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

3. THEOKENO CATCHES UP TO THE TRAIN OF MENSOR AND SAIR IN A DESERTED CITY.

[The night of November 27 ^th-28 ^th. When Catherine Emmerich communicated in 1821 these visions of the journey of the three holy kings, she had already related the whole of Jesus' earthly ministry, and had amongst other things seen how, after the raising of Lazarus (which she saw happening on September 7 ^th of the third year of His ministry), He withdrew beyond the Jordan. During His sixteen weeks' absence there, He visited the three holy kings who on their return from their journey to Bethlehem had settled all together, with their attendants, nearer to the Promised Land. [116] Only Mensor and Theokeno were alive then. The dark-skinned Seir was in his grave when Jesus came there. It seems necessary to inform the reader about these events (which were thirty-two years later in date but described earlier by Catherine Emmerich) in order that certain references to them in what follows may be understandable.]In the night of the 27 ^th to the 28 ^th of November I saw, as day began to dawn, Theokeno and his retinue overtake Mensor and Seir, after whom they had been hurrying, in a deserted city with great rows of isolated high columns. By the gates, which were square ruined towers, and in other places stood many large and beautiful statues not so stiff as in Egypt but in beautiful living attitudes. This region was very sandy and rocky. In the ruins of this deserted city people who looked like bands of robbers had settled themselves. They wore nothing but a skin round their bodies and carried spears in their hands. They were brown in color, short, and stocky, but remarkably agile. (I had a feeling that I had been in this place before, perhaps on those journeys which I made in my dreams to the mountain of the Prophet and the river Ganges.) After the three kings and their followers had met here, they left at dawn in haste to continue their journey. Many of the rabble who lived here joined them because of the kings' generosity. (After Christ's death two disciples, Saturnin and Jonadab, the half-brother of Peter, were sent by St. John the Evangelist to this deserted city to preach the Gospel. [117] )

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