A German Catholic mystic On March 5, 1926, the first Friday of Lent, the first stigmata or sacred wounds of Christ appeared slightly above her heart. She kept it secret, confident it would be healed. This wound is believed to represent the spot where Longinus speared Jesus Christ while on the cross.

Therese Neumann - one of the most fascinating modern day catholic mystic and stigmatic - was born on April 8th 1898, which happened to be Good Friday, in the village of Konnersreuth in Northern Bavaria, Germany. Her ambition in life was to become a catholic missionary and to spread the faith in Africa, but due to a series of accidents and events, she spent her whole life in one place - never leaving her native land. Her father was the village tailor and her family was large - there were eleven children - but extremely poor. She belonged to the third Order of St. Francis.

When Therese was twenty years old, there was a terrible fire in her uncle’s barn next door. The whole family went to help put out the flames. Therese who was standing on a chair passing buckets of water, fell down and sustained several injuries to her head. Due to this she could not stand for long and sustained more falls and injuries in this period and after one particular fall she claimed to have lost her eyesight.
Sometime before her accident, Therese was criminally assaulted by an assailant who she managed to beat off. But the incident left a deep wound in her heart. Fixed in her mind was the deep seated belief that sex and war made beasts of men. From this time on, her affection turned completely to Jesus who alone among men was perfect and pure.
Around this time Therese heard of a young student of priesthood who had to leave the seminary due to a throat ailment. This distressed her greatly and she prayed to Jesus for the young man’s suffering to be transferred to her. Therese’s throat began to be afflicted and after sometime her voice was almost gone. The young priest improved and after a time returned to his church school. Jesus kept granting her prayers everytime she wanted to take on the suffering of another. She ‘took over’ her father’s rheumatism; the stomach ailment of a village woman; a hospital patient’s fever; a soldier’s wounds; even a woman’s delivery pains! The blind transferred their blindness to her; the lame came to her on crutches and walked out on their own two feet. “Ill? Give it to Therese”, became almost a jest.
By the year 1919 she was totally blind and completely bedridden. She reportedly developed bed sores that were sometimes so bad that her bones would be exposed.
In 1923, the miracles in Therese Neumann’s life started happening. She had been praying to Therese of Lisieux regularly ever since her ailments a few years ago. On April 29, 1923 - the day Therese of Lisieux was beatified in Rome, Therese Neumann’s eyesight was restored in Germany.

Ill? Give it to Therese

On May 17, 1925 - the day Therese of Lisieux was fully canonized as a saint in the Catholic Church - Therese Neumann said she was called and cured of her paralysis and bed sores. Her miraculous recovery was witnessed by Father Naber who wrote, “Therese described a vision of a great light and an extraordinarily sweet voice that was asking her if she wished to be healed. Therese gave the most surprising answer when she said it made no difference whether she be healed or not, nor even if she dies, as long as God’s will was done. The mysterious voice told her that every day she would receive a small joy; the healing of her infirmities - but that she still had a lot of suffering in her future.”
Ever since that day she gave up all food and drink except for one small consecrated wafer or Eucharist a day. For an year or so she lived in fairly good health, but in 1926 her most important mystical experiences started; they lasted till her death.

On November 7, 1925 Therese took to her bed again. On November 13, she was diagnosed with appendicitis. While preparing for surgery, she convulsed violently, stared at the ceiling and finally said, “Yes.” She asked her family to take her to the church to pray. She then announced that she had been cured of all traces of appendicitis.
On March 5, 1926, the first friday of Lent, a wound appeared slightly above her heart but she kept it a secret. However, she did report a vision of Jesus with the three Apostles at Mount Olivet. Later stigmata, or sacred wounds of Christ began to appear on her head, breasts, hands and feet every Thursday and would last till sunday, the day of resurrection.
On Good Friday, Therese allegedly witnessed the entire Passion of Christ in her visions. She displayed wounds on her hands and feet accompanied by blood apparently coming from her eyes. Supposedly blood ‘poured’ from the wounds. However, onlookers did not actually see the bleeding but only the blood. By 3 p.m. that day, her parish priest Fr. Josef Naber was summoned to give her the last rites. By 4 o’clock her condition improved. When she was bathed, the wounds on her feet and hands were seen. On Easter sunday she claimed a vision of the resurrection of Christ. For several consecutive fridays after that, she stated she experienced the Passion of Christ, supposedly suffering in her own body all his historic agonies. During some of her friday trances she would utter phrases identified by onlookers as ancient Aramaic. She was also said to have been able to understand Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.

Therese described a vision of a great light and an extraordinarily
sweet voice that was asking her if she wished to be healed. Therese
gave the most surprising answer when she said it made no difference whether she be healed or not, nor even if she die, as long as God’s will was done.The mysterious voice told her that every day she would receive a small joy; the healing of her infirmities -
but that she still had a lot of suffering in her future.

On March 12, she said she had another vision of Christ at Mt. Olivet along with the crowning of thorns. She also claimed that the wound above her heart reappeared on this day and this time she told her sister about it. She claimed that the wound also reappeared on friday of the following week. By March 26, she was claiming the same wound accompanied by a vision of Christ bearing the cross and a similar wound on her left hand. Blood was observed on her clothing and she no longer attempted to keep the information to herself.
By November 5, 1926, she displayed nine wounds on her head as well as wounds on her back and shoulders. Supposedly these wounds never healed and were found on her body after death.
Father Naber who administered Communion to Therese wrote: In her, God’s promised word is accomplished: “My Flesh is real food and my Blood is a true beverage”. Therese offered the Lord her suffering caused by the stigmata - this suffering was dedicated for the intercession of sinners who sought her help. Every time she was called to someone’s death bed, she would bear witness to the soul’s judgment. Ecclesiastical authorities performed many examinations in regard to Therese’s continuous fasting. Carl Strater, S.J., directed by the Bishop of Ratisbonne, studied and examined the life of the stigmatized Therese and confirmed: “The significance of Therese Neumann’s fasting is to show the people of the world the value of the Holy Eucharist; to make the world understand that Christ is actually present in the bread of the Eucharist and that through the Holy Eucharist physical life can actually be preserved.”
From the years of 1922 until her death in 1962, Therese Neumann claimed to have consumed no food other than The Holy Eucharist and to have drunk no water from 1926 until her death. This phenomenon commonly referred to as inedia, is sometimes claimed by persons who aspire to a reputation of holiness.

Jesus kept granting her prayers everytime she wanted to take on the suffering of another.

From 14 to 28 July 1927, the church sent a medical doctor and four Fransciscan nurses to keep a watch on her 24 hours a day. They confirmed that she had consumed nothing except for one consecrated Host a day and had suffered no ill effects, loss of weight or dehydration. Urine tests done two weeks after daily surveillance was dropped, indicated however, that she may have begun eating and drinking normally.
Professors and doctors were flabbergasted. One Dr Otto Buchinger arrived in Konnersreuth with his team and scientific equipment to expose ‘the pure fable.’ After a thorough German style investigation, the learned doctor wrote without any hesitation that this was no fraud. Here was something that defied modern science. The phenomena and the miracles were inexplicable by any so called rational thinking. Some mysticism was at work here. How can a human being seemingly in mortal flesh and blood stop eating and drinking? How can a simple woman actually physically suffer the same agony as Lord Jesus?
As she did not eat regular food, the Nazi authorities withdrew her food rationing card and gave her a double ration of soap to wash her towels and clothing because every friday she would be drenched in blood while in ecstasy - experiencing the Passion of Christ. During the Third Reich Therese Neumann was the target of ridicule and defamation as the Nazis knew about her dissenting views and feared her growing popularity. However, she was never physically harmed and she did encourage Fritz Gerlich to continue his opposition of Hitler and his national-socialist party. Hitler is said to have been rather fearful of Therese.

On September 18, 1962, Therese Neumann died of a cardiac arrest. The Catholic Church has confirmed neither her inedia nor her stigmata and has in the past discouraged pilgrimages to Konnersreuth. The ‘Resl’ as she is colloquially known, nonetheless attained a place in popular piety - a petition asking for her beatification was signed by 40,000 people. In 2005, Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Bishop of Regensburg, formally opened the proceedings for her beatification.
The stories of Giri Bala and Therese Neumann are easy to dismiss as experiences by ’saintly’ people. Yet they were both simple individuals who had great trust and faith. Though it appears that both Giri Bala and Therese were sustained purely by liquid light, neither used this phenomenon to attain physical immortality.

“She gave up all food and drink except for one small consecrated wafer. As she did not eat regular food, the Nazi authorities withdrew her food rationing card and gave her a double ration of soap to wash her towels and clothing because every friday she would be drenched in blood while in ecstasy - experiencing the –Passion of Christ.”

The Great Indian saint Paramahansa Yogananda visited Therese Neumann and wrote about her in his book Autobiography of a Yogi. He wrote an entire chapter- Therese Neumann, The Catholic Stigmatist - which reverently gives a vivid first-hand description of one of her friday passion trances. Yogananda later said that in her past life Therese was Mary Magdalene and that the purpose of her existence was to show - like Giri Bala - that it is possible to live on God’s Light alone.
Throughout the thirty-six years that Therese bore the stigmata, thousands of tourists would visit her small cottage to witness the miracle. In 1946, just after the end of World War II, when asked by an American GI if the United States would ever be destroyed or invaded in a war, she said:

“No, but at the end of this century America will be destroyed economically by a series of natural disasters.”