Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824 ) was a Catholic mystic whose visions, as found in The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, strongly influenced Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. I came across another work by Emmerich in a bookstore here in Tralee:
The Saint of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Volume IV (Charlotte, N.C.: Saint Benedict Press, 2006)
As with so many works of this kind, the Mariology is very high (read: blasphemous), and is reflective of the piety one finds in both historical and modern Catholic works. Here are just some excerpts portraying Mary as co-redemptrix and co-mediatrix (a major theme of the Mariology in Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, largely due to Emmerich’s visions) and other like-teachings:
The Blessed Virgin, united in constant, interior compassion with Jesus, knew and experienced in her soul all that happened to Him. She suffered everything with Him in spiritual contemplation, and like Him she was absorbed in continual prayer for His executioners. (p. 161)
Mary During the Scourging of Jesus
I saw the Blessed Virgin, during the scouring of our Redeemer, in a state of uninterrupted ecstasy. She saw and suffered in an indescribable manner all that her Son was enduring. Her punishment, her martyrdom, was an inconceivably great as her most holy love. Low moans frequently burst from her lips, and her eyes were inflamed with weeping . . . Mary saw her lacerated Son driven past her by the executioners. With His garment He wiped the blood from His eyes in order to see His Mother. She raised her hands in agony toward Him and gazed upon His bloodstained footprints. Then, as the mob moved over to another side, I saw the Blessed Virgin and Magdalen approaching the place of scourging. Surrounded and hidden by the other holy women and some well-disposed people standing by, they cast themselves on their knees and soaked up the sacred Blood of Jesus with the linens until not a trace of it could be found. (pp. 211, 212)
The Blessed Mother of Jesus, who shared every suffering of her Son, had about an hour previously—when the unjust sentence was pronounced upon Him—left the forum with John and the holy women to venerate the places consecrated by His cruel Passion. But now when the running crowd, the sounding trumpets, and the approach of the soldiers and Pilate’s cavalcade accounted the commencement of the bitter. Way of the Cross, Mary would no longer remain at a distance. She must behold her Divine Son in His sufferings, and she begged John to take her to some place what Jesus would pass. (p. 246)
The sufferings of the most afflicted Mother of Sorrows on this journey, at the sight of the place of execution and her ascent to it, cannot be expressed. They were twofold: the pains of Jesus suffered interiorly and the sense of being left behind. (p. 263)
The Mother of Jesus, Mary Cleophas, Mary Magdalen, and John were standing around Jesus’ cross, between it and those of the thieves, and looking up at the Lord. The Blessed Virgin, overcome by maternal love, was in her heart fervently imploring Jesus to let her die with him. At that moment, the Lord cast an earnest and compassionate glance down upon His Mother and, turning His eyes toward John, said to her: “Woman, behold this is thy son! He will be thy son more truly than if thou hadst given him birth” Then He praised John, and said: “He has always been innocent and full of simple faith. He was never scandalized, excepting when his mother wanted to have him elevated to a high position.” To John, He said: “Behold, this is thy Mother!” and John reverently and like a filial son embraced beneath the cross of the dying Redeemer Jesus’ Mother, who had now become his Mother also. After this solemn bequest of her dying son, the Blessed Virgin was so deeply affected by her own sorrow and the gravity of the scene that the holy women, supporting her in their arms, seated her for a few moments on the earthen rampart opposite the cross and then took her away from the circle to the rest of the holy women . . . on such an occasion one is not at all surprised to hear Jesus addressing the Blessed Virgin, not as “Mother,” but as “Woman”; for one feels that in this hour in which, by the sacrificial death of the Son of Man, her own Son, the Promise was realized. Mary stood in her dignity as the Woman who was to crush the serpent’s head. (pp. 284-85)
The Majesty and Dignity of the Blessed Virgin
On the evening of the following day, I saw the Apostles and twenty of the disciples in the hall at prayer under the lamp. The Blessed Virgin, all the holy women, Lazarus, Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, and Obed were present. The prayer over, John addressed the Apostles, and Peter, the disciples. They spoke in words full of mystery of their relations to the Mother of the Lord and what she should be to them. During this instruction of the two Apostles, which they based on a communication received from Jesus. I saw the Blessed Virgin hovering over the assembly in a shining, outspread mantle whose folds embraced them all, and on her head descended a crown from the Most Holy Trinity through the open heavens above her. I no longer saw her kneeling outside the hall in prayer, and I had the conviction that Mary was the legitimate head of them all, the temple that enclosed them all. I think this vision was symbolical of what God designed to take place for the Church at this moment through the exposition of the Apostles upon Mary’s dignity. (pp. 410-11)
Such a distorted view of Mary and such piety is to be rejected and should not be avoided for the sake of “theological ecumenism” and/or “just getting along.”
For a scholarly discussion of true, biblical Mariology, see my book-length treatment of the issue:
