Julian of Norwich – her life and work
On 8th May 1373, when she was thirty years old, Julian suffered a severe illness from which she almost died. During that illness she received a series of visions of the Passion of Christ and the love of God. She subsequently became an anchoress at St Julian’s and spent the remainder of her life in prayer and meditation and offering comfort and advice to those who came to her window.
Over the course of some twenty years, Julian reflected on the meaning of her visions and wrote down an account of this. She was the first woman to write a book in English. It is only in the last century, and in particular in the last few decades, that The Revelations of Divine Love has been published and distributed widely throughout the world. Julian’s wisdom teaching is today regarded as a classic in the canon of Western spirituality, and it is an important spiritual resource for our times.
Julian’s insights into the nature of God and the human condition were ahead of her time. Contrary to the punitive ideas that were the common currency of medieval church teaching with its emphasis on sin, punishment and purgatory, Julian perceived that there is no anger in God. It is in God’s nature, says Julian, to 'put away all our blame', and to 'regard us with pity and compassion as innocent and guiltless children.' Likewise, in contrast to the patriarchal language and concepts of the established church, she saw God not only as an all-powerful and mighty Father, but also as a tender loving Mother.
Sin, Julian perceived, ‘has no substance’ in our being. This is not to say that she did not recognise the damage and darkness that men and women fall into, but that, while sin and suffering is somehow necessary for our human journey, it does not have the final word. Our pain can be turned to profit by becoming a valuable source of self-knowledge and humility. Moreover, through seeking God’s mercy, our wounds are no longer seen as wounds but as honours.
Despite the very real existence of pain and sin, in ourselves and in our world, says Julian, ‘all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.’ It is through her unshakeable confidence in the transformative power of God’s unconditional love that this extraordinary claim emerges, an assurance that resonates in our own troubled times with a profound ring of hope.
Julian ends her book with a prayer that her work may fall only into the hands of those who wish to love God. Given the religious climate of the time, where anyone who displayed independent thinking was in potential danger of being burnt at the stake for heresy, Julian’s work was undertaken with considerable risk. This accounts, at least in part, for the obscurity which enveloped her writing for so long. It also helps explain her sense of caution about the readership of The Revelations and makes her accomplishment all the more remarkable.
From the time of her visions in 1373 until she finished her book some twenty years later, Julian puzzled over the question, ‘what was our Lord’s meaning?’ At the end of this long journey, she receives the answer:
‘What, do you wish to know your Lord’s meaning in this thing? Know it well, love was his meaning. Who reveals it to you? Love. What did he reveal to you? Love. Why does he reveal it to you? For love. [...] So I was taught that love is our Lord’s meaning. And I saw very certainly in this and in everything that before God made us he loved us, which love was never abated and never will be.’
The reason this meaning was revealed to her, says Julian, is ‘because God wants to have it better known to us than it is’. Julian informs us that her work began as ‘God’s gift and grace’ but that, at the time of writing, ‘it is not yet performed’.
More than six centuries later, it is now the task of those who have experienced the grace, beauty and power of her words to ensure that her book and the passionate love of God that it depicts is ‘performed’ fully and widely. Love, as St Paul says, is indeed patient.