everything, that her good mother was obliged to bring her bread, milk,
and eggs, for her own wants and those of the poor, with whom she shared
everything. Then her mother said: 'Your desire to leave your father and
myself, and enter a convent, gives us much pain; but you are still my
beloved child, and when I look at your vacant seat at home, and reflect
that you have given away all your savings, so as to be now in want, my
heart is filled with sorrow, and I have now brought you enough to keep
you for some time.' Anne Catherine replied: 'Yes, dear mother, it is true
that I have nothing at all left, because it was the holy will of God
that others should be assisted by me; and since I have given all to
him, he will now take care of me, and bestow his divine assistance upon
us all.' She remained some years at Coesfeld, employed in labour, good
works, and prayer, being always guided by the same inward inspirations.
She was docile and submissive as a child in the hands of her
guardian-angel.

Although in this brief sketch of her life we are obliged to omit
many interesting circumstances, there is one which we must not pass
over in silence. When about twenty-four years of age, she received a
favour from our Lord, which has been granted to many persons devoted in
an especial manner to meditation on his painful Passion; namely, to
experience the actual and visible sufferings of his sacred Head, when
crowned with thorns. The following is the account she herself has given
of the circumstances under which so mysterious a favour was bestowed
upon her: 'About four years previous to my admittance into the convent,
consequently in 1798, it happened that I was in the Jesuits' Church at
Coesfeld, at about twelve o'clock in the day, kneeling before a crucifix
and absorbed in meditation, when all on a sudden I felt a strong but
pleasant heat in my head, and I saw my Divine Spouse, under the form of
a young man clothed with light, come towards me from the altar, where