Julian of Norwich
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Julian of Norwich Mystic Anchoress Spiritual Guide Julian of Norwich • 14th Century English mystic, writer, and spiritual teacher • “Julian,” anchoress of St. Julian’s Church in Norwich • Wrote A Revelation of Love (Short and Long Text) Julian of Norwich • One of the most important Christian mystics • First woman to write a book in English • Thomas Merton said: “Julian is without a doubt one of the most wonderful of all Christian voices . the greatest English theologian . Nowhere in all Christian literature are the dimensions of her Christian optimism excelled.” • Lived in turbulent times – Peasants' Revolt, Black Plague, beginning of Hundred Years War, Papal Schism, rise of Lollardy, and burning of heretics Original Insights • God’s nearness and goodness encloses all of creation. • God is Love; Love excludes wrath. • Sin has “no substance.” • “Our Savior is our true mother;” the Trinity is our mother. • God is the foundation and prime mover of prayer. Julian in Context • Possibly daughter of a cloth merchant • Age six at time of the Black Plague in 1349 • Women had limited educational and occupational opportunities. • Possibly a widow • Faith and prayer were integral to her daily life. Julian the Mystic • In May 1373, at age 30, she experienced a series of visions while ill. • Through her visions of Christ’s Passion, she receives 16 revelations. • She believed the visions were a gift and meant to be shared. • She wrote in the vernacular. Julian the Anchoress • Underwent religious Rite of Enclosure similar to funeral rite. • Benedictine-based regimen for daily life • Prayed, counseled, and served as an exemplar of holiness Julian the Anchoress • Community provided financial support and sought her intercessory help. • Most cells had three windows – a “squint” facing the sanctuary; a window for receiving food and disposing of waste; and a third for offering counsel. • Margaery Kempe visited Julian in 1413. St. Julian’s Church Julian’s Cell Manuscripts • Three known copies of Long Text. • One copy of Short Text. • 1978 Colledge and Walsh critical edition of Short and Long Text, first in Classics of Western Spirituality series. Sources God’s Universal Love • Eyes fixed on the cross, Julian is filled with the knowledge: “And in this was contained and specified the blessed Trinity, with the Incarnation and the union between God and man’s soul (LT1) . for where Jesus appears the blessed Trinity is understood” (LT4). “Our good Lord showed a spiritual sight of his familiar love. 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” (LT5). “He showed me something small, no bigger than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand . In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is that God loves it, the third is that God preserves it” (LT5). God’s Homely Care • God’s concern for humanity’s simplest, natural functions is uniquely presented. “A man walks upright, and the food in his body is shut in as if in a well-made purse. When the time of necessity comes, the purse is opened and then shut again . And it is God who does this, as it is shown when he says that he comes down to us in our humblest needs” (LT6). “I did not see sin . .” • In seeing all things in God, Julian says, “in all this sin was not shown to me” (LT11). • Sin “has no kind of substance, no share in being, nor can it be recognized except by the pain caused by it” (LT27). • “Sin is necessary, but all will be well . .” (LT27). “For the same true love which touches us all by its blessed strength, that same blessed love teaches us that we must hate sin only because of love” (LT40). “For I saw no wrath . .” • Wrath is revealed as a purely human emotion and “is nothing else but a perversity and an opposition to peace and love” (LT 48). • “For though we may feel in ourselves anger, contention and strife, still we are all mercifully enclosed in God’s mildness and in his meekness . .” (LT49). “I saw truly that our Lord was never angry, and never will be. Because he is God, he is good, he is truth, he is love, he is peace; and his power, his wisdom, his charity and his unity do not allow him to be angry” (LT46). The Parable • After 20 years of reflection, Julian receives insight of how God “lovely and sweetly” gazes upon humanity in light of the glorified Jesus. “When Adam fell, God’s Son fell; because of the true union which was made in heaven, God’s Son could not be separated from Adam, for by Adam I understand all [humankind]. Adam fell from life to death, into the valley of this wretched world . God’s Son fell with Adam, into the valley of the womb of the maiden who was the fairest daughter of Adam . The strength and goodness that we have is from Jesus Christ, the weakness and blindness that we have is from Adam, which two were shown in the servant” (LT51). Motherhood of God • Julian assigns human qualities of motherhood to God – especially to Jesus Christ, the Son of God – as the foundation of her Trinitarian theology. “For the almighty truth of the Trinity is our Father, for he made us and keeps us in him. And the deep wisdom of the Trinity is our Mother, in whom we are enclosed. And the high goodness of the Trinity is our Lord, and in him we are enclosed and he in us” (LT54). • Through our individual creations, each of us is knitted and joined inseparably to Christ. “God the blessed Trinity, who is everlasting being, just as he is eternal from without beginning, just so was it in his eternal purpose to create human nature, which fair nature was first prepared for his own Son, the second person; and when he wished, by full agreement of the whole Trinity he created us all at once. And in our creating he joined and united us to himself, and through this union we are kept as pure and as noble as we were created” (LT58). Jesus as Mother • The Motherhood of God is the measure of true human motherhood. Jesus Christ is “where the foundation of motherhood begins” (LT59). “This fair lovely word ‘mother’ is so sweet and so kind in itself that it cannot truly be said of anyone or to anyone except of him [Jesus] and to him who is the true Mother of life and of all things” (LT60). • “The mother can give her child to suck of her milk, but our precious Mother Jesus can feed us with himself” (LT60). “So in our true Mother Jesus our life is founded in his own prescient wisdom from without beginning, with the great power of the Father and the supreme goodness of the Holy Spirit. And in accepting our nature he gave us life, and in his blessed dying on the Cross he bore us to endless life” (LT63). “Prayer unites the soul to God” • Julian reveals two important aspects of prayer: right attitude and confident trust “But still our trust is often not complete, because we are not sure that God hears us, as we think, because of our unworthiness and because we are feeling nothing at all; for often we are as barren and dry after our prayers as we were before” (LT41). • She affirms that God hears our prayers and that they are in fact the work of God: “I am the ground of your beseeching. First, it is my will that you should have it, and then I make you to wish it, and then I make you to beseech it . how could it be that you would not have what you beseech?” (LT41). • In “our own meek continual prayer” we are able to “come into him now in this life” (LT43). Love was his meaning • In the final chapter of her Long Text, she reveals the following spiritual insight in which all of the revelations are held: “What, do you wish to know your Lord’s meaning in this thing? Know it well, love was his meaning. Who reveals it to you? Love. What did he reveal to you? Love. Why does he reveal it to you? For love. Remain in this, and you will know more of the same. But you will never know different, without end” (LT86). “. the love of God creates in us such a unity that when it is truly seen, no person can separate themself from another” (LT65). .