I will now give a corresponding example of her life of contemplation and ecstasy.  She had been ill several times, and in a state of almost continual ecstasy, during which she often moaned, and moved her hands like a person employed in weeding.  She complained one morning that her hands and arms smarted and itched, and on examination they were found to be covered with blisters, like what would have been produced by the stinging of nettles.  She then begged several persons of her acquaintance to join their prayers to hers for a certain intention.  The next day her hands were inflamed and painful, as they would have been after hard work; and when asked the cause, she replied:  ’Ah!  I have so many nettles to root up in the vineyard, because those whose duty it was to do it only pulled off the stems, and I was obliged to draw the roots with much difficulty out of a stony soil.’  The person who had asked her the question began to blame these careless workmen, but he felt much confused when she replied:  ’You were one of them,—­those who only pull off the stems of the nettles, and leave the roots in the earth, are persons who pray carelessly.’  It was afterwards discovered that she had been praying for several dioceses which were shown to her under the figure of vineyards laid waste, and in which labour was needed.  The real inflammation of her hands bore testimony to this symbolical rooting up of the nettles; and we have, perhaps, reason to hope that the churches shown to her under the appearances of vineyards experienced the good effects of her prayer and spiritual labour; for since the door is opened to those who knock, it must certainly be opened above all to those who knock with such energy as to cause their fingers to be wounded.

Similar reactions of the spirit upon the body are often found in the lives of persons subject to ecstasies, and are by no means contrary to faith.  St. Paula, if we may believe St. Jerome, visited the holy places in spirit just as if she had visited them bodily; and a like thing happened to St. Colomba of Rieti and St. Lidwina of Schiedam.  The body of the latter bore tracks of this spiritual journey, as if she had really travelled; she experienced all the fatigue that a painful journey would cause:  her feet were wounded and covered with marks which looked as if they had been made by stones or thorns, and finally she had a sprain from which she long suffered.

She was led on this journey by her guardian angel, who told her that these corporeal wounds signified that she had been ravished in body and spirit.

Similar hurts were also to be seen upon the body of Anne Catherine immediately after some of her visions.  Lidwina began her ecstatic journey by following her good angel to the chapel of the Blessed Virgin before Schiedam; Anne Catherine began hers by following her angel guardian either to the chapel which was near her dwelling, or else to the Way of the Cross of Coesfeld.