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.

Everyone of the ceremonies and festivals of the Church was to her
far more than the consecration of a remembrance. She beheld in the
historical foundation of each solemnity an act of the Almighty, done in
time for the reparation of fallen humanity. Although these divine acts
appeared to her stamped with the character of eternity, yet she was
well aware that in order for man to profit by them in the bounded and
narrow sphere of time, he must, as it were, take possession of them in
a series of successive moments, and that for this purpose they had to
be repeated and renewed in the Church, in the order established by
Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. All festivals and solemnities were in
her eyes eternal graces which returned at fixed epochs in every
ecclesiastical year, in the same manner as the fruits and harvests of
the earth come in their seasons in the natural year.