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| Saint Dominic in Glory |
Both Saint Catherine and Saint Dominic were seen in visions at the very hour of their death. Mother Francis Raphael retells the story of Saint Dominic on the stairway to heaven in this way, "At the same hour in which he expired, Father Guallo Romanoni, prior of the convent of Friars Preachers in Brescia, fell asleep, leaning against the bell tower of his church, and he seemed to see two ladders let down from an opening in the sky above him. At the top of one stood our Lord, and His blessed Mother was at the summit of the other. Angels were going up and down them, and at their foot was seated one in the habit of the order, but his face was covered with his hood after the fashion in which the friars were wont to cover the face of the dead, when they are carried out for burial. The ladders were drawn up into heaven, and he saw the unknown friar received into the company of the angels surrounded by a dazzling glory and borne to the very feet of Jesus. Guallo awoke, not knowing what the vision could signify, and hastening to Bologna, he found that his great patriarch had breathed his last at the very moment in which it had appeared to him; namely, six in the evening, and he judged it as a certain token that the soul of Dominic had been taken up to heaven.
Drane, Augusta Theodosia (Mother Francis Raphael), The Life of St. Dominic and a Sketch of the Dominican Order with an Introduction to the America edition by Rev Joseph Sadoc Alemany, D.D., P. O’Shea Publisher, New York, New York, 1867, (p. 212).
