I LITERALLY have had to tell people that THOSE writings of Blessed Catherine Emmerich were NOT approved by the Church because they insisted they were correct (about the dark people thing)...its so sad that she said this, but its just ignorance. Ignorance is not a sin. One of the spiritual works of mercy is to instruct the ignorant...!
Yes Marti, it was I suspect just the spirit of the times she lived in. I would suppose that racism was (and I suppose still is to some extent) endemic in those days, people just drank it in with their mothers milk. I remember when I was a child we used t collect money for the Missions here in Ireland and we used to call it money for the, 'Black babies' . We never meant any harm by it but I don't suppose it would be acceptable today. But it warns me not to just swallow everything wholesale even from very good, saintly and trustworthy mystics like Catherine. Also if someone like Catherine bombs like this not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Saints are like the rest of us. They make mistakes. Sometimes very bad mistakes. They are not infallible. They practiced heroic virtue abut that does not make them perfect. I love them all the more for these mistakes it makes them seem less far away above little old me.
I have gone back as well to reading St Catherine of Siena's, 'The Dialogue'. View attachment 2221 A sort of heart to heart chat with God and very beautiful. (Catherine as you may know is a Doctor of the Church) What is written touches my heart so closely I get the weird feeling sometimes that it was written feeling it was written just for me!! I find it best with these writings as they are so deep and intense to read them a little at a time. To take them away and pray over them. This is called in Monastic terms, 'Lectio Divina' or Divine Reading. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lectio_Divina View attachment 2222
In the magnificent passage I am reading at the moment she compares man to the Blessed Trinity. Memory . For the Father. Intellect for the Son. Will for the Holy Spirit. View attachment 2223 "O eternal Trinity, You are a deep sea in which the more I seek the more I find, and the more I find, the more I seek to know You. You fill us insatiably, because the soul, before the abyss which You are, is always famished; and hungering for You, O eternal Trinity, it desires to behold truth in Your light. As the thirsty hart pants after the fount of living water, so does my soul long to leave this gloomy body and see You as You are, in truth. "O unfathomable depth! O Deity eternal! O deep ocean! What more could You give me than to give me Yourself? You are an ever-burning Fire; You consume and are not consumed. By Your fire, You consume every trace of self-love in the soul. You are a Fire which drives away all coldness and illumines minds with its light, and with this light You have made known Your truth. Truly this light is a sea which feeds the soul until it is all immersed in You, O peaceful Sea, eternal Trinity! The water of this sea is never turbid; it never causes fear, but gives knowledge of the truth. This water is transparent and discloses hidden things; and a living faith gives such abundance of light that the soul almost attains to certitude in what it believes. "You are the supreme and infinite Good, good above all good; good which is joyful, incomprehensible, inestimable; beauty exceeding all other beauty; wisdom surpassing all wisdom, because You are Wisdom itself. Food of angels, giving Yourself with fire of love to men! You are the garment which covers our nakedness; You feed us, hungry as we are, with Your sweetness, because You are all sweetness, with no bitterness. Clothe me, O eternal Trinity, clothe me with Yourself, so that I may pass this mortal life in true obedience and in the light of the most holy faith with which You have inebriated my soul." - St. Catherine of Siena
