Julian of Norwich was a 14th century English mystic who wrote but one book, "Revelations of Divine Love" (the book has also been published under the title "Showings". They are one in the same).This book is a collection of two texts, a shorter text and a longer text, which outline sixteen revelations, or showings, that Julian experienced from God.
"This is a revelation of love which Jesus Christ, our endless bliss, made into sixteen showings, of which the first about his precious crowning thorns; and in this was contained and specified the blessed Trinity, with the Incarnation and the union between God and man's soul, with many fair revelations and teachings of endless wisdom and love, in which all the revelations which follow are founded and connected." (Ch. 1)
Julian informs her reader in her second chapter that in the year 1373, on May 13, she asked God for "three graces", recollection of the Passion, bodily sickness, and to have, of God's gift, three wounds: true contrition, loving compassion, and longing with her will for God (Ch. 2). As an answer to this prayer, Julian became deathly ill, and it is at this time where she experienced these divine revelations, which she pens the words of Christ to her, "know it well, it was no hallucination which you saw today, but accept and believe it and hold firmly to it, and comfort yourself with it and trust in it, and you will not be overcome" (Ch. 68).After receiving these revelations, which she believed not to be solely for herself but for the entirety of the church, Julian wrote the short text, an account that attempted to accurately depict the revelations she saw. "About the bodily vision I have said as I saw, as truly as I am able. And about the words, I have repeated them just as our Lord revealed them to me. And about the spiritual vision, I have told a part, but I can never tell it in full" (Ch. 73).
The longer text was a product of twenty years of theological and spiritual reflection of Julian's visions. In some parts it reads the exact same as the shorter text, while in others it has expanded theological reflection. What I want to leave you with today is twelve important quotes as found in Julian's longer text:
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"For the Trinity is God, God is the Trinity. The Trinity is our maker, the Trinity is our protector, the Trinity is our everlasting lover, the Trinity is our endless joy and our bliss, by our Lord Jesus Christ and in our Lord Jesus Christ." (Ch. 4)
"I saw that he is to us everything which is good and comforting for our help. He is our clothing, who wraps and enfolds us for love, embraces us and shelters us, surrounds us for his love, which is so tender that he may never desert us . . . God is the Creator and the protector and the lover. For until I am substantially united to him, I can never have perfect rest or true happiness, until, that is, I am so attached to him that there can be no created thing between my God and me." (Ch. 5)
"It is God's will that we seek on until we see him, for it is through this that he will show himself to us, of his special grace, when it is his will." (Ch. 10)
"And for his love he said very sweetly this: If I could suffer more, I should suffer more. He did not say: If it were necessary to suffer more, but: If I could suffer more; for although it might not have been necessary, if he could suffer more he would." (Ch. 22)
"All will be well." (Ch. 27)
"The fullness of joy is to contemplate God in everything." (Ch. 35)
"God is our true peace; and he is our safe protector when we ourselves are in disquiet, and he constantly works to bring us into endless peace." (Ch. 49)
"Adam fell from life to death, into the valley of this wretched world, and after that into hell. God's Son fell with Adam, into the valley of the womb of the maiden who was the fairest daughter of Adam, and that was to excuse Adam from blame in heaven and on earth; and powerfully he brought him out of hell." (Ch. 51)
"Greatly ought we to rejoice that God dwells in our soul; and more greatly ought we to rejoice that our soul dwells in God. Our soul is created to be God's dwelling place, and the dwelling of our soul is God." (Ch. 54)
"The mother can give her child to suck of her milk, but our precious Mother Jesus can feed us with himself, and does, most courteously and most tenderly, with the blessed sacrament, which is the precious food of true life." (Ch. 60)
"We are not dead in the sight of God, nor does he ever depart from us; but he will never have his full joy in us until we have our full joy in him, truly seeing his fair, blessed face. For we are ordained to this by nature, and brought to it by grace." (Ch. 72)
"Let us flee to the Lord, and we shall be comforted. Let us touch him, and we shall be made clean. Let us cleave to him, and we shall be sure and safe from every kind of peril." (Ch. 77)
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