of suffering and contemplation, should sometimes see their spiritual
labours under the form of those earthly occupations which formerly
filled their days. Then their acts were prayers; now their prayers are
acts; but the form remains the same. It was thus that Anne Catherine,
in her ecstatic life, beheld the series of her prayers for the Church
under the forms of parables bearing reference to agriculture,
gardening, weaving, sowing, or the care of sheep. All these different
occupations were arranged, according to their signification, in the
different periods of the common as well as the ecclesiastical year, and
were pursued under the patronage and with the assistance of the saints
of each day, the special graces of the corresponding feasts of the
Church being also applied to them. The signification of this circles of
symbols had reference to all the active part of her interior life. One
example will help to explain our meaning. When Anne Catherine, while
yet a child, was employed in weeding, she besought God to root up the
cockle from the field of the Church. If her hands were stung by the
nettles, or if she was obliged to do afresh the work of idlers, she
offered to God her pain and her fatigue, and besought him, in the name
of Jesus Christ, that the pastor of souls might not become weary, and
that none of them might cease to labour zealously and diligently. Thus
her manual labour became a prayer.

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