St. Christopher Ladies Guild Woman of the Month
Julian of Norwich (1342-1416)
Years ago, my husband, our five children and I took a rafting trip down the Roaring Fork River near Aspen, Colorado. We enjoyed the stunning scenery while relaxing on an oversized raft with several other groups. As we meandered through the wilderness we came upon a large tree near the riverbank which contained a small house perched within it its branches and reached by a ladder from below. Our tour guide informed us that a local hermit lived there. My then ten-year old son exclaimed loudly and enthusiastically: “That’d be a great place for you to live, Mom!” And it’s true, during times of family chaos and stressful world events, I often wished aloud to join a cloister or become a hermitess. But in my attempts to embrace peace, patience, and tranquility, I more often resemble the Seinfeld character Frank Constanza as he screams: “SERENITY NOW!”
Julian of Norwich was just such a hermitess, known also as an anchoress, who withdrew from society for religious reasons, yet remained in a cell attached to the church of St. Julian in Norwich, England from which she took her name. She is most well-known in our times for her phrase: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well,” which comes from her spiritual masterpiece, Revelations of Divine Love. Her book details a series of visions or “showings”, as she calls them, which she experienced during a severe, life-threatening illness that left her physically paralyzed for a time. (Pathologists today believe she may have suffered from botulism, Guillain-Barre syndrome, or a tick-borne disease) During this time she struggled to understand the meaning of suffering and sin. Her times were every bit as chaotic and anxiety-provoking as our own. She lived through three attacks of the bubonic plague from which nearly half the population of Norwich died. Both the king and the Archbishop of Canterbury were assassinated and three popes were fighting each other for the papal throne. The Hundred Years’ War ground on, killing thousands, and resulting in ever shifting political rivalries and boundaries. Yet, despite this personal suffering and the outer worldly turmoil, Julian’s writings speak so powerfully of God’s intimate love for us that she developed quite a following in her day. Though she lived as an anchoress, she expressed great love of community and over the years thousands of pilgrims came to her window for spiritual direction and consolation. Her book was the first ever written by a woman in the English language (because she was not educated in Latin) and it became the first of a female author to be published by the printing press in the early 1500s.
Though our lives are separated by centuries and circumstance from hers, Julian’s theological insights have been described as “cutting edge” and “avant garde” and of “belonging to the 22nd century” more than the 14th. Pope Benedict spoke at length about Julian’s writings during a general audience in 2010. He especially admired her insights on the feminine and mothering qualities of God. “She compares divine love with maternal love. This is one of the most characteristic messages of her mystical theology. The tenderness, solicitude and sweetness of God’s goodness towards us are so great that to us, pilgrims on the earth, they seem as the love of a mother for her children.” Such luminaries as C. S. Lewis and Thomas Merton also deeply admired Julian’s writings. Lewis quoted her in many of his books and Merton, inspired by her authenticity and originality, called her “one of the most wonderful of all Christian voices” and “the greatest English theologian.”
The summer months are the perfect time to contemplate the words of Julian of Norwich and to make her a companion on our spiritual journey. Despite our busy lives and turbulent times, we all contain the seeds of mysticism within, just waiting to be nurtured. In doing so, may we, like her, know that God is “our clothing, that for love wraps us and winds us, embraces us and totally encloses us, hanging about us for tender love, that He may never leave us.”
Works Consulted
https://catholicnews.sg/2010/12/02/julian-of-norwich-primacy-of-divine-love/
Julian of Norwich. Revelation of Love. (John Skinner, Ed. & Trans.). Image Books, 1996.
https://www.spiritualwanderlust.org/post/the-19-best-julian-of-norwich-quotes
https://uscatholic.org/articles/201604/julian-of-norwich-and-a-life-full-of-love/
https://uscatholic.org/articles/201311/what-julian-of-norwich-can-teach-us-about-prayer/
Words of
Julian of Norwich
“Prayer oneth the soul to God.”
“God is all that is good, and God has made all that is made, and God loves all that he has made.”
“I am Ground of your longing.”
“God, of your goodness, give me yourself; you are enough for me, and anything less that I could ask for would not do you full honor. And if I ask anything that is less, I shall always lack something, but in you alone I have everything.”
“If there is anywhere on earth a lover of God who is always kept safe, I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me. But this was shown: that in falling and rising again we are always kept in that same precious love.”
“He said not ‘Thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed, thou shalt not be dis-eased’; but he said, ‘Thou shalt not be overcome.’”
“The Goodness that is Nature is God. He is the ground, He is the substance, He is the same thing as Naturehood. And He is the very Father and very Mother of Nature.”
“Thus, in our Very Mother, Jesus, our life is grounded…He feeds us and nurtures us as childhood requires.”