Julian of Norwich May 8th

Julian of Norwich (1342-1416) was the first woman English Christian mystic. She lived at the time of plagues (just after the Black Death) and peasant uprisings. Perhaps her most famous work is “Revelations of Divine Love” the result of her visions of Jesus during a severe illness.

Unlike the theology of the time Julian wrote about God’s love in terms of joy and compassion rather than as a result of law and duty. God is all loving and without wrath. This is when most people saw God punishing people because of their wickedness. According to Julian, God is both our mother and our father. However, this could be more a metaphor than literal. Her work still has an important impact on Christian thinkers today. “Revelations of Divine Love” and many of her other works are still in print.

"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well", which Julian claimed to be said to her by God himself, reflects her theology.

“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.”

Legacy

The 20th-century poet T.S. Eliot incorporated the saying that "…All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well", as well as Julian's "the ground of our beseeching" from the 14th Revelation, into Little Gidding, the fourth of his Four Quartets:

Whatever we inherit from the fortunate

We have taken from the defeated

What they had to leave us—a symbol:

A symbol perfected in death.

And all shall be well and

All manner of things shall be well

By the purification of the motive

In the ground of our beseeching.

Julian's feast day in the Roman Catholic tradition is on 13 May. In the Anglican and Lutheran traditions, her feast day is on 8 May.

More information is obtained by following the link: http://www.juliancentre.org