On March 15, 1821, Anne Catherine communicated these concepts about a vision she had had during the night concerning Saint Longinus, whose feast day fell on that very day, a fact that the sister was unaware of.
Longinus, who had had another name, performed a service, somewhere between civil and military, as an ally of Pilate, who commissioned him to watch what was happening and report it to him. He was good and helpful; but before his conversion, he lacked firmness and strength of character. He did everything in a hurry; he liked to give himself importance, and since he was cross-eyed, his companions frequently mocked him.
Longinus was a lower-class officer. On the night Jesus was led to Caiaphas' court, he was in the vestibule with the soldiers: he was coming and going without ceasing. When Peter was afraid of the maidservant's words, he was one of those who said to him: "You are one of that man's followers." When they led Jesus to Calvary, he was near the escort by order of Pilate, and the Savior cast a look at him that moved him. Afterwards, I saw him on Golgotha with the soldiers. He was on horseback, and he held a spear. I saw him at Pilate's house after the death of the Lord: he said that Jesus' legs should not be broken. He hurried back to Calvary.
His spear was made of many pieces that fitted into one another, and by extending them, it could be made three times its length. This is what he had done when he suddenly determined to pierce Jesus with the spear; he converted on Calvary, and declared to Pilate his conviction that Jesus was the Son of God. Nicodemus obtained Longinus' spear from Pilate. I have seen many things concerning this spear. Longinus, after his conversion, left the military and joined the disciples. He was one of the first to receive baptism after Pentecost, along with two other soldiers converted at the foot of the cross.
I have seen Longinus and those two men return to their homeland dressed in long, white robes. They lived in the countryside, in a barren and swampy land. In this very place, the forty martyrs died. Longinus was a deacon, and as such, he traveled through the country announcing Christ and recounting the Passion and the Resurrection as an eyewitness. He converted many people and cured many sick individuals, having them touch a piece of the holy spear that he carried with him. The Jews were very angry with him and his two companions because they published the truth of the Savior's resurrection everywhere and revealed their cruelties and schemes. At the instigation of the Jews, Roman soldiers were sent to Longinus' homeland to arrest him and try him as a deserter and disturber of the public peace. He was cultivating his fields when they arrived, and he led them to his house, where he hosted them. They did not know him, and when they told him the purpose of their journey, he sent for his two companions, who lived in a sort of hermitage a short distance away, and told the soldiers that they three were the ones they had come to find. The same thing happened with Phocas the gardener. The soldiers were grieved, for they had grown fond of him. I saw them lead the three to a neighboring village, where they were questioned; they were not in prison: only held under their word, but they had a particular mark on their shoulder. Afterwards, they decapitated the three of them on a hill located between the village and Longinus' house, and they buried them there. The soldiers placed Longinus' head on the tip of a spear and carried it to Jerusalem to prove that they had fulfilled their mission. It seems to me that this happened a few years after the death of the Lord.
I later had a vision from a subsequent period. A blind woman, from the country of Saint Longinus, went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, hoping to be healed in the holy city, where Longinus' eyes had been cured. She was being led by her son, but he died, and she was left abandoned and without consolation. Then Saint Longinus appeared to her and told her that she would regain her sight if she retrieved his head from a sewer where the Jews had thrown it. It was a pit with a vault, where filth collected from various conduits. I saw some people lead the poor woman there: she entered the sewer up to her neck and pulled out the holy head. She was cured and returned to her homeland; those who had accompanied her kept the head. This is all that I remember.