PREFACE

same, promises uniformity to the figures it fashions.

Now, nothing is more false.

The world of the elect: those chosen by God, specifically the saints is a universe; larger than the material universe, but composed, like the latter, of unity and variety. To name the universe, one must name these two elements.

The elect are all elect; but each has their own proper virtue. Jesus Christ, who is their unity, their peace, their universal type: here meaning the archetype or original model, marks them, like a royal seal, with the sacred unity of the Spirit. But remembering that he made the violets, the lilies, and the roses differently capable of absorbing original: "s'assimiler" the rays of the same sun, he has left to each their own mark, their character, their form, and their name. There are not two leaves of a tree in the world that are exactly alike. All the stones of the eternal temple are the stones of the Jerusalem which shall not end; but not one among them is carved like its neighbor.

If Saint Gertrude Saint Gertrude the Great (1256–1302) was a German Benedictine mystic known for her deep devotion to the humanity of Christ was, says Olier Jean-Jacques Olier (1608–1657) was a key figure in the French School of Spirituality and founder of the Sulpicians, the saint of the humanity of Jesus Christ, and Saint Catherine of Genoa A 15th-century Italian mystic (1447–1510) famous for her mystical experiences and her service to the sick the saint of his divinity, it seems that the Blessed Angela of Foligno unites these two kinds of contemplation, of light and of adoration. It seems that she penetrated into the abysses of the heights, as into those of the depths. The double abyss, of which she sometimes speaks,