Sinking beneath the weight of life and of the task imposed upon her she often besought God to deliver her, and she then would appear to be on the very brink of the grave.  But each time she would say:  ’Lord, not my will but thine be done!  If my prayers and sufferings are useful let me live a thousand years, but grant that I may die rather than ever offend thee.’  Then she would receive orders to live, and arise, taking up her cross, once more to bear it in patience and suffering after her Lord.  From time to time the road of life which she was pursuing used to be shown to her, leading to the top of a mountain on which was a shining and resplendent city—­the heavenly Jerusalem.  Often she would think she had arrived at that blissful abode, which seemed to be quite near her, and her joy would be great.  But all on a sudden she would discover that she was still separated from it by a valley and then she would have to descend precipices and follow indirect paths, labouring, suffering, and performing deeds of charity everywhere.  She had to direct wanderers into the right road, raise up the fallen, sometimes even carry the paralytic, and drag the unwilling by force, and all these deeds of charity were as so many fresh weights fastened to her cross.  Then she walked with more difficulty, bending beneath her burden and sometimes even falling to the ground.

In 1823 she repeated more frequently than usual that she could not perform her task in her present situation, that she had not strength for it, and that it was in a peaceful convent that she needed to have lived and died.  She added that God would soon take her to himself, and that she had besought him to permit her to obtain by her prayers in the next world what her weakness would not permit her to accomplish in this.  St. Catherine of Sienna, a short time before death, made a similar prayer.

Anne Catherine had previously had a vision concerning what her prayers might obtain after death, with regard to things that were not in existence during her life.  The year 1823, the last of which she completed the whole circle, brought her immense labours.  She appeared desirous to accomplish her entire task, and thus kept the promise which she had previously made of relating the history of the whole Passion.  It formed the subject of her Lenten meditations during this year, and of them the present volume is composed.  But she did not on this account take less part in the fundamental mystery of this penitential season, or in the different mysteries of each of the festival days of the Church, if indeed the words to take part be sufficient to express the wonderful manner in which she rendered visible testimony to the mystery celebrated in each festival by a sudden change in her corporal and spiritual life.  See on this subject the chapter entitled Interruption of the Pictures of the Passion.