How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Page)
Quote #7
When she was there, she had such an intense recollection of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of his precious wounds, and how dearly he bought her, that she cried and roared amazingly, so that she could be heard a great way away [...]. (I.67.203)
Kempe flees from the main church in Bishop's Lynn to the Prior's Chapel in order to avoid slander. It's probably not a coincidence, then, that she has this memory of Christ's suffering at this particular time. She often equates—as Jesus does—her suffering slander to Christ's own Passion. While all human suffering can be related to Christ's suffering in this way, slander is a particularly appropriate trigger for Kempe. She would have known that Christ was mocked and accused of many things on the way to crucifixion.
Quote #8
[...] she thought to herself how she in her young days had had very many delectable thoughts, physical lust, and inordinate love for his body. And therefore she was glad to be punished by means of the same body, and took it much the more easily, and served him and helped him, she thought, as she would have done Christ himself. (I.76.221)
John Kempe, Kempe's husband, takes a nasty fall down the stairs when he is an old man, and Kempe has to take care of him. She hates doing this, because it takes away from her contemplative time. However, the memory of her former lust for her husband's body settles her down to the task much more easily, since she sees this all as a form of penance. This is an interesting confession, since Kempe usually says so little about her experiences as a wife.
Quote #9
For many years on Palm Sunday, as this creature was at the procession with other good people in the churchyard, and saw how the priests kept their observances, how they knelt to the sacrament, and the people too, it seemed to her spiritual sight as though she had been at that time in Jerusalem, and seen our Lord in his manhood received by the people as he was while he went about here on earth. (I.78.224-225)
There's a kind of double memory going on in this passage. First, Kempe's attending a Palm Sunday Mass, which memorializes Christ's entrance into Jerusalem. Because it is a reenactment of this event, it triggers a kind of memory experience for Kempe, in which she uses her own experiences in Jerusalem to participate imaginatively in Christ's journey.