For some unexplainable reason those who follow one or another discipline, religion or spiritual leader are often unwilling to recognize the merits, nay, even the evident proof of a real awakening of the soul when this happens in people which do not belong to their own beliefs, and yet, great saints and Masters have been talking of the fundamental unity of all religion, creeds and yogas as leading to one and the same God. This also means that in spite of all appearances and differences the awakening of the soul is a universal possibility for every human being independently of the path they follow.
Surely in future years when people will feel free to investigate into different spirituality without any fear and moved by the impulse towards a synthetic truth, the outstanding figure of Anne Catherine Emmerich will give more than one reason for wonder, and pretext for connection with other oriental streams of spirituality: her visions (actually authentic akashic registers) relating the life and deeds of the Master Jesus are not only to be considered authentic but of a character willingly revelatory, and at such an extent that could be considered a new Gospel in itself.
At the moment the only reference I may send the reader for more information is a complete enough english/spanish web page on her life and visions: http://annecatherineemmerich.com
Revelation is a condition of Grace, it has always a purpose even if at first it is not understood by the men and women of their time, and it has always the purpose of enlarging the human understanding about life on earth and the unfolding of a spiritual consciousness over the planet.
Anne Catherine was born in 1774 in Germany in a very pious and poor christian family, since her childhood she had visions of who in future years will become her Master, her beloved Jesus Christ. We may suspect that in a previous life she was probably familiar to Jesus as a disciple or she witnessed herself some of the events she later describes in her visions.
Before her twenties she tried several times to enter a monastery but she couldn't because of her poverty. Of late she was admitted but it could be possible only for a few years: when the French Revolution had a side effect of closing several monasteries and churches in Europe, she was again obliged to leave her secluded life and was received in the home of a pious widow where Anne Catherine remained till her death.
Losing the peace, silence and loneliness between the wall of the monastery was not an obstacle to her for developing such an intense love for Christ as to receive the stigmata, due to her frail health and the pain she patiently bore for the stigmata in her later years was obliged in bed and her last twelve years she only survived on plain water and a daily sacred Host.
Beside her own life which was the reason for declaring her a Beate, her most outstanding feature were her visions about the deeds and Passion of Jesus the Nazarene, often related with an astounding precision of details and filling the narrative of other Gospels with unknown pages on the life, deeds an whereabouts of the Master.
Beside the life of Christ there were other visions concerning the present (her present) and future of the Church which offended her sensibility and her religious feelings for they exposed the dryness or even the corruption and meant an implicit warning to the ecclesiastical hierarchies.
She was foretold that a man would appear to help her in registering the complete narrative of her visions and when that was done she would finally die, as well as the writer.
Clemente Brentano, a romantic poet friend of Goethe became her faithful friend and associated himself for life with her, writing her spoken narrative coloured of many dialectical words Anne Catherine made use of in her speech into an understandable and readable german language.
Things happened exactly as she was foretold, after her passing away, Brentano had the time to put in a definitive copy all his work before dying himself too. When she was declared a Beate by the Christian Church only her life, but not her visions, was taken into account because they were not written first hand but by someone who could have modified them or altered their meaning.
We may assume with a reasonable degree of certainty that were the visions widely known as they deserved to be, the Church would have been in need to defend itself from an uncomfortable position.
But revelation is of a divine origin and escapes any attempt of controlling it, its purpose is exactly this: the sharing of the truth with the whole body of believers and it will not fail its purpose. Eventually, in coming years the ostracism imposed on the visions will be removed and the revelation they contain fully shine for all to be seen while spiritually fed by the truth they contain, which is the purpose and usefulness of every revelation.
In the images, Anne Catherine Emmerich and Clemente Brentano.
