The Shewings of Julian of Norwich: Part IV
A Summary of Revelation 14
As part of my Theology and Literature class, I am working on a summary of Julian’s Shewings. I thought I would post them here in case someone might find them helpful. Here is the first installment, the second, and the third. I have italicized the sections where the shewings proper are described.
In ch. 52, Julian begins by reflecting on God as the soul’s Mother and Spouse. She notes that our life is a mixture of weal (salvation/well-being) and woe, because we are both risen in Christ and fallen in Adam. Sometimes we live more in one of these identities than the other, and we are so mixed up between them that we scarcely know where we stand. But we can take comfort from the fact that Christ is not only with us in heaven, but on earth and in our soul. We should not be reckless and sin as if it did not matter, but neither should we despair. We should accuse ourselves, but also keep in mind God’s mercy. We have pain and suffering in our lower part (or sensuality), which is for our benefit, but in our higher part (our natural substance) we rejoice.
In ch. 53, Julian tells us again that there is a godly will in everyone that shall be saved that never consents to sin and never will. Why? Because we are knitted together and united in our natural substance with Jesus Christ. We have been eternally loved in him; God did not begin to love humanity at some particular point. Our soul is not made out of anything created. This is why there is not anything between God and the high point of our soul, so closely are they united. Every soul that shall be saved is part of an eternal knot tied in Christ.
In ch. 54, Julian points us, beyond the high truth that God dwells in our soul as maker, to the even higher truth that we dwell in God in our natural substance. She sees no difference between God and our natural substance, but she knows intellectually that God is uncreated divinity and our natural substance is a creature in God. It goes in both directions: we are “beclosed” or contained in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but they are also beclosed or contained in us.
In ch. 55, Julian writes that Christ bears us up in his body to heaven, which is more truly our location than the earth is. Our faith is tied to the natural love of our substance and, through God’s mercy, helps us rejoin it. Our sensuality has our substance as its ground. Our substance is in God, and God is in our sensuality, in which he dwells as his city. Our soul and our body are growing together and help each other. Our soul is a created Trinity like the uncreated Trinity. Jesus, who is united to our substance in our first making, is united to our sensuality in our remaking - that is, by his taking a human body and sensuality in the Incarnation.
In ch. 56, Julian first says that we cannot know ourselves unless we first know God, in whom our life is hid. For God is closer to us than we are to ourselves. And yet she also says we can’t know God unless we first know ourselves. Our ultimate well-being depends in part on our natural substance, and in part on grace, which restores us to our natural substance and brings our healed sensuality along with it. In our first creation, God gave us on the level of the natural substance (or spirit) all that he could, but the full good he wanted to give us required us to be both substance and sensuality.
In ch. 57, Julian writes about our becoming sensual. Our natural substance is full and perfect, and is the source for many the virtues that come to us in our sensuality. Our substance is full, although our sensuality immediately fails or falls. But once this fall into sensuality happens, in addition to the natural goodness of our substance, we also receive additional gifts from God’s mercy and grace, which our natural goodness enables us to receive. Christ is the one who joins together our substance and sensuality, for both are united to God in him, and this union of substance and sensuality (of pure soul and the bodily aspects of the soul), even though it seems to result from the fall, was known and planned in advance by God. Our faith comes to us from our natural substance and the same virtues which are in us naturally come back to us through God’s mercy and grace. Julian begins to reflect on Mary as our mother, but also Jesus the Savior as our Mother.
In ch. 58, Julian tells us that human nature was first envisioned or appointed for Jesus and we were all made at once in him, in our natural substance. God is our Father, our Mother, and our true Spouse. The Father is our Father, and the Son is our Brother, Mother, and Savior. From the Father we have the preservation of our natural substance, from the Son the redemption of our sensuality, and in the Holy Spirit our reward and a gift even beyond the rewards we deserve. The Son is the Mother of our natural substance, but he has become the Mother of our sensuality too. From the Father we have our being, from the Son our restoring, and from the Holy Spirit our fulfillment. Our substance is in all the persons of the Trinity, but our sensuality only in Christ.
In ch. 59, Julian says again that it is proper to God to work good against evil, and that we will experience more bliss after being restored from the Fall than if it had not happened. God is as truly our Mother - with which Julian associates wisdom and kindness - as he is our Father. This was part of what he meant in saying to Julian - “I it am.”
In ch. 60, Julian writes that Christ wanted to be our Mother in all things, not just our natural substance. So he became lowly and mild in the Virgin’s womb. A mother’s love is the nearest, readiest, and surest thing, willing to experience pain and even death. Jesus is the only one who has fulfilled these features of motherhood to the maximum, and he would have suffered more if he could. Mothers give their children milk, but Christ gives himself in the sacraments. This is the meaning of him saying he is holy Church: he is the reality and meaning of everything the Church says and offers. The lovely word “mother” can only be truly applied to him, and he is the one who does the deed of motherhood even in physical childbearing. As her child grows, a mother changes her works but not her love.
In ch. 61, Julian explains why God permits his children to fall into sin. It is necessary for us to fall, and it is necessary for us to see it so that we know our nothingness apart from God and his marvelous love. Like a good mother, Jesus permits us to suffer and struggle when it is for our ultimate good, but he never permits us to perish. What he wants is for his children to flee to him with all their might, and to cling to his Body Holy Church, which is unbroken as a whole even when one of its members falls.
In ch. 62, Julian reflects once again that God allows all our failings, weaknesses, and woes but turns them all into his worship (by us and of us) and our joy. He never allows us to lose time. God is the ground and substance of kindness, and heals and restores all “kinds” of creatures through humanity, which is the fullness of creation. To go into our Mother’s breast, to go to the Church, and to go into our own soul are all one. His restoring of us comes from both grace and “kind” or nature.
In ch. 63, Julian reminds us that sin is contrary to our nature and more horrible and deserving of hate that we can imagine. When nature and grace are working together, we see how horrible they are and shun them. But we have no dread, because we know that God will bring all of his children to term, so that they are born in Him. We were born to endless life on the cross, and there is no higher spiritual state in this life than to be children of this Mother. Christ our Mother will restore us to an endlessly new beginning in the Father.
In ch. 64, Julian wishes to be taken from this life of suffering and woe. But she realizes it is spiritually beneficial to go through this mortal life without knowing when we will be taken from it. For this builds patience, to be always at the brink of passing from this life. But one day, she is told, you will be suddenly taken from all your pain. She sees an image of this in a loathsome and gross body from which a pure child (representing the soul) speeds towards heaven.
In ch. 65, Julian speaks of the confidence we should have in the endless love God has for us. He wants us to be as sure of the bliss of heaven here as when we are there. We should see ourselves bound to God as closely as he has in fact bound us. And we should see ourselves bound in an absolutely tight unity of mutual love. God wants us to know that all the power of the enemy is locked in the hands of our Friend.
Here are a two of those passages:
"As the knowledge of God develops within us, it becomes the cause and agent of our ignorance of all other beings, and this includes even God himself, for the immensity of his brilliant light blinds us to everything. Sensation which transcends all things is itself beyond sensation, and so it becomes insensible to everything outside itself. How can we even call it a sensation when we cannot comprehend or grasp these things at all? We do not know what they are like, or their source and origin, or how they come about, let alone what they are in themselves. Is it not true that these things are really beyond sensation, and that the mind senses its own weakness and finds itself insensible to something which is beyond sensation? For that which the eye has not seen, or ear heard, which has never entered into the heart of man, how shall it fall within the scope of sensation?
The Lord who has graced us with these super-sensible things also gives us by his Spirit a new super-sensible sensation, so that through all our senses his gifts and graces, which supernaturally transcend sensation, can be sensed clearly and purely.
Any man who is insensible to the One! must be insensible to everything, just as he who senses the One thereby senses all things, even though he is outside all sensation. He stands within the sensation of all things, but is not overcome by this sensation.” (St. Symeon, Second Chapters 2.2-2.4)
And, St. Mechthild hears the Lord in a vision say to her: “Behold, I give you my eyes to see everything with them. I give you my ears to understand everything you hear with them. I give you my mouth to utter all that you should with it, whether you are speaking, praying, or singing. And I give you my heart to consider everything with it, loving me and all things for My sake.” With these words God drew the soul totally into Himself and united Himself with her. It seemed to her then that she saw with God’s eyes, heard with God’s ears, and spoke with His mouth; and she felt that she no other heart but His” (The Book of Special Grace 2.34)
“In ch. 55, Julian writes that Christ bears us up in his body to heaven, which is more truly our location than the earth is. Our faith is tied to the natural love of our substance and, through God’s mercy, helps us rejoin it. Our sensuality has our substance as its ground.”
This whole paragraph is a great summary. I remember in chapter 22-24 when she describes a three tiered heaven, which is all the body of the man Jesus Christ. She seems to have a consistent Christo-cosmo-logical vision. I love this unity of sense and spirit, of body and soul. She learned it, as we all must, in the warmth of personal experience.
Which also calls to mind, as McGinn notes in The Presence of God vol. 1, the long tradition of “spiritual senses” going back to Origen’s homilies on the Song of Songs.
Great stuff man! Thanks for sharing