The Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich

[Stone]

XIII THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT AND ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST IN THE DESERT
Section III

[Catherine Emmerich also communicated the following fragments of visions of the subsequent life of the Holy Family in Heliopolis or On:]

Once at a later time I came over the sea to Egypt, and found the Holy Family still living in the great devastated city. It is very extensive, and is built beside a great river with many arms. The city can be seen from afar, standing high up. In many places the river flows underneath the buildings. The people cross the arms of the river on rafts which lie there in the water ready for use. I saw quite astonishingly huge buildings in ruins, great masses of solid masonry, halves of towers and whole, or nearly whole, temples. I saw pillars as big as towers, with winding staircases outside. I saw high tapering pillars completely covered with strange figures, and also a number of big figures like reclining dogs with human heads.

The Holy Family lived in the galleries of a great stone building supported at one side by short thick pillars, some square and some round. People had built themselves dwellings against and under these pillars; above the building ran a road with much traffic on it; it passed a great heathen temple with two courts. In this building was a space with a wall on one side of it and on the other a row of short thick pillars. In front of this Joseph had constructed a light wooden building, divided off by wooden partitions, for them to live in. I saw them there all together. The donkeys were there, too, but separated by screens such as Joseph always used to make. I noticed for the first time that they had a little altar against the wall, hidden behind one of these screens—a little table covered with a red cloth and a transparent white one over it. There was a lamp above it, and they used to pray there. Later I saw that Joseph had arranged a workshop in his home, and also that he often went out to work. He made long staffs with knobs at the end, and little low round three-legged stools with a handle at the back to carry them by. He also made baskets and light wicker screens. These were afterwards smeared with some substance which made them solid, and were then used to make huts and compartments against and in the massive masonry of the walls. He also made little light hexagonal or octagonal towers out of long thin planks, ending in a point crowned by a knob. These had an opening and could be used to sit in like sentryboxes. They had steps leading up to them. I saw little towers like these here and there in front of the heathen temples, and also on the flat roofs. People sat inside them. They were
perhaps sentry-boxes, or little summer-houses used to give shade.

I saw the Blessed Virgin weaving carpets. I also saw her with other work; she had a stick beside her with a lump fastened to the top of it, but I do not know what she was doing, whether spinning or something else. I often saw people visiting her and the Infant Jesus, who lay in a sort of cradle on the floor beside her. Sometimes I saw this cradle raised on a stand like a sawing-trestle. I saw the Child lying very contentedly in His cradle, sometimes with His arms hanging out on each side. Once I saw Him sitting up in it. Mary sat close by knitting, with a basket at her side. There were three women with her. The people in this half-destroyed city were dressed just like those cotton-spinning people whom I saw when I went to meet the three kings, except that they wore aprons, like short skirts. There were not many Jews here, and they seemed to live here on sufferance. North of Heliopolis, between it and the Nile, which there divides into many arms, was the land of Gessen.

Amongst its canals was a place where a large number of Jews lived. Their religion had become very degraded. Some of these Jews became acquainted with the Holy Family, and Mary made various things for them, in return for which they gave her bread and provisions. The Jews in the land of Gessen had a temple which they likened to Solomon’s temple, but it was very different.186

I again saw the Holy Family in Heliopolis. They were still living near the heathen temple under the vaulting of the massive walls. Not far off Joseph built a place of prayer in which the Jews living in the city assembled together with the Holy Family. Before this they had had no meeting-place for prayer. The room had a lightly built dome above it, which they could open so as to be under the open sky. In the middle of the room stood a sacrificial table or altar, covered with white and red, and having scrolls upon it. The priest or teacher was a very old man. The men and women were not so strictly separated at their prayers as in the Promised Land: the men stood on one side and the women on the other. I had a sight of the Blessed Virgin visiting this place of prayer with the Infant Jesus for the first time. She sat on the ground leaning on one arm; the Child was sitting before her in a little sky-blue dress, and she put His hands together on His breast. Joseph stood behind her, as he always does here, though the other men and women stand and sit in separate groups on each side of the room. I was often shown how the little Jesus was already growing bigger, and how He was often visited by other children. He could already speak and run quite well; He was much with Joseph, and I think went with him when he worked away from home. He wore a little dress like a shirt, knitted or woven in one piece. Some of the idols fell down in the temple near which they lived, just as the statue near the gate had collapsed on their entry into the city; many people said that this was a sign of the wrath of the gods against the Holy Family, and in consequence they suffered various persecutions.


186. The presence of a Jewish temple built on the ruins of Leontopolis, on the outskirts of Heliopolis, is well known from Josephus (Ant., XIII, iii, 1-4), who explains that it was built by Onias (IV) after his flight from Palestine, c. 170 B.C., ‘like indeed to that at Jerusalem but smaller and poorer’. Cf. also BJ, VII, x, 3. (SB)