2. Of her rapture into the Holy land, and to the sacred places of the city of rome

While then the sick virgin earnestly occupied herself every day in exercises of the Lord's Passion, sometimes she was rapt by a holy angel to the places of the Holy Land in which Our Saviour by His birth, life, and suffering wrought the mysteries of man's redemption. When therefore on Mount Calvary, where the Lord was crucified, or at the other holy places, she was admitted to kiss the Lord's cross or His wounds; and for the refreshment of her tribula tions sucked honey out of the rock, and oil from the hardest stone, and attained to the embrace of the transfixed feet, and to the expiring of her Spouse cruci fied for love, then also after the example of Him Whom she sought and loved, she commended her spirit into His ST. LYDWINE of SCHIEDAM hands. And although she often passed from the wounds of the flesh to pene trate the abysmal openings of the divinity through the rapture of con templation, so that for the abundance of spiritual graces and sweetness she ceased to feel the sufferings of the body, nevertheless she was sometimes afflicted by such great fresh maladies, that even returning from those sweet kisses of the Lord's cross and His wounds she brought back certain ulcers imprinted upon the lips of her mouth. Which indeed by the ordinance of God was wrought, so that not only according to the multitude of sorrows in her heart the divine consolations should rejoice her soul within, but that also, according to the multitude of the divine consola tions, her tribulations and afflictions suddenly arising should sadden and humble her without ; that thereby openly and frequently tried she might know by contrary vicissitudes what things she had received from God, and what she had of herself. Then finally the angel said to her: "These ulcers thou hast therefore received in thy body, that thou mayest know that thou art rapt also in the body."

ST. LYDWINE of SCHIEDAM Another time likewise, when she was passing- through the aforesaid most happy regions, and for the slipperiness of the path could not keep her footing, she said that she felt in the body a certain fall on the right foot, and that she suffered pain from that fall and from the sprain of the same foot. For from that injury she contracted such a swelling and blackening and pain in her ankle, that even for several days she was tormented thereby.

In a like manner she was once rapt to the sacred places of the city of Rome. And while she was going between some of the chief churches, and was proceed ing with outstretched arms between shrubs and thorn bushes, from the same bushes she received a thorn in her fingers and brought it back with her, from the pain of which, as from the other maladies, she suffered not a little for nearly two days. On account of these bodily injuries then which thus she brought back, she was wont to say, ac cording to the word of the angel, that she thought she had been rapt in the body also. But how these bodily raptures took place, the angel himself knew who conducted her and bore witness thereof.

ST. LYDWINE of SCHIEDAM At times our Saviour Jesus Christ, surrounded by the heavenly hosts, entering her cell as a king with his princes, set Himself at table, and seated in order around her bed, they most fully refreshed her with heavenly meats. And what wonder if she needed not bodily food, who was now nourished with the angels on heavenly dishes, as the Saviour Himself answered the devil tempting Him over bread : " It is written, not in bread alone doth man live, but in every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God " (Matt, iv 4).