Revelations of Divine Love. Julian of Norwich

Profunda, Ecstatica—so Julian has been designated; perhaps she might in fuller truth be called Theodidacta, Profunda, Evangelica. She is indeed a mystic, evangelical, practical. With all her fellow-Christians and in the most deeply personal concern she looks with a tender mind on the redeeming work of God by Christ in the “glorious satisfaction” (“Asseth”), and in fervent response of love and thankfulness trusts in the blessed Passion of Christ, and in His sure keeping, and in all the restoring, fulfilling work by the Holy Ghost. But after the Mystical manner she seeks “the beyond”: that is, while in no way leaving the works of mercy and grace she seeks to go back to the ground or source of them, the Goodness of God,—yes, to God Himself. “I could not have perceived of the part of Mercy but as it were alone in Love.” “The Passion was a noble worshipful deed done in a time, but Love was without beginning, is, and shall be without ending.”

      The Mystical Vision is that which in outward nature sees the unseen within the seen, but it is also that which in spiritual things sees behind and beyond the temporal means, the eternal causes and ends (vi.). And it is surely here in the spiritual things, in the heart and centre of human existence, in the stress of sin and suffering, rather than amongst the gentle growing things, and flaming lights, and songs, and blameless creatures of Nature that the Beatific Vision on earth is at its highest. For here are found united the Evangel and the Vision and the Life of love. “There the soul is highest, noblest, and worthiest, where it is lowest, meekest, and mildest”: it is not in nature’s goodness alone that we have our life, “all our life is in three,” in nature, in mercy, in grace; “whereof we have meekness, mildness, patience and pity” (lviii., lix.). Man’s “spirit,” the higher nature that Julian talks of, may indeed be there in the Heavenly places, as an infant’s angel lying in the Father’s arms, always beholding His Face in love’s silence of waiting; but here in earthly places is the Prodigal Son returning, here too is the Father’s embrace, and here is His earliest greeting of the son that was lost and is found. And already here in the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth (where all grow pure in the sonship obedience of Jesus Christ), are those that are kept from the first as little children, taken up in His arms and suffered to sing their Hosannahs, which perfect His praise.

      The Revelation of Love is all centred in the Passion, and looking on the Passion in time the soul sees, in vision, the Lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world, the mind conceives how before all time the Divine Love took to itself in the Wisdom of God the mode of Manhood, and in time created Man in the same, and how thus God could be and do all that man could be and do, could exercise Love Divine in human Faith and Courage: could “take our flesh” and live on the earth as “the Man, Christ-Jesus,” “in all points tempted like as we are,” finding His daily Bread in the will of the Father, drinking with joy of the Wine of Life in the evening cup of Death. “Pain is passing,” says Julian, but in passing it leads forth love in man to its deepest living, its fairest height of pureness and strength and fulfilment. Thus it behoved the Captain of man’s salvation to have His perfection here through suffering. It is the Lamb in the midst of the Throne, the Almighty Love that was slain, that is Shepherd to the Martyrs, leading them unto living fountains of waters. He that bore the yoke gives rest to the heavy-laden; blessed is He that mourned: for He comforteth with His comfort.

      So in the Mediaeval story,{29} the highest Mystical Vision, the sight of the Holy Grail, comes only to him that is pure from self, and looks on the bleeding wound that sin has left in man, and is compassionate, and gives himself to service and healing.—Can ye drink of the Cup I drank of?—Love’s Cup that is Death and Life.—

      Wine of Love’s joy I see thy cup

      Red to the trembling brim

      With Life outpoured, once lifted up,

      I drink, remembering Him.—

      It is the mourners who are comforted: those that bear griefs of their own, or bear griefs of others fully, do not despair, though the mere onlooker may well despair. Thus the compassionate Julian’s vision is of Comfort—comfort not for herself “in special,” but for “the general Man”—for all her fellow-Christians. She who had long time mourned for the hurt that is come by sin to the creature, came to the sight of comfort not by turning her eyes away but by deeper compassion that found through the very wounds the healing of Love on earth, the glory of Love in Heaven. She was “filled with compassion for the Passion of Christ,” and thus she saw His joy; so afterwards, she tells, “I was fulfilled in part with compassion of all mine even-Christians, for that well, well-beloved people that shall be saved. For God’s servants, Holy Church, shall be shaken in sorrow and anguish and tribulation in this world, as men shake a cloth in the wind. And as to this our Lord answered in this manner: A great thing shall I make hereof in Heaven of endless worship and everlasting joys. Yea so far forth as this I saw: that our Lord joyeth of the tribulations of His servants, with ruth and compassion.” “For He saith: I shall wholly break you of your vain affections and of your vicious pride: and after that I shall together gather you, and make you mild and meek, clean and holy, by oneing to me” (xxviii.). Sin is indeed “the sharpest scourge,” “viler and more painful than hell, without comparison,” “an horrible thing to see for the loved soul that would be all fair and shining in the sight of God, as Nature and Grace teacheth.” And darkness, which overhangs the soul while here it is “meddling with any part of sin,” “so that we see not clearly the Blissful Countenance of our Lord,” is a lasting, life-long “natural penance” from God, the feeling of which indeed does not depart with actual sinning: “for ever the more clearly that the soul seeth this Blissful Countenance by grace of loving, the more it longeth to see it in fulness” (lxxii.). All this is in man’s experience, with many other pains—pains which in individual lives have no proportionate relation to sin, though, in general, “sin is cause of pain” and “pain purgeth.”—(“For I tell thee, howsoever thou do thou shalt have woe”), (lxxvii., xxvii.). But the Comfort Revealed shews how sin, which “hath no part of being” and “could not be known but by the pain it is cause of,” (sin which in this view may be compared to the nails of the Passion—mere dead matter, though with power to wound unto death for a time the blessed Life), sin, which is failure of human love,—leaves, notwithstanding all its horror, an opening for a fuller influx of Divine love and strength.{30} And as to darkness, “seeking is as good as beholding, for the time that God will suffer the soul to be in travail” (x.). And as to tribulation of every kind, “the Passion of our Lord is comfort to us against all this, and so is His blessed will” (xxvii.).

      The parts may seem to come by chance and to be “amiss,” but the whole, and in the whole each part, is ordered. “And when we be all brought up above, then shall we see clearly in God the secret things which be now hid to us. Then shall none of us be stirred to say: Lord, if it had been thus, then it had been full well: but we shall all say with one voice: Lord, blessed mayst Thou be, for it is thus: it is well; and now we see verily that all things are done as it was then ordained before that anything was made” (xi., lxxxv.). “Moreover He that shall be our bliss when we are there, is our Keeper while we are here”; and the Last Word of the Revelation is the same as the First; “Thou shalt not be overcome.” “He said not: Thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed, thou shalt not be distressed; but He said: Thou shalt not be overcome.”

      This is God’s comfort. And that here, meanwhile, we should take His comfort is Julian’s chief desire and instruction. For Julian, who speaking so much of sin as a strange and troubling sight, yet gives as examples of sin only a slothful mistrusting despondency,—speaks indeed of faith and hope and charity, compassion and meekness, but scarcely exhorts except to the cheerful enduring of tribulation. So she gives counsel as to “rejoicing more in His whole love than sorrowing in our often fallings”; as to “living gladly and merrily for love’s sake” in our penance of darkness (lxxii.-lxxxi.). And in general, for all experiences of life, “It is God’s will that we take His promises and His comforting as largely and as mightily as we may take them, and also He willeth that we take our abiding and our troubles as lightly as we may take them, and set them at nought” (lxiv., lxv., xv.).

      “We are all one in comfort,” says Julian, “all the gracious comfort was for all mine even-Christians.” Sin separates, pain isolates, but salvation and comfort unite.