Revelations of Divine Love. Julian of Norwich

and protection. Occasionally a little group of recluses lived together like those three young sisters of the Thirteenth Century for whom the Ancren Riwle, a Rule or Counsel for “Ancres,” was at their own request composed. The recluse’s chamber seems to have generally had three windows: one looking into the adjoining Church, so that she could take part in the Services there; another communicating with one of those rooms under the keeping of her “maidens,” in which occasionally a guest might be entertained; and a third—the “parlour” window—opening to the outside, to which all might come that desired to speak with her. According to the Ancren Riwle the covering-screen for this audience-window was a curtain of double cloth, black with a cross of white through which the sunshine would penetrate—sign of the Dayspring from on high. This screen could of course be drawn back when the recluse ‘held a parliament’ with any that came to her.{6}

      Before Julian passed from the sunny lawns and meadows of Carrow, along the road by the river and up the lane to the left by the gardens and orchards of the Coniston of that day, to the little Churchyard house that would hide so much from her eyes of outward beauty, and yet leave so much in its changeful perpetual quietude around her (great skies overhead like the ample heavenly garments of her vision “blue as azure most deep and fair”; little Speedwell’s blue by the crannied wall of the Churchyard—Veronika, true Image, like the Saint’s “Holy Vernacle at Rome “) her vow{7} might be: “I offering yield myself to the divine Goodness{8} for service, in the order of anchorites: and I promise to continue in the service of God after the rule of that order, by divine grace and the counsel of the Church: and to shew canonical obedience to my ghostly fathers.”

      The only reference that Julian makes to the life dedicated more especially to Contemplation is where she is speaking, as if from experience, of the temptation to despair because of falling oftentimes into the same sins, “especially into sloth and losing of time. For that is the beginning of sin, as to my sight,—and especially to the creatures that have given themselves to serve our Lord with inward beholding of His blessed Goodness.”{9}

      “One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in His temple”—His Sanctuary of the Church or of the soul. That was her calling. She had heard the Voice that comes to the soul in Spring-time and calls to the Garden of lilies, and calls to the Garden of Olive-trees (where all the spices offered are in one Cup of Heavenly Wine): “Surge, proper a amica mea: jam enim Hyems transiit, imber ambiit et recessit. Surge, propera amica mea, speciosa mea, et veni.” “Arise: let us go hence”{10} “For this is the natural yearnings of the soul by the touching of the Holy Ghost: God of Thy Goodness, give me Thyself, for Thou art enough to me; … and if I ask anything that is less, ever me wanteth; but only in Thee I have all” (v.).

      “A soul that only fasteneth itself on to God with very trust, either by seeking or in beholding, it is the most worship that it may do to Him, as to my sight” (x.). “To enquire” and “to behold”—no doubt it was for these that Julian sought time and quiet. For she had urgent questionings and “stirrings” in her mind over “the great hurt that is come by sin to the creature”—“afore this time often I wondered why by the great foreseeing wisdom of God the beginning of sin was not letted” (“mourning and sorrow I made over it without reason and discretion”); and also she was filled with desire for God: “the longing that I had to Him afore” (xxvii.).

      Moreover, this life to which Julian gave herself was to be a life of “meek continuant prayers” “for enabling” of herself in her weakness, and for help to others in all their needs. For thought and worship could only be held together by active prayer: the pitiful beholding of evil and pain and the joyful beholding of Goodness and Love would be at war, as it were, with each other, unless they were set at peace for the time by the prayer of intercession. And that is the call of the loving soul, strong in its infant feebleness to wake the answering Revelation of Love to faith that “all shall be well,” and that “all is well” and that when all are come up above and the whole is known, all shall be seen to be well, and to have been well through the time of tribulation and travail.

      “At some time in the day or night,” says the Ancren Riwle, which Julian perhaps may have read, though as to such prayers her compassionate heart was its own director—“At some time in the day or night think upon and call to mind all who are sick and sorrowful, who suffer affliction and poverty, the pain which prisoners endure who lie heavily fettered with iron ; think especially of the Christians who are amongst the heathen, some in prison, some in so great thralldom as is an ox or an ass; compassionate those who are under strong temptations; take thought of all men’s sorrows, and sigh to our Lord that He may take care of them and have compassion and look upon them with a gracious eye; and if you have leisure, repeat this Psalm, I have lifted up mine eyes. Paternoster. Return, O Lord, how long, and be intreated in favour of Thy servants: Let us pray. ‘Stretch forth, O Lord, to thy servants and to thy handmaids the right hand of thy heavenly aid, that they may seek thee with all their heart, and obtain what they worthily ask through Jesus Christ our Lord.’” Julian tells how in her thinking of sin and its hurt there passed before her sight all that Christ bore for us, “and His dying; and all the pains and passions of all His creatures, ghostly and bodily; and the beholding of this—with all pains that ever were or ever shall be” (xxvii). From sin, except as a general conception, Julian’s natural instinct was to turn her eyes; but with this Christly compassion in her heart in looking on the sorrows of the world she could not but take account of its sin. As she came to be convinced that “though we be highly lifted up into contemplation, it is needful for us to see our own sin,”—albeit we should not accuse ourselves “overdone much” or “be heavy or sorrowful indiscreetly”—so when sins of others were brought before her she would seek with compassion to take the sinner’s part of contrition and prayer. “The beholding of other man’s sins, it maketh as it were a thick mist afore the eyes of the soul, and we cannot, for the time, see the fairness of God, but if we can behold them with contrition with him, with compassion on him, and with holy desire to God for him” (lxxvi.).

      And notwithstanding all the stir and eager revival of the Fourteenth Century in religion, politics, literature and general life, there was much both of sin and of sorrow then to exercise the pitiful soul—troubles enough in Norwich itself, of oppression and riot and desolating pestilence—troubles enough in Europe, West and East,—wars and enslaving and many cruelties in distant lands, and harried Armenian Christians coming to the Court of Edward to plead for succour in their long-enduring patience. There was trouble wherever one looked; but to prayer, and to that compassion which is in itself a prayer, the answer came. Indeed the compassion was its own first immediate answer: for “then I saw that each kind compassion that man hath on his even-Cristen (his fellow-Christians) with charity, it is Christ in him.” This is the comfort that both comforts in waiting and calls to deeds of help. And such “charity” of social service was not beyond the scope of the life “enclosed,”—whether it might be by deed or, as more often, by speech.{11}

      It is in her seeking for truth and her beholding of Love that we best know Julian. Of the opening of the Revelation she says: “In all this I was greatly stirred in charity to mine even-Christians, that they might see and know the same that I saw: for I would it were comfort to them,” and again and again throughout the book she declares that the “special Shewing” is given not for her in special, but for all—for all are meant to be one in comfort as all are one in need. “Because of the Shewing I am not good, but if I love God the better: and in as much as ye love God the better it is more to you than to me…. For we are all one in comfort. For truly it was not shewed me that God loved me better than the least soul that is in grace; for I am certain that there be many that never had any Shewing nor sight but of the common teaching of Holy Church that love God better than I. For if I look singularly to myself I am right nought; but in general [manner of regarding] I am, I hope, in oneness of charity with all mine even-Christians. For in this oneness standeth the life of all mankind that shall be saved, and that which I say of me, I say in the person of all mine evenChristians: for I am taught in the Spiritual Shewing of our Lord God that He meaneth it so. And therefore I pray you for God’s sake, and counsel you for your own profit that ye leave the beholding of a worthless creature [a “wretch”]