Observations placeholder
Suor Maria della Passione - She really flew up the flight of stairs which led to her cell
Identifier
024222
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Friar Herbert Thurston was a Catholic priest, a member of the Jesuit order and an historian. He wrote extensively on Catholic mysticism and psychic phenomena and was a member of the Society for Psychical Research. He was also widely read on this subject. He is described as ‘an honest skeptic’., and once said ‘the role of Devil’s advocate is a thankless one and does not make for popularity’.
A description of the experience
Friar Herbert Thurston - The Physical Phenomenon of Mysticism
Finally I may note the curious experience of a still more recent ecstatic who died in 1912. One of her fellow-religious, Suor Maria Prassede, delle Crocifisse Adoratrici, in a letter of June 3, 1913, writes:
I was still a novice and on those last occasions when Suor Maria della Passione was able to come down to the choir to receive Holy Communion, the Rev. Mother Superior bade me take her back to her cell, because, as she was so ill, she had to return to bed almost immediately after Communion was given her. Well, no sooner had we left the choir together than I noticed that the servant of God, though she was in a most suffering state, mounted the stairs in an instant, as if she flew on wings, while I, though I was in perfect health, could not keep pace with her; so much so that it seemed to me that she never touched the ground but that she really flew up the flight of stairs which led to her cell.