Account of the passion of Therese Neumann

The first thing I always see is Christ on the Mount of Olives. I see him with three disciples. He moves around a lot. He soon falls to his knees. After a little while he gets up, puts his hands together and several times looks towards the sky. In this prayer and in all the struggle and agony of Jesus, I clearly see three phases, for the agony in the garden of the Mount of Olives is presented to me in three visions. It is in the second prayer that Jesus struggles the hardest. First I see the appearance on his face of little red drops and suddenly the blood begins to flow…. After a while I see that he is dis-robed for the flagellation, and I see the terrible flagellation itself. The column to which the Saviour is tied is quite tall. He is tied by the hands so that his body is stretched out. The feet however rest on the ground. Jesus is struck violently by two men at once. The torturers are changed twice so that six men whip him. The dear Saviour is whipped all over his body. First on the back. Then he is turned and he is whipped on the front. The dividing of his clothes gives him great pain. Under so many blows, the skin swells and then tears and the blood flows, so much that the whole body is cruelly deformed and reddened with blood and wounds. When the soldiers are satisfied with their cruelty, they free the Saviour and he collapses. It is pitiful to see. Suddenly, the vision is over. Then I think again about what I have seen…While I have to see all this I don’t myself receive so terrible a crown, but the cruel vision makes me horribly ill…On Thursday and Friday I am not having visions continuously. Between the two, I am a little myself again. When I say: I am a little myself again, I am only using a normal expression, because during the visions, I am not so unconscious as one might perhaps believe. Those who are around me can themselves see that I do not sleep nor dream, that I am not absent in spirit. Otherwise I would not be able to recall all that I do in reality or even be able to remember anything at all. My spirit is seized so truly by what I see and so preoccupied by what is played out in front of my eyes…..I am wholly taken up by the sight of Jesus, in whom I am completely absorbed.