixth showing is of the gratitude full of honor of our Lord God, full of honor by which He rewards all His blessed servants in heaven.
The seventh showing concerns the frequent shifts in feeling, between well-being and woe. The feeling of well-being is gracious, touching and buoyant, with a sense of real security in unending joy. The feeling of woe is a kind of temptation coming from the heaviness and weariness of our fleshly living. This showing brings with it the spiritual understanding that we are as well preserved in love when we are in woe as when we are in well-being, by the goodness of God.
The eighth showing is of the last pains of Christ, and of His cruel dying.
A LISTING OF THE SHOWINGS
The ninth showing is of the pleasure of the blessed Trinity because of the accomplishment of the hard passion and painful death of Christ. In this joy and pleasure, He wills we have solace and mirth with Him, until we come to its full glory in heaven.
The tenth showing is of our Lord Jesus, who joyfully shows His blessed heart cloven in two for love.
The eleventh is a noble, spiritual showing of His excellent mother.
The twelfth showing is that our Lord God is Being Allsovereign.
The thirteenth showing is that our Lord God wills that we have great regard for all the deeds He has done, for the great nobility of His making of all things, for the excellence of the greatest of His works, His making of man, and for the precious amendment He has made for man's sin, turning all our blame into unending honor. By this showing He means to say,
"Behold and see! For by the same might, wisdom and goodness that I have done all this, I shall make well all that is not well, and you will see it." And in this He wills that we keep ourselves in the faith and truth of holy Church, not choosing to know His secrets now, except as is proper to us in this life.
The fourteenth showing is that our Lord God is the ground of our prayer. In this situation there are two benefits: the one is rightful prayer, and the other is secure trust. Both of these
He wills to be equally great, and thus our prayer pleases Him, and He, of His goodness, fulfills it.
The fifteenth showing is that we shall suddenly be taken from all our pain and from all our woe. And of His goodness we shall come up above, where we shall have our Lord Jesus for our reward, that we may be completely filled with joy and bliss in heaven.
The sixteenth showing is that the blissful Trinity our Maker, in Christ Jesus our Savior, dwells without end in our soul, graciously ruling and commanding all things, saving and keeping us mightily and wisely for love, so that we shall not be overcome by our enemy.
OF THE TIME OF THE SHOWINGS
Chapter 2 Of the time of the showings and how she asked three petitions.
These showings were made to a simple, unlettered creature living in mortal flesh in the year of our Lord 1373, on the eighth day of May.
This creature had desired beforehand three gifts of God by His grace. The first gift was to enter into the spirit of Christ's passion. The second gift was bodily sickness in youth, at thirty years of age. The third gift was to have God give me three wounds.
As far as the first petition was concerned, it seemed to me that I already had considerable feeling for the passion of Christ, but still, I desired to have more, by the grace of God.
I wished I could have been with Mary Magdalene and the other lovers of Christ at the time of His passion. Then I might have seen with my own eyes the passion our Lord suffered for me, and I could have suffered with Him, as did the others who loved Him.
Therefore, I desired a vision in which I might have more knowledge of the bodily pains of our Savior, and of the compassion of our Lady and of all His true lovers who were living at that time and saw His pains, for I wanted to be one of them and suffer with Him. I never desired any other vision or showing from God until my soul should be parted from my body (for I believed I would be saved by the mercy of God).
I made this first petition so that after the showing I might have a truer understanding of the passion of Christ.
As for the second petition, it came to my mind with contrition, freely, without my seeking it in any way. It was a fully willed desire to have as God's gift a bodily sickness so severe it would bring me to the point of death. I asked that in that sickness I might receive all the rites of holy Church, and that I, and everyone else who saw me, should really believe I was dying. I asked this because I wanted absolutely no human or earthly comfort in this sickness. I desired to have all the kinds of bodily and spiritual pain I would have had if I had actually been dying. I wanted all the terrors, the temptations of dev-