CHRISTINA EBNER, VIRGIN - 27 DECEMBER

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN DECEMBER

Saints celebrated on the 27th of December

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CHRISTINA EBNER, VIRGIN

Christina Ebner was born of a patrician family on Good Friday, at Nuremberg, 1277. From her mother she inherited a deeply religious spirit, which early manifested itself in a fondness for prayer and mortification. Hardly had she made her First Communion when her parents acceded to a desire, which she had expressed since her seventh year, of entering the Dominican convent at Engelthal in the vicinity of Nuremberg. 

At the end of her year of novitiate she was stricken with a dangerous illness, which reappeared three times annually from her thirteenth to her twenty-third year. Each year, for the remainder of her life, she suffered a relapse of this mysterious sickness. 

A MYSTERIOUS SICKNESS

Christina did not, however, on this account relax her penitential practices, nor fail in her duties as superior, to which she had been early elected. 

In her thirteenth year she began to enjoy frequent visits from the Master, from whose words she drew light and counsel for her own direction. As a result she was misunderstood by all save her confessor, Father Konrad of Fussen, O.P., at whose command, in the Advent of 1317, she began to write a diary of her spiritual experiences in chronological order. 

HER DIARY

After an introduction in which she reviews in a simple, unaffected manner the whole history of her life till 1317, this touching piece of mystical literature is carried on till 1353. She speaks of herself in the third person as "von dem Menschen" ["of the human being").

SHE SPEAKS OF HERSELF IN THE THIRD PERSON

Most of this diary was written by her own hand save when she dictated on account of illness. It is preserved, in a complete version of the fifteenth century, in a manuscript at Nuremberg. 

HISTORICAL DETAILS

We learn from this source that Christina played an important part by her prayers in the settlement of the difficulties arising from the riots at Nuremberg in 1348; from the earthquake of the same year; the Black Death; the Flagellants’ processions of 1349; and the long quarrel between Louis the Bavarian and the Holy See. She also tells us of the absence of a director from the removal of Konrad to Freiburg in 1324 till 1351, when Henry of Nordlingen visited her and gave her advice sufficient for the remainder of her life. Christina died at Engelthal, December 27, 1355. 

From Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913

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