History -The modern history of the Casa de María begins, in the first half of the 19th century, in the bed of a peasant named Catherine Emmericks, in Germany, on the banks of the Rhine, in the Dülmen region, in Westphalia. She has an incurable disease that has kept her in bed with pain for twelve years. But she finds comfort in her visions of Jesus Christ and Mary.
The duration of these visions, their descriptions, with extraordinary details, characters, events, and places that he could not know, attracted the attention and aroused the admiration of public opinion and certain intellectuals. One of them, the German romantic poet Clemens Brentano settled in Dülmen, as Catherine Emmerick’s “secretary”.
Throughout the days, she took note of what Catherine said about the life of Jesus Christ and Mary. Reviewing the accumulated material, Brentano thought about publishing it and in 1835 he published a book entitled “The Painful Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ.” After her death in 1842, “The Life of the Virgin Mary, According to the Visions of Anne Catherine Emmerick” was published.
In the penultimate chapter of this book it is written: “After the Ascension of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Mary lived three years in Zion, three years in Bethany, and nine years in Ephesus, where John Si took place shortly after the Jews Exposing Lazarus and his sisters at sea, Mary did not live in Ephesus, but in the neighborhood, where several of her friends had already settled. Ephesus leagues and a half, on a mountain to the left, coming from Jerusalem and descending rapidly at Ephesus. From the southeast, we see the city gathered at the foot of a mountain, but it is seen that it spreads everywhere as one advance, before Ephesus, there are large avenues of trees under which are yellow fruits on the ground, and a little to the south, narrow paths lead to a height covered with wild plants, then we find an undulating plain covered with vegetation, which is half a league in circumference, it was there that this establishment was made. It is a very lonely country, with many pleasant and fertile hills, and some caves carved out of the rock, in the middle of small sandy places. The country is wild without being sterile; Here and there there are many trees with a pyramidal shape, whose trunk is smooth and whose branches shade a large space.
When Saint John brought the Blessed Virgin there, for whom he had built a house in advance, some Christian families and several holy women were already residing in this country.
They lived, some in tents, others in caves that had been made habitable by means of some frames and some woodwork. They had arrived before the persecution had broken out in all its violence.
By taking advantage of the caves that were there and the facilities offered by the nature of the place, their houses were true hermitages, often separated by a quarter of a league from each other. Maria’s house was the only one in stone. Some distance behind this house, the land rose and ended, through rocks, at the highest point of the mountain, from the top of which, beyond the hills and trees, we saw the city of Ephesus. and the sea. with its many islands. This place was closer to the sea than Ephesus itself, which was some distance away.