PREFACE

naming, without realizing it, one of the twelve apostles, Thomas Didymus: an apostle of Jesus, also known as "Doubting Thomas" 1, the double abyss was the dwelling where she spent her earthly life. It was her palace, her temple, her royal residence. When she questions the depth, the Passion of Jesus Christ: the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus tells her fearsome secrets. She plunges a terrified and terrifying gaze into His human sorrows, and even into His physical pains. She sees as she loves; this is why she sees even the shape of the nails; she measures the pain by the number of their facets. She calculates the aggravations of this pain according to the details she has discovered.

Among these accounts of the Passion, there are terrible things that one forgets to consider. A person's life—which is, in any case, much too short to cast a lead line into the abysses original: "jeter la sonde," a nautical metaphor for measuring depth—is furthermore spent on other things. Angela: Angela of Foligno (1248–1309), an Italian mystic and Franciscan tertiary had a fearsome familiarity with the physical tortures of the Passion, which allowed her devouring eyes to follow the flesh of Jesus, the flesh of the feet and the hands, into the interior of the wood where the nails drove them. She witnesses the atrocious tension of the arms, legs, and nerves. She recounts as if she had seen—as if she had seen what even the executioners did not see.

Footnote at the bottom of the page
1. Thomas Didymus in Hebrew signifies "double abyss." The author provides a mystical etymology here; while "Thomas" and "Didymus" both traditionally mean "twin," the text links them to the concept of deep spiritual depths.