Julian of Norwich, 1417
Julian of Norwich’s Feast Day is not until tomorrow, May 8, but I am ‘translating’ her to today for us to have an opportunity to meet her or renew our relationship with her.
We know very little about Julian’s early life, only the probable date of her birth (1342). Her own writing in the “Revelations of Divine Love” has to do with her visions, or “showings,” she experienced during a grave illness when she was 30.
Dame Julian’s book is a tender and beautiful exposition of God’s eternal and all-embracing love, showing how His charity toward the human race is exhibited in the Passion. Again and again, she refers to Christ as “our courteous Lord.”
Many have found strength (very much including my late wife, Jane) in the words He gave her. “I can make all things well; I will make all things well; I shall make all things well; and thou canst see for thyself that all manner of things shall be well.” Over the last year of Jane’s life, as she was losing her physical sight, she took great insight and comfort from these words of Julian, as her spiritual sight began to increase more and more.
Julian’s vision was not a flight into fantasy from reality. It was, instead, a call to look at the world with the Spirit of God, to look beyond the limits of our own weaknesses, our own powers and abilities, to look with an eye for the possibilities and to see God’s possibilities present in our realities. We need this vision to counter our despair that we shall never progress beyond the moment—that we shall be overwhelmed by our future or eternally shackled to our past.
It is impossible at this distance to know with any certainty just what Mary Magdalene "saw" in the garden on Easter morning, or what the assembly of frightened disciples "saw" within their closed room. We can never know what Julian of Norwich, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila or Francis of Assisi actually saw.
We have only their words and the spirit of their visions, the irrepressible Spirit of God that emanated from them and generations of faithful people since, filling them with unshakable confidence that "all can be well, will be well, and shall be well."
From a portion of the collect for her day: "...move our hearts, like hers, to seek Thee above all things, for in giving us Thyself, Thou givest us all..." Amen.
