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Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love records sixteen mystical visions and her theological reflections on sin, love, prayer, and Christ's motherhood. This deck covers her account of the revelations' circumstances and key teachings, including the three wounds and the soul's knowledge of God.
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Chapter 1 · Question
According to the Third Revelation, what is sin?
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Chapter 1 · Answer
The Third Revelation states that all Being is Being of God and is good, and that sin is no Being. Sin is thus described as lacking true being rather than as a created thing, while all that truly is comes from God and is good.
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The Third Revelation states that all Being is Being of God and is good, and that sin is no Being. Sin is thus described as lacking true being rather than as a created thing, while all that truly is comes from God and is good.
Chapter 1
The Thirteenth Revelation says man's finite love was suffered by Infinite Love to fail, so that falling through sin into pain and death of darkness, the creature might more deeply know his need and more highly know the Creator's Love as the Saviour's, and being raised and held by the Holy Ghost, rise to fuller endless oneness with God.
Chapter 1
The Fourteenth Revelation states that, beginning on earth, Prayer makes the soul one with God. It is listed as the revelation beginning on earth, in contrast to the closing Fifteenth Revelation, which concerns Love's Fulfilment in Heaven.
Chapter 1
The closing section states the meaning of the whole is of learning more on earth and in Heaven of the one thing taught in the Revelation: the Endless Love, in which Life is everlasting. The editor presents this Endless Love as the unifying theme of the entire work.
Chapter 1
Julian states the Revelation of Love was shown to her on 13 May 1373, when she was thirty and a half years old. The Fifteen consecutive Shewings lasted from about four o'clock until after nine that same morning, followed by only one other Shewing on the night of the next day. She says the teaching of these Sixteen Shewings was later renewed and enlarged by the same Spirit.
Chapter 2
Julian describes a preliminary seven days' sickness, with all its pain ceasing during the earlier visions and throughout the five hours' special Shewing. When the vision closed, physical pain, mental distress and dryness of feeling returned. She then fell into doubt about whether she had been delirious, and had a terrifying dream on Friday night, noting that this horrible Shewing came in her sleep, unlike the Sixteen Revelations.
Chapter 2
The chapter suggests Julian was likely of gentle birth and sent to Carrow Convent for education, receiving instruction in reading, writing, Latin, French and needlework, and especially in the Common Christian Belief. It says she most likely received consecration as a Benedictine nun there, since anchoresses usually, though not necessarily, belonged to a Religious Order. She was a recluse at St Julian's anchorage from 1393.
Chapter 2
Julian mentions neither her name nor her state in life, calling herself a simple creature and a wretch. She refers to fifteen years after and more, and to twenty years after save three months, so the book cannot have been finished before 1393. An old Manuscript says she was yet in life in 1442, and Blomefield records Lady Julian as ankeress at St Julian's in 1393 with two servants.
Chapter 2
Julian looks to faith as the immediate means of realizing God's nearness—faith as a gift of nature and a grace from the Holy Ghost. Faith leads, through prayer, effort of obedience, and teachableness of spirit, into actual experience of oneness with God. She does not set out to teach methods for gradually drawing near to God, but to record a Revelation of God's actual nearness to the soul.
Chapter 3
Julian says it is needful to know the littleness of creatures and to 'nought' all things made, in order to love God who is unmade. But this knowing comes first through a sight of the Goodness of God: to a soul that sees the Maker of all, all that is made seems full little. By further beholding God as Maker and Preserver, what was noughted is seen as truly of much account.
Chapter 3
Julian desired three wounds to be made more deep in her life: contrition (in sight of sin), compassion (in sight of sorrow), and longing after God. She prayed and sought diligently for these graces, feeling they were comprehensive of the Christian life and meant for all. With them she sought a sight of such truth as might behove her to know for God's glory and men's comfort.
Chapter 3
Julian does not regard Christ as the Bridegroom of the individual soul; she applies 'the Spouse,' 'the Fair Maiden,' and 'His loved Wife' only to the Church. When she seeks to express pictorially Christ's union with men and His work for men, the soul is the Child and Christ is the Mother. In this symbolic language the Christian soul's love is the love of the Child to its Mother and to each of the other children.
Chapter 3
Julian states, "God is althing that is gode, as to my sight, and the godenes that althing hath, it is He." The chapter explains that the mystic may begin at any point the beholding of Goodness and therein behold God, since "He is in the mydde poynt of all thyng, and all He doeth."
Chapter 4
The chapter says knowledge begins with God, but with Him in the lowest place of the soul rescued by mercy. Julian says it is readier to know God than our own soul, since the soul is deep-grounded in God; yet we may never fully know God till we clearly know our own soul. This seems to be Julian's view.
Chapter 4
The soul finds a natural response to grace by love and longing for God, and a contrariness to grace by failing and falling. It experiences the Godly Will, part of and gift from its higher nature, "the Substance," and a "beastly will" from the simple animal nature that can will no moral good and, failing of love, falls into sin, bringing pain and travail.
Chapter 4
The chapter argues that with Julian the Christian Faith is not added to the Mystical sight but seen as one. It says the inherent Christianity of her system makes her teaching practical, since the system came to be seen through prayerful searching out of her practical need for an answer to the problem of sin and sorrow.
Chapter 4
The First Shewing is of Christ's crowning with thorns, and therewith was comprehended and specified the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the unity betwixt God and man's soul, with many shewings of endless wisdom and teachings of love. Julian says all the Shewings that follow are grounded and oned—made one—in this First Shewing.
Chapter 5
The Seventh Shewing concerns our often feeling of weal and woe. The feeling of weal is gracious touching and lightening with true assuredness of endless joy; the feeling of woe is temptation by heaviness and irksomeness of fleshly living. Julian says ghostly understanding shows we are kept all as securely in Love in woe as in weal, by the Goodness of God.
Chapter 5
In the Thirteenth Shewing our Lord says: by the same Might, Wisdom, and Goodness that made all things, He shall make well all that is not well, and we shall see it. Julian says He willeth that we keep us in the Faith and truth of Holy Church, not desiring to see into His secret things now, save as it belongeth to us in this life.
Chapter 5
The Fourteenth Shewing is that our Lord is the Ground of our Prayer. In it were seen two properties: rightful prayer and steadfast trust, which He willeth should both be alike large. Julian says that thus our prayer pleaseth Him, and He of His Goodness fulfilleth it.
Chapter 5
Julian, describing herself as a simple unlettered creature, desired three gifts: first, a true mind of Christ's Passion; second, bodily sickness in youth at about thirty years of age; third, three wounds from God. The first two she asked with a condition of God's will, but the third she asked without any condition.
Chapter 6
She writes that she already had some feeling of Christ's Passion but desired more by God's grace. She wished to have been present with Mary Magdalene and other lovers of Christ, to see His bodily pains and the compassion of Our Lady and His true lovers, so that afterward she might have the more true mind in the Passion of Christ.
Chapter 6
Julian asked for the mind of the Passion and for bodily sickness only with a condition, praying: Lord, Thou knowest what I would, if it be Thy will that I have it; and if not, be not displeased, for she willed nothing but as God willed. The third petition, for three wounds, she asked without any condition.
Chapter 6
By God's grace and the teaching of Holy Church, Julian conceived a desire for three wounds in her life: the wound of true contrition, the wound of natural compassion, and the wound of steadfast longing toward God. She asked this last petition without condition. The first two desires passed from her mind, but the third dwelled with her continually.
Chapter 6
Julian says that when she was thirty and a half years old, God sent her a bodily sickness in which she lay three days and three nights. On the fourth night she received all her rites of Holy Church and did not expect to live until day. She then languished two more days and nights, and on the third night she and those with her often expected her to pass away.
Chapter 7
Julian says that, being still young, she thought it great sorrow to die, but not for anything on earth she loved to live for, nor from fear of pain, since she trusted in God's mercy. Rather, she wished to have lived so she might have loved God better and longer, gaining more knowing and loving of God in the bliss of Heaven.
Chapter 7
Julian says it suddenly came to her mind that she should desire the second wound of our Lord's gracious gift: that her body might be filled with mind and feeling of His blessed Passion. She wanted His pains to be her pains, with compassion and afterward longing to God. She desired no bodily sight or shewing of God, but compassion such as a kind soul might have with Jesus, and therefore desired to suffer with Him.
Chapter 7
At the moment Julian truly expected to have passed, all her pain was suddenly taken from her, and she was as whole, especially in the upper part of her body, as ever before. She marvelled at the sudden change, thinking it a privy working of God and not of nature. Yet by the feeling of this ease she trusted never the more to live, and it was no full ease to her, for she had liefer have been delivered from this world.
Chapter 7
Julian sees the red blood trickling hot and freshly from under the Garland of thorns, as it were at the time of the Passion, and then suddenly the Trinity fills her heart with utmost joy. She understands this joy as a foretaste of heaven, where it shall be without end for all who come there.
Chapter 8
Julian states that the Trinity is God and God is the Trinity; the Trinity is our Maker and Keeper, and our everlasting love, joy and bliss, by our Lord Jesus Christ. She says this was shewed in the First Shewing and in all, for where Jesus appears, the blessed Trinity is understood, as to her sight.
Chapter 8
Julian thought that by God's sufferance she should be tempted by fiends before she died. Through the sight of the blessed Passion, with the Godhead she understood in it, she knew well that it was strength enough for her, and for all creatures living, against all the fiends of hell and ghostly temptation.
Chapter 8
Julian sees Mary ghostly in bodily likeness: a simple, meek maid, young and little more than a child in stature when she conceived. Julian understands her wisdom and truth, and that she said meekly to Gabriel, 'Lo me, God's handmaid.' Julian understands that Mary is more than all God made beneath her in worthiness and grace, with only Christ's blessed Manhood above her.
Chapter 8
Julian recounts a spiritual sight of a little thing, the size of a hazel-nut, lying in her palm, round as a ball. When she wondered what it was, she was answered in her understanding: "it is all that is made." She marvelled that it could last, seeming so little it might fall to naught, and was told it lasts and ever shall last because God loveth it.
Chapter 9
Julian says that in this Little Thing she saw three properties: first, that God made it; second, that God loveth it; third, that God keepeth it. She adds that she cannot tell what is verily the Maker, Keeper, and Lover to her, for until she is substantially oned to Him she may never have full rest or true bliss.
Chapter 9
Julian argues that we need to know the littleness of creatures and hold as nought all that is made, in order to love and have God who is unmade. She says this is why we are not all at ease in heart and soul: we seek rest in little things wherein is no rest, and do not know God who is Very Rest. No soul is rested till it is willingly made nought, for love, to have Him that is all.
Chapter 9
Julian says our Lord God shewed that it is full great pleasance to Him that a helpless soul come to Him simply, plainly, and homely. She describes this as the natural yearning of the soul by the touching of the Holy Ghost, expressed in the words: "God, of Thy Goodness, give me Thyself: for Thou art enough to me." Asking anything less, she says, ever leaves us wanting.
Chapter 9
The book exists in two manuscripts: No. 30 of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (Bibliotheca Bigotiana, 388), and No. 2499 Sloane in the British Museum. The Paris manuscript is from the sixteenth century; the Sloane is in seventeenth-century handwriting. The editor notes that the fourteenth-century English is on the whole well preserved in both, perhaps especially in the later Sloane manuscript.
Chapter 10
The earliest printed edition was prepared by the Benedictine Serenus de Cressy and published in 1670, by permission of his ecclesiastical superior, the Abbot of Lambspring, under the title Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love. It agrees with the Paris manuscript, differing from the Sloane only in few and unimportant readings. It is in seventeenth-century English with some archaic words explained in side margins, and was reprinted in 1843.
Chapter 10
Wills show Julian Lampet was a legatee between 1427 and 1478, and her name is struck from a will made in 1471 (proved 1483), indicating she died between 1478 and 1483. Since the Revelations writer was over thirty in May 1373, even 1478 is 136 years after her birth, so the editor calls the identification 'surely an impossibility.'
Chapter 10
The editor transcribed the Sloane manuscript, divided its continuous lines into paragraphs, supplied capital letters, and varied punctuation for clarity. Modern spelling was adopted and most obsolete words rendered in modern English, though a few of special charm were kept. Archaic constructions were left unchanged. The editor aimed never to omit a word, enclosing the very few additions in square brackets.
Chapter 10
The author argues that it is more worship to God and more true delight to pray faithfully to God of His Goodness and cleave to it by grace, with true understanding and steadfast love, than to take all the means that heart can think. Even all such means together are too little and not full worship, whereas in His Goodness is all the whole and nothing fails.
Chapter 11
The author uses clothing imagery: as the body is clad in cloth, flesh in skin, bones in flesh, and heart in the whole, so are we, soul and body, clad in and enclosed by the Goodness of God. This is more homely still, for those things may waste and wear away, but the Goodness of God is ever whole and nearer to us without any likeness.
Chapter 11
The author states that our natural Will is to have God, and the Good Will of God is to have us. We may never cease from willing or longing until we have Him in fullness of joy, and then we may desire no more. God wills that we be occupied in knowing and loving until we are fulfilled in Heaven.
Chapter 11
Julian concludes the Shewing "is not other than of faith, nor less nor more." When a Shewing given in time passes and is hidden, faith keeps it by grace of the Holy Ghost unto life's end. She grounds this in our Lord's teaching in the same matter, and says the Shewing plainly teaches the same as faith, opened and declared with many privy points belonging to the Faith.
Chapter 12
Julian saw the plenteous bleeding of the Head lasting through the spiritual sight, great drops falling from under the Garland. Three likenesses came to mind: pellots, for roundness in the coming out of the blood; the scale of herring, for roundness in the spreading on the forehead; and drops off eaves after a great shower, for the plenteousness innumerable. The blood was brown-red coming out, bright-red spreading, and vanished at the brows.
Chapter 12
Julian offers an open example: it is most worship for a solemn King or great Lord to be homely with a poor servant, especially if he shows it himself with a full true meaning and glad cheer, privately and in company. The poor creature thinks this marvellous homeliness brings more joy than great gifts given with a strange manner. Julian argues this is the most joy: that He who is highest and mightiest is lowest and meekest, homeliest and most courteous.
Chapter 12
She understood six things: the tokens of the blessed Passion and plenteous shedding of Christ's precious blood; the Maiden who is His dearworthy Mother; the blissful Godhead that ever was, is, and shall be—Almighty, All-Wisdom, All-Love; all-thing He hath made; that He who made all things for love keeps them without end; and that God is all that is good, and each thing's goodness is He.
Chapter 13
Julian says heaven and earth and all that is made is great, large, fair, and good. But it showed so little to her sight because she saw it in the presence of Him who is the Maker of all things: to a soul that seeth the Maker of all, all that is made seemeth full little.
Chapter 13
She prays and counsels them for their own profit to leave the beholding of a poor creature that it was shewed to, and mightily, wisely, and meekly behold God, who of His courteous love and endless goodness would shew it generally, in comfort of us all. She says it is God's will they take it with great joy, as if Jesus had shewed it to them all.
Chapter 13
Julian says that if she looks "singularly" to herself, she is "right nought." Her worth and comfort come not from the Shewing itself but from loving God the better, and she insists that those who love God more than she does gain more by it than she does. She speaks this for the simple, for ease and comfort.
Chapter 14
No. Julian states it was not shewed her that God loved her better than the least soul in grace. She is certain many who never had a Shewing, only the common teaching of Holy Church, love God better than she does. In the general Body she hopes she stands in oneness of charity with all her even-Christians.
Chapter 14
Julian says God is all that is good, made all that is made, and loves all He made. Whoever loves generally all his even-Christians for God loves all that is. In mankind that shall be saved is comprehended all: all that is made and the Maker of all, for in man is God and God is in all.
Chapter 14
Julian says all was shewed by three ways: bodily sight, word formed in her understanding, and spiritual sight, which she cannot fully express. She believes as Holy Church believes, preaches, and teaches; the Faith stood continually in her sight, and she meant never to receive anything contrary to it, beholding the Shewing as one in God's meaning.
Chapter 14
Julian states it is God's will that we have three things in our seeking: first, to seek earnestly and diligently, without sloth and without unreasonable heaviness or vain sorrow; second, to abide Him steadfastly for His love, without murmuring or striving against Him, to our life's end, for it shall last but awhile; third, to trust in Him mightily with full assured faith.
Chapter 15
Julian says she was taught that seeking is as good as beholding, for the time that God suffers the soul to be in travail. The continual seeking of the soul pleases God greatly, since the soul can do no more than seek, suffer and trust. Seeking with faith, hope and charity pleases God; the clearness of finding comes of His special grace when it is His will.
Chapter 15
Julian's understanding was led down into the sea-ground, where she saw green hills and dales like moss, with wrack and gravel. She understood that if a man or woman were under the broad water and might have sight of God as God is with a person continually, they should be safe in body and soul and take no harm; passing over, they should have more solace than all this world can tell.
Chapter 15
Julian asks how the image portrayed by Christ's own blessed face could be so darkening in colour and far from fair. She answers that the blessed Trinity made mankind to His image, and after man fell, the Maker would restore him by love; and between these two, He would for love and worship of man make Himself as like to man in this deadly life, in our foulness and wretchedness, as man might be without guilt.
Chapter 15
Julian reports that she was certain God does no sin, and that "sin is no deed." She says sin was not shown in this vision, and she would no longer marvel at it but instead behold the Lord. She notes, however, that another time gave a showing for beholding sin nakedly, where God uses working of mercy and grace.
Chapter 16
Julian says nothing is done by hap or adventure, but all things by God's foreseeing wisdom. If something seems like chance in human sight, it is because of our blindness and unforesight. Things ordained in God's wisdom from without beginning come about suddenly to us, unwitting; but to our Lord God they are not haps.
Chapter 16
Julian says rightfulness has two fair properties: it is right and it is full. All the works of our Lord God share these properties, so they need neither the working of mercy nor grace, for they are all rightful and nothing fails in them. She adds that in another time God uses mercy and grace for beholding sin.
Chapter 16
Julian says she saw surely that God never changes His purpose in any thing, nor ever shall. Nothing was unknown to Him in His rightful ordinance from without beginning, so all things were set in order before anything was made. God says He lifts never His hands off His works, and leads all things to the end He ordained by Might, Wisdom and Love.
Chapter 16
Julian sees the body plenteously bleeding as from the Scourging: the fair skin broken deep into tender flesh, hot blood running so plentifully that neither skin nor wound is seen, but as it were all blood. Where it would have fallen, it vanished, yet the bleeding continued awhile so it might be seen and considered.
Chapter 17
Julian says the precious plenty of His blood descended into Hell, burst her bands, and delivered all there belonging to the Court of Heaven. It overfloweth all Earth and is ready to wash all creatures of goodwill of sin. It ascended into Heaven to the blessed body of Christ, bleeding and praying for us to the Father, as long as it needeth.
Chapter 17
God formed in her soul the words "Herewith is the Fiend overcome," meaning His blessed Passion as previously shown to her. This came after a time of silent heed to what she had seen. The chapter presents the Passion of Christ as the overcoming of the Fiend, and Julian identifies this as the Sixth Revelation.
Chapter 18
Julian states that the Fiend has the same malice now as before the Incarnation, and labors as sorely and continually, seeing that all souls of salvation escape him worshipfully by the virtue of Christ's precious Passion. This is his sorrow and shame: all God permits him to do turns to our joy and to his shame and woe.
Chapter 18
Julian says she sees game in that the Fiend is overcome; scorn in that God scorns him and he shall be scorned; and earnest in that he is overcome by the blissful Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ, done in full earnest and with sober travail. She notes God scorns him because He sees him now as he shall be without end.
Chapter 18
Julian laughed mightily at the sight of God scorning the Fiend's malice and setting at nought his unmight, and her laughing made those about her laugh too. But she did not see Christ laugh. She understood that we may laugh in comforting ourselves and joying in God that the devil is overcome, and she wished all her even-Christians had seen as she saw.
Chapter 18
Julian says God showed three degrees of bliss for every soul that willingly served God on earth: first, the worshipful thanks of the Lord when delivered of pain; second, that all blessed creatures in Heaven see this thanking and the service is made known to all; third, that it lasts without end, as new and gladdening as when first received.
Chapter 19
Julian offers the example of a king who thanks his servants: the thanks is great worship to them, but if the king makes it known to all the realm, the worship is greatly increased. She uses this to illustrate the second degree of bliss, where all in Heaven see the worshipful thanking and the service is made known.
Chapter 19
Julian says that the more the loving soul sees this courtesy of God, the liefer—more gladly—he is to serve God all the days of his life. The soul's gratitude for the three degrees of bliss and for God's homely, sweet showing increases its desire to serve, rather than being driven by fear or obligation.
Chapter 19
The author argues it is not God's will that we follow the feeling of pains in sorrow and mourning for them. Instead, we should hold ourselves in comfort with all our might, since bliss is lasting without end while pain is passing and shall be brought to nought for those who shall be saved. We should suddenly pass over and hold ourselves in endless enjoyment.
Chapter 20
She was filled with glad, ghostly peace, then left to herself in heaviness and weariness of life with only faith, hope, and charity, though little in feeling. Then comfort returned, and the pain and joy alternated divers times, about twenty times. In joy she could say with Paul that nothing shall part her from Christ's charity; in pain, with Peter, 'Lord, save me: I perish!'
Chapter 20
No. She says a man is sometimes left to himself for the profit of his soul, though sin is not always the cause. In her case she sinned not, and it came so sudden; nor did she deserve the blessed feeling. The author argues the Lord freely gives when He wills and suffers us to be in woe sometimes, and both are one love.
Chapter 20
Julian saw Christ's face as dry and bloodless with pale dying, then more pale and dead, then turning more dead unto blue, and finally more brown-blue as the flesh turned more deeply dead. She notes the face was chiefly shown in His blessed lips, and that this was a pitiful change from the fresh, ruddy, pleasing colour it had been before.
Chapter 21
Julian says bloodlessness and pain dried within, while blowing of wind and cold came from without. These four—twain without and twain within—dried the flesh of Christ by process of time. She describes it as a dry, hard wind and wondrous cold at the time our Lord died upon the Rood.
Chapter 21
She clarifies it meant the sweet body was so discoloured, dry, shrunken, deathly and piteous, as if He had been seven nights dead, continually dying. She says this long pining seemed as if He were at the point of outpassing away, suffering the last pain, and that as long as any spirit had life in His flesh, so long He suffered pain.
Chapter 21
Julian says she thought the drying of Christ's flesh was the most pain and the last of His Passion. Though the pain was bitter and sharp, it was full long lasting as to her sight, painfully drying up all the lively spirits of Christ's flesh, part after part, with marvellous pains.
Chapter 21
Julian saw in Christ a double thirst: one bodily and another spiritual. She says the bodily thirst was caused by failing of moisture, since the blessed flesh and bones were left alone without blood or moisture, dried by the wringing of the nails and the weight of the body hanging long. She reserves discussion of the spiritual thirst for the Thirty-first Chapter.
Chapter 22
Julian saw four dryings: first, bloodlessness; second, pain following after; third, hanging up in the air as men hang a cloth to dry; and fourth, that the bodily Kind asked liquid and no manner of comfort was ministered to Him in all His woe and distress. She calls the slow shrinking drying with cold wind more than her heart can think.
Chapter 22
Julian asks whether any pain is like this and is answered in her reason that hell is another pain, for there is despair. But of all pains that lead to salvation, she holds the most pain is to see one's Love suffer. She says she loved Christ so much above herself that no pain could be suffered like the sorrow of seeing Him in pain.
Chapter 22
Julian says the Shewing of Christ's pains filled her full of pain, and though she knew He suffered but once, it was as if He would show it to her and fill her with mind as she had before desired. She felt no pain but for Christ's pains, then thought she knew but little what pain she asked, and repented, saying she would have been loath to pray it had she known.
Chapter 22
Julian says Christ and Mary were so oned in love that the greatness of her loving caused the greatness of her pain. Because she loved Him more than all others, her pains passed all others. Julian states the general principle that the higher and mightier the love, the more sorrow it is to the lover to see the loved body in pain.
Chapter 23
Julian reports seeing a great oneing between Christ and us: when He was in pain, we were in pain. She extends this to all creatures made for our service, saying the firmament and earth failed for sorrow at Christ's dying, since it belongs to their nature to know Him as their God in whom their virtue stands.
Chapter 23
Julian speaks of two kinds of people, understood by Pilate and Dionysius of France, then a pagan. Those who knew Him not suffered for failing of all comfort except God's secret keeping. Dionysius, seeing the marvels, said either the world is at an end or its Maker suffers, and wrote on an altar: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.
Chapter 23
Julian concludes that our Lord Jesus was made-naught for us, and that all we stand in this manner made-naught with Him, and shall do until we come to His bliss. She links this to creatures failing with Him in sorrow, and promises to tell more of it afterward.
Chapter 23
Julian says her reason was offered a friendly suggestion to look up to Heaven to His Father. She answered inwardly with all the might of her soul, "Nay; I may not: for Thou art my Heaven." She explains she would rather have remained in that pain till Doomsday than come to Heaven otherwise than by Him, and was thus learned to choose Jesus as her Heaven.
Chapter 24
Julian says repenting and willing choice are two contraries she felt both in one at that time. They belong to our two parts: the outward deadly flesh-hood, which is in pain and woe and was the part that repented, and the inward high, blissful life, all in peace and love, in which she mightily, wisely and with steadfast will chose Jesus to her Heaven. She says God assigns no blame to reluctance and frailty of the flesh without assent of the soul.
Chapter 24
Julian writes that for every man's sin that shall be saved He suffered, and every man's sorrow and desolation He saw and sorrowed for—by kinship and love. She adds that as our Lady sorrowed for His pains, so He suffered sorrow for her sorrow, and more, as His sweet manhood was worthier in kind.
Chapter 25
Julian says that as long as He was passible He suffered for us and sorrowed for us; and now He is uprisen and no more passible, yet He suffereth with us. She also says that beholding this by grace, she saw His Love so strong toward our soul that willingly He chose it with great desire and mildly suffered it with well-pleasing.
Chapter 25
Julian says the highest point that may be seen in the Passion is to think and know what He is that suffered. In this shewing she was brought in part to mind the height and nobleness of the glorious Godhead together with the preciousness and tenderness of the blessed Body united in Him, and the lothness in our kind to suffer pain.
Chapter 25
The first manner is beholding the hard pain He suffered with contrition and compassion. Julian says our Lord gave her strength and grace to see this. The chapter references notes pointing to two further manners (chapters xxii and xxiii) but the text here details only the first, so the remaining two are not described in this chapter.
Chapter 26
As she looked for the departing and expected to see the body all dead, she did not see it so. Suddenly, beholding the same Cross, He changed the look of His blessed Countenance. The change of His Countenance changed hers, and she was as glad and merry as possible. Then our Lord merrily brought to her mind: 'Where is now any point of the pain, or of thy grief?'
Chapter 26
Julian understands that we are now, in our Lord's meaning, in His Cross with Him in His pains and Passion, dying. If we willingly abide in the same Cross with His help and grace unto the last point, suddenly He shall change His Cheer to us and we shall be with Him in Heaven. Between that one and that other shall be no time, and then all shall be brought to joy.
Chapter 26
Julian says that because He shows us the time of His Passion as He bore it in this life, and His Cross, we are in distress and travail with Him as our frailty asks. The cause why He suffers it is that of His goodness He will make us the higher with Him in His bliss. For this little pain we shall have a high endless knowing in God we could never have without it, and the harder our pains with Him, the more our glory with Him.
Chapter 26
Christ tells Julian that if she is pleased, He is pleased, and that His suffering for her is joy and bliss to Him. He says that if He might suffer more, He would suffer more. Julian notes He did not say "if it were needful," for even if not needful, He would suffer more if He might.
Chapter 27
Julian's understanding is lifted into Heaven where she sees three heavens, all in the blessed manhood of Christ. None is more, less, higher, or lower; all are even-like in bliss. The first heaven shows Christ's Father in property and working—the Father giving meed to the Son, a gift so blissful it pleases Christ best.
Chapter 27
Julian says we are not only Christ's by His buying, but also by the courteous gift of His Father we are His bliss, His meed, His worship, and His crown. She calls it a singular marvel and delectable beholding that we be His crown, so great a bliss to Jesus that He sets at nought all His travail, hard Passion, and shameful death.
Chapter 27
Julian sees in the Passion that the love which made Christ suffer passes as far all His pains as Heaven is above Earth. The pains were a noble, worshipful deed done in a time by love's working, but Love was without beginning, is, and shall be without ending. So Christ's "if I might suffer more" expresses endless love, not mere necessity.
Chapter 27
Julian interprets the three words as three heavens: joy signifies the pleasure of the Father, bliss the worship of the Son, and endless satisfying the Holy Ghost. She summarizes: the Father is pleased, the Son is worshipped, the Holy Ghost is satisfied. The author presents this as a showing received in the revelation, not as formal doctrine.
Chapter 28
Four concern the pains: bleeding of the head, discolouring of the face, plenteous bleeding of the body as from scourging, and the deep dying. The fifth is shown for the joy and bliss of the Passion. Julian says God wills that we truly enjoy with Him in our salvation and be mightily comforted and strengthened.
Chapter 28
Julian states that all the Trinity wrought in the Passion of Christ, ministering abundance of virtues and plenty of grace to us by Him, but only the Maiden's Son suffered. Of this all the blessed Trinity endlessly enjoyeth. She ties this to Christ's words asking if she is well pleased, and His saying that if she is pleased, then He is pleased.
Chapter 28
A glad giver takes little heed of the gift itself; all his desire is to please and solace the receiver. If the receiver takes the gift highly and thankfully, the courteous giver sets at nought all his cost and travail for joy that he has pleased the one he loves. Julian applies this to Christ, who asks nothing for His travail but that He might well please us.
Chapter 28
Julian recounts that our Lord looked unto His wounded Side and beheld, rejoicing, and with His sweet looking led her understanding through the same wound into His Side within. There He showed a fair, delectable place, large enough for all mankind that shall be saved to rest in peace and in love, and brought to mind His dearworthy blood and precious water poured out for love.
Chapter 29
Julian understands it as Christ saying: He loved us so much ere He died that He would die for us, and now He has died and suffered willingly all He may. Now all His bitter pain and hard travail are turned to endless joy and bliss for Him and for us, so any prayer that pleases Him He will gladly grant, since His pleasing is our holiness and endless joy.
Chapter 29
Julian states that this is the understanding, simply as she can say it, of the blessed word 'Lo, how I loved thee,' and that our good Lord showed it for to make us glad and merry. The showing is meant to stir the poor soul to think on the endless Love that was without beginning and is and shall be ever.
Chapter 29
With His sweet beholding, Julian says, He showed His blessed heart even cloven in two. Alongside this, He showed in part the blessed Godhead, stirring her soul to understand the endless Love that was without beginning and is and shall be ever, and He spoke blissfully the words 'Lo, how that I loved thee.'
Chapter 29
Julian says our Lord showed her nothing in special but Our Lady Saint Mary, and showed her three times: first as she was with Child, second as she was in her sorrows under the Cross, and third as she is now in pleasing, worship, and joy.
Chapter 30
Julian says she is not learned to long to see Mary's bodily presence while she is here, but rather the virtues of her blessed soul: her truth, her wisdom, her charity, whereby she may learn to know herself and reverently dread God. She notes she often prayed to see Mary bodily but did not see her so.
Chapter 30
Julian says our Lord speaks this sweet word to all mankind that shall be saved as if to one person: 'Wilt thou see in her how thou art loved? For thy love I made her so high, so noble and so worthy; and this pleaseth me, and so will I that it doeth thee.' After Himself she is the most blissful sight.
Chapter 30
Julian says Christ showed this example: as if a man love a creature singularly, above all creatures, he wills to make all creatures to love and have pleasure in that creature he loves so greatly. So Christ wills it be known that all who please them in Him should please them in her, and in the pleasure He has in her and she in Him.
Chapter 30
Julian writes that in seeing Christ more glorified she was learned that the soul shall never have rest till it comes to Him, knowing He is fulness of joy, homely and courteous, blissful and very life. Rest is thus found only in God, not in anything short of Him.
Chapter 31
Julian reports Christ repeating 'I it am': I it am that is highest, that thou lovest, enjoyest, servest, longest for, desirest, meanest, and that is all; also that Holy Church preacheth and teacheth, and that shewed me here to thee.
Chapter 31
Julian says she often wondered, in her folly, why the great foreseeing wisdom of God did not hinder the beginning of sin, thinking that then all would have been well. She calls this stirring of mind much to be forsaken, yet she mourned over it without reason and discretion until Christ answered her.
Chapter 32
Christ answers in a word: it behoved that there should be sin, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. Julian notes these words were said tenderly, showing no blame to her or to any that shall be saved, so it would be great unkindness to blame or wonder at God for her sin.
Chapter 32
In the naked word sin, our Lord brought to her mind generally all that is not good, the shameful despite and utter noughting He bore for us, His dying, and all pains of His creatures, ghostly and bodily. All this was shown in a touch and quickly passed into comfort, for our good Lord would not have the soul affeared by that terrible sight.
Chapter 32
Julian says she saw not sin, for she believes it has no manner of substance nor part of being, and could not be known but by the pain it causes. Pain, as to her sight, is something for a time, for it purges and makes us know ourselves and ask mercy; the Passion of our Lord is comfort against all this.
Chapter 32
Julian states that each kind compassion a person has toward their fellow Christians, when accompanied by charity, is Christ in him. This means Christ is present in the compassionate person. She frames this as part of what was shown to her in the Compassion, paralleling the noughting shown in the Passion.
Chapter 33
Julian saw two understandings: first, the bliss we are brought to, in which the Lord wills us to rejoice; second, comfort in our pain, since He wills us to perceive that all shall be turned to worship and profit by virtue of His Passion, that we suffer not alone but with Him, and that His pains and noughting far surpass all we may suffer.
Chapter 33
Julian says beholding this will save us from murmuring and despair in the feeling of our pains. Even if we truly see that our sin deserves punishment, His love excuses us; of His great courtesy He does away all our blame and beholds us with ruth and pity as children innocent and unloathful.
Chapter 33
The Lord answered meekly that Adam's sin was the most harm ever done or ever to be done to the world's end, and that this sin is openly known in all Holy Church on earth. The author presents this as the Lord's teaching to her, not her own deduction.
Chapter 34
The Lord taught Julian to behold the glorious Satisfaction, the Amends-making. This Amends-making is more pleasing to God and more worshipful, without comparison, than ever Adam's sin was harmful. The author presents this as divine teaching, emphasizing that the remedy surpasses the harm.
Chapter 34
The Lord signified that since He has made well the most harm, it is His will that Julian know thereby that He shall make well all that is less. The argument moves from the greatest case, Adam's sin, to lesser harms. The author reports this as the Lord's teaching, not her own conclusion.
Chapter 34
Julian describes two parts of truth: the open part, which is our Saviour and our salvation—clear, fair, light, and plenteous, encompassing all mankind of good will—and the hidden part, shut up from us, which is all that lies beside our salvation. She calls the hidden part God's privy counsel, belonging to His royal lordship.
Chapter 35
Julian says our Lord wills that we be occupied in the open part, joying in Him, since He enjoys in us. We are bound, drawn, counselled, and taught inwardly by the Holy Ghost and outwardly by Holy Church. The more plenteously we take of this with reverence and meekness, the more thanks we earn from God and the more profit to ourselves.
Chapter 35
Julian argues the hidden part is our Lord's privy counsel, and it belongs to God's royal lordship to keep that counsel in peace, while it belongs to His servant, for obedience and reverence, not to learn it wholly. She says God has pity on those who busy themselves therein, and that we would please Him and ease ourselves by leaving it.
Chapter 35
Julian says the saints in Heaven will to know nothing but what our Lord wills to show them, and their charity and desire are ruled after His will. She says we ought to will like them, so that we will and desire nothing but our Lord's will, as they do, for we are all one in God's seeing. She concludes we should trust and rejoice only in our Saviour.
Chapter 35
Julian reads 'I may' as the Father, 'I can' as the Son, 'I will' as the Holy Ghost, and 'I shall' as the unity of the blessed Trinity—three Persons and one Truth. 'Thou shalt see thyself' she understands as the oneing of all mankind that shall be saved unto the blessed Trinity. In these five words, she says, God willeth we be enclosed in rest and in peace.
Chapter 36
Julian defines Christ's Spiritual Thirst as the love-longing that lasts and ever shall until we see that sight on Doomsday. It is His desire to have us altogether whole in Him, to His bliss. She says this same desire and thirst He had upon the Cross, and it was in Him from without beginning, and He has it yet until the last soul that shall be saved comes up to His bliss.
Chapter 36
Julian says that as verily as there is a property in God of ruth and pity, so verily there is a property of thirst and longing, both coming of His endless Goodness. She states that of the virtue of this longing in Christ we have to long again to Him, without which no soul cometh to Heaven. His wisdom and love suffereth not the end to come till the best time.
Chapter 36
Julian draws two meanings. First, God takes heed not only of noble and great things but also of little, low, and simple things, so that the least thing shall not be forgotten. Second, evil deeds and great harms appear to us impossible to end well, because our reason is now blind, low, and simple and cannot know the high Wisdom, Might, and Goodness of the Trinity.
Chapter 37
Julian understands the Great Deed as what the blessed Trinity shall do on the last Day, ordained from without beginning and hidden in God's breast, by which He shall make all things well. When it shall be and how it shall be done is unknown to all creatures beneath Christ, and shall remain so until it is done. God wills we know it shall be, but conceals what and how.
Chapter 37
Julian notes that faith is grounded in God's word and that many creatures shall be condemned: fallen angels, heathen who die outside the Faith, and Christians who live unchristian lives and die out of charity. With all this standing, she thought it impossible that all manner of things should be well. Her only answer was that what is impossible to her is not impossible to God, who shall save His word and make all things well.
Chapter 37
Julian says she was taught by the grace of God to steadfastly hold to the Faith as she had beforehand understood it, and therewith to firmly believe that all things shall be well as our Lord showed. She argues the Great Deed is where God shall save His word and make all well that is not well, though no creature beneath Christ knows how until it is done.
Chapter 37
Julian desired full sight of Hell and Purgatory for learning, not to test the Faith. She believed as Holy Church teaches. Yet she could see nothing of this except what was shown in the First Shewing: the devil is reproved by God and endlessly condemned. She understood that all creatures of the devil's condition, christened or not, are no more mentioned before God than the devil.
Chapter 38
Julian says the Revelation of goodness, which made little mention of evil, did not draw her from any point of the Faith Holy Church teaches. She had sight of Christ's Passion in several Shewings, feeling in part the sorrow of Our Lady and His true friends. She was strengthened and taught generally to keep the Faith in every point as she had before understood it, hoping to continue therein to her life's end.
Chapter 38
Julian says that in her Shewings of the Passion she did not see the Jews who did Christ to death so properly specified. Nevertheless she knew in her Faith that they were accursed and condemned without end, saving those who converted by grace. She was strengthened and taught generally to keep the Faith in every point as she had before understood it.
Chapter 38
Julian states it is God's will that we have great regard to all His deeds that He has done, but evermore it is needful for us to leave the beholding of what the Deed shall be. She says we should desire to be like the saints in Heaven, who will nothing but God's will and are well pleased with both hiding and shewing. She saw truly that the more we busy ourselves to know His secret counsels, the farther we shall be from knowing them.
Chapter 38
Julian says the Lord showed two kinds of secrets: the great Secret (Counsel) with all its private points, which God wills we know only as hidden until He clearly reveals them; and other secrets He wills to make open and known to us. These are secret to us partly by His will and partly through our blindness and ignorance, which He pities.
Chapter 39
Julian says God showed great pleasure in all men and women who mightily, meekly, and with full will receive the preaching and teaching of Holy Church. She calls it His Holy Church, and says He is the Ground, the Substance, the Teaching, the Teacher, the End, and the Meed for which every kind soul labors.
Chapter 39
Julian says all she has told, and more to come, is comforting against sin. In the Third Shewing, when she saw that God does all that is done, she saw no sin and saw that all is well. But when God showed her for sin, He said: All shall be well.
Chapter 39
Julian says this Shewing is made known, and shall be known, to every soul to whom the Holy Ghost declares it. She hopes truly that God shall speed all those who seek this, because they seek God. She also says all that is speedful for us to learn and know, our Lord will courteously show us.
Chapter 39
Julian desired assurance about a certain creature she loved, but seeking a singular showing seemed to hinder her, and she was not taught at that time. She was answered in her reason that she should take it generally and behold God's graciousness as shown, for it is more worship to God to behold Him in all than in any special thing.
Chapter 40
Julian states that all our Lord does is rightful and what He suffers is worshipful, and in these two are comprehended good and ill. All that is good our Lord does, and the evil our Lord suffers, meaning allows. She clarifies that no evil is worshipful, but God's sufferance is worshipful, whereby His goodness shall be known without end through mercy and grace.
Chapter 40
Julian defines Rightfulness as that thing so good it may not be better than it is, for God Himself is very Rightfulness. All His works are done rightfully as ordained from without beginning by His high Might, Wisdom, and Goodness. He ordained unto the best and works continually, leading it to the same end, ever full-pleased with Himself and all His works.
Chapter 40
Julian says Mercy is a working that comes of the goodness of God and shall last in working all along, as sin is suffered to pursue rightful souls. When sin has no longer leave to pursue, then the working of mercy shall cease, and all shall be brought to rightfulness and stand therein without end.
Chapter 40
Julian states that God showed her a deed He Himself shall do, and that she shall do nothing but sin, yet her sin shall not hinder His Goodness working. She calls the beholding of this a heavenly joy in a fearing soul that by grace desires God's will. The deed begins here and lasts in working until the last Day.
Chapter 41
Julian says the deed and 'that other aforesaid' are two sundry, not one. This deed shall be done sooner, as we come to Heaven, and may be known here in part by those to whom the Lord gives it. But the Great Deed shall neither be known in Heaven nor earth till it is done.
Chapter 41
Julian says God gave her special understanding that He has done many miracles and does now continually. Miracles are preceded by sorrow, anguish, and tribulation, so we should know our own feebleness and the mischiefs we are fallen into by sin, to meeken us and make us dread God and cry for help. Miracles then come of God's Might, Wisdom, and Goodness, strengthening faith and hope.
Chapter 41
Julian describes a "beastly will" in the lower part that may will no good, and a "Godly Will" in the higher part that is so good it can never will evil but ever good. This Godly Will never assented to sin nor ever shall, and it is why, she says, we are what God loves and endlessly do what pleases Him.
Chapter 42
She first took the showing singularly to herself, but by the comfort that followed she was taught to take it for all her even-Christians, "all in general and nothing in special." Though the Lord showed that she should sin, by her alone is understood all. The comfort shown alongside was secureness and keeping for all her even-Christians.
Chapter 42
Julian states that "for failing of love on our part, therefore is all our travail." She sets this against the showing of the wholeness of love we stand in before God: He loves us now as well while we are here as He shall while we are before His blessed face. So the trouble lies in our failing of love, not in any failing of God's love.
Chapter 42
To her soft dread, our Lord answered: "I keep thee full surely." Julian says this word was said with more love, secureness, and spiritual keeping than she can tell. Just as it was shown that she should sin, so was the comfort shown: secureness and keeping for all her even-Christians, not for her alone.
Chapter 42
Julian writes that God showed her sin shall be no shame to man but worship: as each sin is answered by pain through truth, so each sin is given a bliss by love. Sins punished with diverse pains on earth are rewarded with diverse joys in Heaven according as they were painful and sorrowful to the soul. Thus the token of sin is turned to worship.
Chapter 43
In this sight Julian's understanding was lifted into Heaven. God brought to her mind David and others without number in the Old Law, and in the New Law first Mary Magdalene, Peter and Paul, and those of Inde, and Saint John of Beverley, and others without number. They are known in the Church on earth with their sins, which are no shame but all turned to worship.
Chapter 43
God called him Saint John of Beverley plainly, with glad sweet cheer, showing he is a full high saint in Heaven. In his youth he was a dearworthy servant, greatly loving and dreading God, yet God suffered him to fall, mercifully keeping him from perishing. God afterward raised him to manifold more grace, and for his contrition and meekness gave him manifold joys overpassing what he would have had without falling.
Chapter 43
Julian says God shows this here in part as it is there in fulness, for there the token of sin is turned to worship. The examples of David, Mary Magdalene, Peter, Paul, and John of Beverley are known in the Church on earth with their sins, to their worship rather than shame. And all this, she concludes, was to make us glad and merry in love.
Chapter 43
Julian writes that by contrition we are made clean, by compassion we are made ready, and by true longing toward God we are made worthy. She calls these three means the medicines by which every soul that has sinned on earth and shall be saved must be healed before coming to heaven.
Chapter 44
Julian states that though the soul is healed, its wounds are seen before God—not as wounds but as worships. On the contrary side, as we are punished here with sorrow and penance, we shall be rewarded in heaven by the courteous love of God, who wills that none who come there lose their travail in any degree.
Chapter 44
Julian says sin is the sharpest scourge a chosen soul may be smitten with, making a person hateful in their own sight, until contrition takes hold by the touching of the Holy Ghost and turns the bitterness into hope of God's mercy. Then God begins to heal the wounds, and the Holy Ghost leads the person to confession.
Chapter 44
Julian argues that our courteous Lord wills not that His servants despair, for often nor for grievous falling, since our falling hinders Him not from loving us. Peace and love are ever in us, being and working, though we are not always in peace and love; He is the ground of our whole life in love and our everlasting Keeper.
Chapter 44
Julian states that "true love teacheth us that we should hate sin only for love." Hatred of sin is not separate from love but flows from it. She adds that God wills we endlessly hate the sin and endlessly love the soul, as God loves it, so that our love is not broken toward ourselves or our fellow Christians because of sin.
Chapter 45
Julian writes that to her was shown "no harder hell than sin," and that a kind soul has no hell but sin. She says if all the pains of Hell, Purgatory, and Earth were laid before us along with sin by itself, we should rather choose all that pain than sin, because sin is so vile it can be likened to no pain that is not sin.
Chapter 45
Julian warns that if anyone, stirred by folly, thinks that since this comfort is true it would be good to sin to have the more reward, or to count sin less guilty, this stirring is untrue and comes from the enemy. She says by her own feeling, the more a kind soul sees this courteous love, the more loath it is to sin and the more ashamed.
Chapter 45
Julian says sins are forgiven by mercy and grace, and the soul is worshipfully received in joy as it shall be in Heaven, as often as it comes by the gracious working of the Holy Ghost and the virtue of Christ's Passion. She describes the Lord welcoming the soul merrily, saying He was ever with it in its woe and now they are one in bliss.
Chapter 45
Julian reports our Lord saying: 'I am Ground of thy beseeching.' He first wills that we have it, then makes us will it, then makes us beseech it. Since everything God makes us beseech was ordained to us from without beginning, our beseeching is not the cause of God's goodness. She calls it most impossible that we should beseech mercy and grace and not have it.
Chapter 46
Julian says our Lord is full glad and merry over our prayer and wills to have it, because by His grace He makes us like Himself in condition as we are in kind. He bids us pray inwardly even when it seems to savour us not, for it is profitable though we feel not and see nought. In dryness, barrenness, sickness and feebleness, prayer is well-pleasing to Him, and He accepts the goodwill and travail of His servant however we feel.
Chapter 46
Julian says thanking belongs to prayer. Thanking is a true inward knowing, with great reverence and lovely dread, turning ourselves with all our mights to the working our good Lord stirs us to, enjoying and thanking inwardly. Sometimes for plenteousness it breaks out with voice. When the heart is dry or tempted, reason and grace drive it to cry aloud, rehearsing Christ's Passion and Goodness, and the virtue of His word quickens the heart into true working.
Chapter 46
Julian says our Lord wills true understanding in three things belonging to prayer: first, by whom and how prayer springs (God is the Ground, and it comes by His Goodness); second, how we should use prayer, namely that our will be turned to God's will; third, the fruit and end of prayer, that we be oned and like our Lord in all things.
Chapter 47
Julian says we should not be in heaviness if we have prayed long and think we have not our asking. She is sure, by our Lord's signifying, that either we abide a better time, or more grace, or a better gift. She also holds that no one asks mercy and grace with true meaning unless mercy and grace be first given to him.
Chapter 47
Julian says if we pray and do not see that He doeth it, it makes us heavy and doubtful, which is not His worship. If we see that He doeth and pray not, we do not our debt. But to see that He doeth it and to pray forthwithal is how He is worshipped and we are sped. She adds that all things God has ordained to do, He wills that we pray for, in special or in general.
Chapter 47
Julian writes that prayer oneth the soul to God. Though the soul is ever like God in kind and substance, restored by grace, it is often unlike in condition through sin on man's part. Prayer is then a witness that the soul willeth as God willeth; it comforteth the conscience and enableth man to grace.
Chapter 48
Julian says God showed great pleasance and content in this word, as though He were much beholden to us for every good deed we do (though it is He that doeth it), because we beseech Him mightily to do what seems to Him good. She reports it as if God said nothing could please Him more than such earnest beseeching.
Chapter 48
When our courteous Lord of His grace sheweth Himself to the soul, we have what we desire and can pray right nought but as He stirreth us; Julian calls this a high unperceivable prayer. When we see Him not, we feel need and cause to pray because of failing, especially when the soul is tempested and troubled.
Chapter 48
No. Julian states that by no manner of prayer does the soul make God pliant to it, for He is ever alike in love. Instead, prayer makes the soul pliable and obedient to God. She also saw that when we see needs and pray, our good Lord followeth us, helping our desire; when we plainly behold Him, we follow Him and He draweth us by love.
Chapter 48
Julian states that God is endless sovereign Truth, endless sovereign Wisdom, and endless sovereign Love, unmade. Man's soul is a creature in God that has the same properties made. Because of this, the soul evermore does what it was made for: it sees God, beholds God, and loves God, and God enjoys in the creature endlessly.
Chapter 49
Julian says Truth sees God and Wisdom beholds God, and from these two comes a third: a holy, marvellous delight in God, which is Love. Where Truth and Wisdom are truly present, Love is truly present, coming from them both. All of this is of God's making, since God is unmade Truth, Wisdom, and Love.
Chapter 49
Julian says this work was shown in the First Revelation through a marvellous example: the working of the soul of the blissful Lady, Saint Mary. In her soul's working, Julian identifies Truth and Wisdom at work. She says she hopes, by the grace of the Holy Ghost, to tell how this is done as she saw it.
Chapter 49
Julian says that in marvelling the creature sees its God, Lord, and Maker so high, great, and good compared with itself that the creature scarcely seems anything to itself. But the clarity of Truth and Wisdom makes it see and bear witness that it is made for Love, and in that Love God endlessly keeps it.
Chapter 49
Julian says all heavenly and earthly things belonging to Heaven are comprehended in two judgments: God's judgment, which looks upon our Nature-Substance kept whole and safe in Him, and man's judgment, which looks upon our changeable Sense-soul that seems now one thing, now another and shows outward.
Chapter 50
Man's judgment is mingled because it beholds diverse things: sometimes it is good and easy, belonging to rightfulness, and sometimes hard and grievous because of sin beheld in the Sense-soul. Julian says our good Lord Jesus reforms the hard and grievous part by mercy and grace through the virtue of His blessed Passion, bringing it to rightfulness.
Chapter 50
Julian could not be fully eased by the sweet doom in which God assigned no blame, because the doom of Holy Church, which she had understood before and kept continually in sight, taught that sinners are worthy sometime of blame and wrath. She could not see these two in God, yet felt bound to take both, and desired to see how Holy Church's doom is true in God's sight.
Chapter 50
Julian received no other answer but a marvellous example of a lord and a servant, which she says was shown full mistily and promises to tell after. She remains desiring, and wills unto her end, that by grace she might know these two dooms as belongs to her, since all heavenly and earthly things belonging to Heaven are comprehended in them.
Chapter 50
Julian says that from beginning to end she had two manner of beholdings. One was endless continuant love, with secureness of keeping and blissful salvation, which was all the Shewing. The other was the common teaching of Holy Church, in which she was afore informed and grounded. The beholding of the Church went not from her, and the Shewing did not stir her from it.
Chapter 51
Julian says our passing life in the sense-soul knoweth not what our Self is. We may have knowing of our Self in this life by continuant help and virtue of our high Nature, and grow by mercy and grace, but we may never fully know our Self until the last point, when this passing life and manner of pain and woe shall have an end.
Chapter 51
Julian says she was afore informed and grounded in the common teaching of Holy Church, and held it with all her will in use and understanding. By the Shewing she was not stirred nor led therefrom in any point, but had therein teaching to love it and find it good, whereby she might by God's grace increase to more heavenly knowing and higher loving. She yields herself to Holy Church as a simple child.
Chapter 51
Julian states that two things belong to our soul as duty: first, that we reverently marvel, and second, that we meekly suffer, ever enjoying in God. She adds that God would have us understand that in short time we shall see clearly in Himself all that we desire.
Chapter 52
From earlier teaching, Julian understood God's mercy to be the forgiveness of His wrath after we have sinned, and she thought this forgiveness should be a principal point of His mercy, since God's wrath seemed harder to a loving soul than any other pain. Yet she could in no wise see this point in all the Shewing.
Chapter 52
Julian explains that man is changeable in this life and by frailty falls into sin; he is weak and unwise of himself, and his will is overlaid. The cause is blindness, for he does not see God. If he saw God continually, he would have no mischievous feeling nor any motion serving to sin.
Chapter 52
Julian felt five workings: enjoying, mourning, desire, dread, and sure hope. Enjoying because she knew it was God she saw; mourning for failing; desire to see Him more; dread that the sight should fail; sure hope in His endless love. She beheld that this manner of sight may not be continuant in this life, for God's worship and increase of our endless joy.
Chapter 52
Julian says she saw no wrath except on man's part, and that God forgives it in us. Wrath is nothing but a forwardness and contrariness to peace and love, arising from failing of might, wisdom, or goodness. This failing is not in God but on our part, for by sin and wretchedness we have a continuant contrariness to peace and love.
Chapter 53
Julian beholds mercy and grace as two manners of working in one love. Mercy belongs to the Motherhood in tender love and works keeping, suffering, quickening, and healing. Grace belongs to the royal Lordship in the same love and works raising, rewarding, and endlessly overpassing what our longing deserves. Grace turns dreadful failing into solace, shameful falling into worshipful rising, and sorrowful dying into blissful life.
Chapter 53
Julian says that as our contrariness works pain, shame, and sorrow on earth, so grace works solace, worship, and bliss in heaven, and overpassing. When we receive the reward grace has wrought, we shall thank and bless our Lord, endlessly rejoicing that we ever suffered woe. This is a property of blessed love in God that we could never have known without woe going before.
Chapter 53
The author argues God cannot be wroth because wrath and friendship are contraries, and our life is all grounded and rooted in love. Since God endlessly keeps us in His Might, Wisdom, and Goodness, any instant of wrath would mean we could never have life or being. She saw no manner of wrath in God, neither for short time nor for long.
Chapter 54
Julian says we are securely safe by God's merciful keeping, so we perish not, even while in tribulation, distress, and woe through our blindness and frailty. But we are not blissfully safe in having our endless joy until we are all in peace and love: full pleased with God, with all His works and judgments, and peaceable with ourselves and our even-Christians.
Chapter 54
Julian saw that though we feel debates and strifes, we are enclosed in God's mildness. Our contrariness causes our tribulations and woe, but our Lord Jesus takes them and sends them up to Heaven, where they are made more sweet and delectable than heart may think or tongue may tell. When we come thither we shall find them ready, turned into fair and endless worships.
Chapter 54
Julian writes that immediately the soul is made at one with God when it is truly set at peace in itself. Where our Lord appeareth, peace is taken and wrath hath no place. God is our very Peace and sure Keeper while we are in unpeace, continually working to bring us into endless peace; when by mercy and grace we are made meek and mild, we are fully safe.
Chapter 54
Julian sees that God shows us no more blame than if we were as clean and holy as angels in heaven, yet she knows by Holy Church's teaching and her own feeling that the blame of our sin continually hangs upon us. Between these two contraries her reason was greatly travailed through blindness and could have no rest.
Chapter 55
Julian gives three reasons: first, the matter is so low a thing that she need not be a-dread; second, it is so common that she need not be a-dread; third, she needs to know it to live here knowing good and evil, so that by reason and grace she may part them asunder, love goodness and hate evil, as Holy Church teacheth.
Chapter 55
After longing and perplexity, Julian cries inwardly with all her might, seeking God for help: 'Ah! Lord Jesus, King of bliss, how shall I be eased? Who shall teach me and tell me that thing me needeth to know, if I may not at this time see it in Thee?' She asks who will teach her if she cannot see it in God now.
Chapter 55
The Servant falls not from fault but from goodwill: his great desire and love to do his Lord's will make him start and run in haste, and then he falls and takes great hurt. Julian says no blame is assigned to him, for his will was kept whole in God's sight, though he is blinded from knowing it.
Chapter 56
The seven are: the sore bruising of the fall; heaviness of body; feebleness; blindness of reason and stunned mind, almost forgetting his own love; inability to rise; lying all alone with no help near or far; and lying on a long, hard, grievous place. Julian says the greatest mischief was failing of comfort, since he could not turn his face to his loving Lord.
Chapter 56
The Lord says it is fitting that He reward the Servant for his affright, dread, hurt, maim and all his woe, and give him a gift better and more worshipful than his own wholeness would have been. Julian understands that the Servant's fall and woe shall be turned into high worship and endless bliss.
Chapter 56
Julian understands the Servant was shewed for Adam — one man shown, and his falling, to make understood how God beholdeth All-Man and his falling. For in the sight of God all man is one man, and one man is all man. She notes the Servant had many properties that could not be assigned to single Adam alone.
Chapter 56
Julian says God rejoices that He is our Father, that He is our Mother, and that He is Very Spouse while the soul is His loved Wife; Christ rejoices that He is our Brother, and Jesus rejoices that He is our Saviour. She calls these five high joys, in which He wills that we enjoy, praising, thanking, loving, and endlessly blessing Him.
Chapter 57
Julian says all who shall be saved have in them, during this life, a marvellous mingling of weal and woe: by Christ we are steadfastly kept and by grace raised into sure trust of salvation, while by Adam's falling we are broken in feeling, made dark by sins and pains. In our intent we abide in God and trust for mercy; God opens our understanding more or less as He gives ability.
Chapter 57
Julian describes an outward regard, shown meekly and mildly with great ruth and pity, in which man should meekly accuse himself while God courteously excuses him; this is the lower part of man's life, with two parts: man's rueful falling and the worshipful Satisfaction our Lord made. The inward regard is more highly and all one: the life and virtue of the lower part comes from the higher, all one love, where pains are highly restored.
Chapter 57
Julian writes that in every soul that shall be saved there is a Godly Will that never assented to sin nor ever shall. This Will is so good it can never will evil but continually wills and works good in God's sight. She says our Lord wills that we know this in faith and hold this blessed Will whole and safe in Jesus Christ.
Chapter 58
Julian insists that notwithstanding the rightful knitting and endless oneing, the redemption and again-buying of mankind is needful and speedful in everything, done for the same intent and end that Holy Church teaches in our faith. So the mystical union does not cancel the Church's teaching on redemption; both stand together in her showing.
Chapter 58
Julian says when God would make man's body He took clay of earth, a matter mingled and gathered of all bodily things. But for man's soul He would take right nought but made it. Thus the made nature is rightly oned to the Maker, Substantial Nature not-made, God, so that there may nor shall be right nought between God and man's soul.
Chapter 58
Julian defines faith as "nought else but a right understanding, with true belief and sure trust, of our Being: that we are in God, and God is in us: Whom we see not." She also calls faith a virtue that comes from our Nature-Substance into our Sense-soul by the Holy Ghost, and says that without it no man may receive virtue.
Chapter 59
Julian says we should rejoice that God dwells in our soul, and "much more highly" that our soul dwells in God. The soul is made to be God's dwelling-place, while the soul's dwelling-place is God, who is unmade. She calls it high understanding to know God dwells in us, and higher understanding to know our made soul dwells in God's Substance.
Chapter 59
Julian says she saw "no difference between God and our Substance: but as it were all God," yet her understanding took that our Substance is in God — that God is God, and our Substance is a creature in God. So the apparent unity is qualified: the creature's being is in God, not identical with the uncreated God.
Chapter 59
Julian calls the Almighty Truth of the Trinity our Father, who made us and keeps us in Him; the deep Wisdom of the Trinity our Mother, in whom we are all enclosed; and the high Goodness our Lord, in whom we are enclosed and He in us. She says we are enclosed in Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and each Person is enclosed in us.
Chapter 59
Julian states that notwithstanding all our feeling of woe or weal, God wills that we understand and hold by faith that we are more verily in heaven than in earth. She grounds this in Christ, who bears us up into heaven and presenteth us worshipfully to His Father, a gift the Father receives thankfully and gives back to the Son.
Chapter 60
Julian says our Faith cometh of the natural Love of our soul, of the clear light of our Reason, and of the steadfast Mind which we have from God in our first making. Once the soul is inspired into the body and we are made sensual, mercy and grace begin to work, and the Holy Ghost formeth in our Faith Hope that we shall come again up above to our Substance.
Chapter 60
Julian argues that because of the worshipful oneing made by God between soul and body, mankind must needs be restored from double death. This restoring could never happen until the Second Person of the Trinity had taken the lower part of man's nature, to whom the highest part was oned in the First-making. In Christ both parts are one Soul: the higher in peace with God, the lower suffering for mankind's salvation.
Chapter 60
Julian says her understanding was led of God to see that our soul is made-trinity, like to the unmade blissful Trinity, known and loved from without beginning, and in the making oned to the Maker. She calls this sight full sweet and marvellous, peaceable, restful, sure, and delectable. She also affirms God is never out of the soul, dwelling in it blissfully without end.
Chapter 60
The author argues it is readier for us to come to the knowing of God than to know our own Soul, because the Soul is so deep-grounded in God that we cannot know it until we first know God, its Maker. Yet she also says we must desire wisely and truly to know our own Soul, seeking it where it is—in God—so that both are known in one.
Chapter 61
She means God is the Ground in whom our Soul stands, and the Mean that keeps Substance and Sense-nature together so they never dispart. The soul sits in God in rest, stands in God in strength, and is rooted in God in endless love. Therefore to have knowledge of and commune with our Soul, one must seek God, in whom it is enclosed.
Chapter 61
Both together may rightly be called our Soul because of their oneing in God. The worshipful City Jesus sits in is our Sense-soul, where He is enclosed; our Kindly Substance is enclosed in Jesus with Christ's blessed Soul resting in the Godhead. She saw it must needs be that we remain in longing and penance until led so deep into God that we truly know our Soul; we cannot be fully holy until the Soul is in its full powers, when the Sense-soul by Christ's Passion is brought up to the Substance.
Chapter 61
The three are Reason (grounded in God, Substantial Naturehood), and from that Ground spring Mercy and Grace. Julian says we may not profit by Reason alone without Mind and Love, nor be saved by our Nature-Ground in God without Mercy and Grace coming from the same Ground. Of these three working all together we receive all our Goodness; the first gifts are goods of Nature, given at our first making, though God's foreseeing wisdom willed that we should be double.
Chapter 61
Julian writes that our higher part (substance) is knit to God in the making, while God is knit to our lower part (the sensual soul) in the taking of flesh. Thus in Christ our two natures are oned: the Trinity is comprehended in Christ, in whom our higher part is grounded, and the Second Person took our lower nature.
Chapter 62
Julian states that in our substance we are full, but in our sense-soul we fail. This failing God will restore and fulfil through Mercy and Grace plenteously flowing from His own Nature-Goodness. His Nature-Goodness makes Mercy and Grace work in us, and the nature-goodness we have from Him enables us to receive that working.
Chapter 62
Julian says our Lady is our Mother in whom we are all enclosed and of her born in Christ, since she who is Mother of our Saviour is Mother of all who shall be saved in our Saviour. She adds that our Saviour is our Very Mother in whom we are endlessly borne and never shall come out of Him.
Chapter 62
Faith comes out of the high riches of our nature-Substance into our sensual soul, grounded in us through God's Nature-Goodness by the working of Mercy and Grace. From it come all other goods by which we are led and saved: the Commandments, which we should know both as biddings to love and keep and as forbiddings to hate and refuse, plus the Seven Sacraments and all virtues.
Chapter 62
Julian writes that all our life is in three: the first is Nature, in which we have our Being; the second is Mercy, in which we have our Increasing; and the third is Grace, in which we have our Fulfilling. She links these to the Trinity: the high Might is our Father, the deep Wisdom our Mother, and the great Love our Lord.
Chapter 63
Julian says we are double by God's making, Substantial and Sensual. The Second Person is our Mother in Nature, making our Substance, in whom we are grounded and rooted; and He is our Mother in Mercy, taking our Sense-part. In our Mother Christ we profit and increase, and in Mercy He reforms and restores us, oneing us to our Substance by His Passion, Death, and Uprising.
Chapter 63
Julian attributes rewarding and giving to the Third Person, the Holy Ghost, working with Mercy. Rewarding is a large giving-of-truth the Lord does to the one who has travailed; giving is a courteous working done freely of Grace, fulfilling and overpassing all that is deserved of creatures. Through this we are fulfilled.
Chapter 63
Julian holds that our Substance is whole in each Person of the Trinity, which is one God: in the Father, in the Mother All-wisdom, and in the Lord the Holy Ghost. But our Sense-soul is only in the Second Person, Christ Jesus, in whom are the Father and the Holy Ghost; and in Him and by Him we are taken out of Hell and oned to our Substance.
Chapter 63
Julian says she understood three manners of beholding Motherhood in God: the first is grounded in our Nature's making; the second is the taking of our nature, where the Motherhood of Grace begins; the third is the Motherhood of working, in which grace spreads forth in length, breadth, height, and endless deepness. She concludes that all is one Love.
Chapter 64
Julian argues that all our bliss comes by Mercy and Grace, which we could never have had nor known unless that property of Goodness which is God had been contraried. Wickedness was suffered to rise contrary to the Goodness, and God's Goodness of Mercy and Grace turned it all to goodness and worship for all who shall be saved.
Chapter 64
Julian writes that our Father wills, our Mother works, and our good Lord the Holy Ghost confirms. It belongs to us to love God in whom we have our being, reverently thanking and praising Him for our making, mightily praying to our Mother for mercy and pity, and to the Holy Ghost for help and grace. In these three is all our life: Nature, Mercy, Grace.
Chapter 64
Julian states that the soul is highest, noblest, and worthiest where it is lowest, meekest, and mildest. Out of this Substantial Ground we have all our virtues in our Sense-part by gift of Nature, helped and sped by Mercy and Grace, without which we may not profit. She adds that it properly belongs to virtue to hate sin and wickedness.
Chapter 64
Julian calls the Mother's service nearest, readiest, and surest—nearest because most of nature, readiest because most of love, surest because most of truth. She argues that this office none might, could, or ever should do to the full except Christ alone, who took the ground of His works low and mildly in the Maiden's womb.
Chapter 65
Julian argues that falling is necessary so we learn how feeble and wretched we are of ourselves, and so we fully know the marvellous love of our Maker. In heaven we shall see we grievously sinned yet were never hurt in His love nor less of price. The sight of falling also gives lowness and meekness, by which we are highly raised.
Chapter 66
Julian argues that as an earthly mother may let her child fall and be hurt for its profit but never let peril come to it, so Jesus, our heavenly Mother, may not suffer His children to perish, being All-mighty, All-wisdom and All-love. He acts as a kind nurse whose office is to save us, and wills that we run to Him as a hurt child to its mother.
Chapter 66
Julian says we should not flee away but use the condition of a child: run hastily to our Mother for help, saying 'My kind Mother, my Gracious Mother, my dearworthy Mother, have mercy on me: I have made myself foul and unlike to Thee, and I nor may nor can amend it but with thine help and grace.' If not eased at once, He acts as a wise mother, letting us mourn until the best time.
Chapter 66
Julian argues that one single person may oftentimes be broken, as it seemeth to himself, but the whole Body of Holy Church was never broken nor ever shall be. Therefore it is sure and gracious to will meekly and mightily to be fastened and oned to our Mother, Holy Church, that is, Christ Jesus, whose blood and water are plenteous to make us fair and clean.
Chapter 66
The author argues that God is Nature in His being: the Goodness that is Nature is God. He is the ground, the substance, and the same thing that is Nature-hood. She further states that God is very Father and very Mother of Nature, and that all natures flowing out of Him shall be restored and brought again into Him through the salvation of mankind by the working of Grace.
Chapter 67
Julian says that in that time God showed our frailty and fallings, our afflictings and settings at nought, our despites and outcastings, and all our woe so far as it might befall in this life. With that He showed His blessed Might, Wisdom, and Love, keeping us as tenderly and surely to our salvation as when we are in most solace, raising us spiritually and highly in heaven.
Chapter 67
Julian says we need not greatly seek far out to know sundry natures, but should go to Holy Church, unto our Mother's breast, that is, unto our own soul where our Lord dwells. There we shall find all now in faith and in understanding, and afterward verily in Himself clearly, in bliss.
Chapter 67
Julian insists that no man or woman should take this singularly to himself, for it is not so but general. It is of our precious Christ, and this fair nature was prepared for the worship and nobility of man's making and for the joy and bliss of man's salvation, even as He saw, wist, and knew from without beginning.
Chapter 67
Julian states that Nature is all good and fair in itself, and Grace was sent to save Nature and destroy sin, bringing fair nature back to God with more nobleness through Grace's working. She says Grace is God as Nature is God: two in manner of working, one in love, neither working without the other, and not disparted.
Chapter 68
Julian says that when we are accorded to Nature and Grace by God's mercy, we shall see that sin is truly viler and more painful than hell, without likeness, because it is contrary to our fair nature. As truly as sin is unclean, so truly is it unnatural, and thus horrible to see for the loved soul that would be fair and shining before God.
Chapter 68
Julian grounds our life in Jesus as Very Mother: in the foreseeing Wisdom from without beginning, in taking our nature He quickened us, in dying on the Cross He bore us to endless life, and from then until Doomsday He feeds and furthers us, as the sovereign Kindness of Motherhood and the kindly need of childhood ask.
Chapter 68
Julian says that by nature the child does not despair of the Mother's love, does not presume of itself, and loves the Mother and each other child. These fair virtues, with others like them, serve and please our Heavenly Mother. Julian understood no higher stature in this life than childhood, in feebleness and failing of might and wit, until our Mother brings us to the Father's Bliss.
Chapter 68
Julian says she had great longing to be delivered from this world and this life, because she beheld the woe here and the bliss there. She adds that if there had been no pain in this life but the absence of our Lord, it seemed sometimes more than she might bear. Her own wretchedness, sloth, and weakness also made her dislike living and travailing.
Chapter 69
She saw a body lying on the earth, heavy and horrible, without shape or form, like a swollen quag of stinking mire. Suddenly from it sprang a fair little Child, fully formed, nimble and lively, whiter than lily, which swiftly glided up into heaven. The body's swollenness betokens the wretchedness of deadly flesh; the Child's littleness betokens the cleanness of purity in the soul.
Chapter 69
She argues that if pain is taken from us it may come again, but to be taken from pain is a final deliverance. Therefore she calls it a sovereign comfort and blissful beholding in a loving soul that we shall be taken from pain. In this promise she saw Christ's marvellous compassion for our woe and a courteous promising of clear deliverance.
Chapter 69
She says it is God's will that we set the point of our thought in this blissful beholding as often and as long as we may with His grace, since it is blessed contemplation and greatly to His worship. When we fall again into heaviness, spiritual blindness, and pains by our frailty, it is God's will that we know He has not forgotten us.
Chapter 69
Julian writes that the Charity of God makes in us such a unity that, when it is truly seen, no man can part himself from other. She applies this to the soul's inward thinking: every soul should think of its Lover as having done for it all that God has done, and so be as bound to Him in love.
Chapter 70
Julian understands that whoever with firm will chooses God in this life, for love, may be sure of being loved without end, and that this endless love works grace in him. She says God wills that we be as assured in hope of heaven's bliss while here as we shall be in sureness while there, and the more joy we take in that sureness with reverence and meekness, the better it pleases Him.
Chapter 70
Julian describes a holy courteous dread of our Lord, united with meekness, in which a creature sees the Lord marvellous great and itself marvellous little. God shows this so we love Him and dread nought but Him, since all the Enemy's might is taken into our Friend's hand. Other dread she sets among passions, bodily sickness, and imaginations, to be passed lightly over.
Chapter 70
Julian says she has told of Fifteen Revelations, as God vouchsafed to minister them to her mind, renewed by lightings and touchings, which she hopes were of the same Spirit that showed them all. Of these Fifteen Shewings, the First began early in the morning about the hour of four, and they lasted, showing by fair and steady process, each following other, till nine of the day.
Chapter 70
Julian says that for the folly of feeling a little bodily pain she unwisely lost, for a time, the comfort of all the blessed shewing of our Lord God. When the fifteen shewings ended, her sickness returned, and she describes herself as barren and dry, moaning and crying over bodily pain and the failing of spiritual and bodily comfort.
Chapter 71
Julian had said she raved, and he laughed heartily. But when she said the Cross before her face seemed to bleed fast, he grew sober and marvelled. Julian was sore ashamed and astonished at her recklessness, wept greatly, and wanted to be shriven, but thought no priest would believe her since she did not believe God.
Chapter 71
Julian thought the Fiend set himself on her throat with a visage like a young man's, long and wondrous lean, red like new-burnt tilestone with black spots, red rust-coloured hair, and white teeth in a malicious grin. He had no shapely body or hands but held her throat with paws and would have strangled her, but could not.
Chapter 71
After waking, a light smoke with great heat and foul stench came in the door, and Julian thought it a bodily fire. When those with her felt no stench, she knew it was the Fiend come to tempest her. She took to what our Lord had shewed her that same day, with all the Faith of Holy Church, which she beheld as both one, and fled to it as her comfort; all vanished and she was brought to rest and peace.
Chapter 71
She saw her soul in the midst of her heart, appearing as large as an endless world and a blissful kingdom; by its conditions she understood it to be a worshipful City. In the midst of that City sits the Lord Jesus, God and Man, a fair Person of large stature, highest Bishop, most majestic King, most worshipful Lord, clad majestically, sitting in peace and rest.
Chapter 72
Julian reports that the place Jesus takes in our soul He shall never remove, without end, as to her sight, for in us is His homeliest home and His endless dwelling. The Godhead rules and sustains heaven and earth and all that is, being sovereign Might, sovereign Wisdom, and sovereign Goodness, yet the soul remains His chosen place of rest.
Chapter 72
Julian understood in verity that our soul may never have rest in things beneath itself. Yet when it comes above all creatures into the Self, it may not abide in beholding its Self; all the beholding is blissfully set in God, the Maker dwelling therein. She illustrates with a creature seeing a lord's treasures and, marvelling, seeking the high place where the lord dwells.
Chapter 72
Julian saw that the blessed Trinity enjoys without end in the making of Man's Soul, having seen from without beginning what should please Him without end. She argues that if the Trinity might have made the soul any better, fairer, or nobler, He would not have been fully pleased with its making. He wills our hearts be raised above vain sorrows and rejoice in Him.
Chapter 72
The chapter stresses that Christ did not promise freedom from being tempested, travailed, or afflicted, but only that "Thou shalt not be overcome." Julian presents this as a comfort against all tribulations that may come, and the author argues God wills that we take heed to these words and remain strong in sure trust in both weal and woe.
Chapter 73
The chapter says that just as in the first word, signifying Christ's blissful Passion, it was said "Herewith is the devil overcome," so in the last word He said with full true secureness, meaning us all, "Thou shalt not be overcome." The author argues this teaching and comfort is general, extending to all her even-Christians, and so is God's will.
Chapter 73
Julian says it was a singular joy and bliss to her that she saw Him sitting, because the quiet secureness of sitting shows endless dwelling. She also describes the beholding of this without end as full pleasing to God and full great profit to us, making the soul like to Him that is beheld and oning it in rest and peace by His grace.
Chapter 73
The Lord said full sweetly, without voice and without opening of lips, that it was no raving that she saw that day, but that she should take it and believe it, keep herself therein, comfort herself therewith, and trust thereto, and she should not be overcome. Julian says these last words were said for believing and true sureness that it is our Lord Jesus who showed her all.
Chapter 73
Julian reports the Fiend returned with heat and a vile, painful, dreadful stench, and she heard a bodily jangling as if two persons were muttering together, seeming to hold a parliament with great busyness. She understood nothing they said, and judged it all was meant to stir her to despair, as though mocking boisterous mouth-prayers said without devout attention and wise diligence.
Chapter 74
She set her bodily eye on the same Cross where she had been comforted before, her tongue to speech of Christ's Passion and rehearsing the Faith of Holy Church, and her heart to fasten on God with all trust and might. She told herself that if she would be as busy keeping from sin as she was keeping the Faith, that would be a good and sovereign occupation.
Chapter 74
Julian states that above the Faith no goodness is kept in this life, and beneath the Faith there is no help of soul. Therefore the Lord wills that we keep ourselves in the Faith. She presents this as her own sight or understanding, not as a universal doctrine, and ties it to the teaching that we must remain steadfastly within faith.
Chapter 75
On the day the Sight was shown, when it passed, Julian says that as a wretch she forsook it and openly said she had raved. Then Jesus of His mercy would not let it perish but showed it all again within her soul with more fulness, saying mightily and meekly: 'Wit it now well: it was no raving that thou sawest this day.'
Chapter 75
Julian identifies the six words as: 'Take it, believe it, and keep thee therein and comfort thee therewith and trust thou thereto; and thou shalt not be overcome.' She says His meaning is to fasten it faithfully in our heart, willing that it dwell with us in faith to our life's end and afterward in fulness of joy.
Chapter 75
Julian says our faith is contraried in diverse manners by our own blindness and our spiritual enemy, within and without. Therefore our precious Lover helps us with spiritual sight and true teaching. By His sufferance through ghostly enmity we are assayed in the Faith and made mighty; if our faith had no enmity, it should deserve no meed, according to her understanding.
Chapter 75
Julian describes three manners of Cheer: the Cheer of Passion, shown while Christ was here in this life dying, which is mournful and troubled yet glad and joyous because He is God; the Cheer of Ruth and Compassion, shown with sureness of keeping to all His lovers who betake them to His mercy; and the Blissful Cheer, as it shall be without end, which was shown oftenest and longest-continued.
Chapter 76
The third manner, the Blissful Cheer, as it shall be without end, was shown oftenest and longest-continued. Julian says the first two are the common Cheer shown in this life, but the third is mingled with them, like in part as it shall be in Heaven, given by gracious touching and sweet lighting of the spiritual life.
Chapter 76
In the time of pain and woe, He shows the Cheer of His Passion and His Cross, helping us to bear it by His own blessed virtue. In the time of our sinning, He shows the Cheer of Ruth and Pity, mightily keeping and defending us against all our enemies. These are the common Cheer shown in this life.
Chapter 76
Julian hopes that with His grace God has drawn, and more shall draw, the Outer Cheer to the Inner Cheer, making us all one with Him and each of us with other, in true lasting joy that is Jesus. She says the Blissful lovely Cheer of our Lord to our souls is glad, joyous, and sweet, and He beholds us ever living in love-longing.
Chapter 76
Julian writes that two contrary things can never be together in one place, and the most contrary pair is highest bliss and deepest pain. Since sin is most contrary to the Blissful Cheer, as long as we meddle with any part of sin we shall never see it clearly; the more grievous our sins, the deeper we are from that sight for the time.
Chapter 77
Julian says this weeping is not only tears of the bodily eye but has a more ghostly meaning: the soul's great, unmeasurable desire. Even if given all noble things God made in heaven and earth, without seeing the fair Blissful Cheer of Himself the soul would not stint of moaning and ghostly weeping, that is, painful longing, until it truly sees Him.
Chapter 77
Julian states that the Blissful Sight is the end of all manner of pain to the loving soul and the fulfilling of all manner of joy and bliss. She adds that if we were in all the pain heart can think and tongue may tell, yet might see His fair Blissful Cheer in that time, all this pain should not aggrieve us.
Chapter 77
Julian says it belongs to us to have three manner of knowings: first, to know our Lord God; second, to know our self, what we are by Him in Nature and Grace; third, to know meekly what our self is anent our sin and feebleness. As to her understanding, all the Shewing was made for these three.
Chapter 77
Julian states that God showed her two manners of sickness: the first is impatience, or sloth, whereby we bear our travail and pains heavily; the second is despair, or doubtful dread, which she says she will speak of afterward. She adds that generally God showed sin, in which all is comprehended, but in special only these two, which most travail and tempest us.
Chapter 78
Julian says the cause why we are travailed with them is lack in knowing of Love. Though the three Persons of the Trinity are all even in Itself, the soul took most understanding in Love, and God wills that in all things we have our beholding and enjoying in Love. Of this knowing, she says, we are most blind.
Chapter 78
Julian says that when we begin to hate sin and amend by the ordinance of Holy Church, a dread still dwells in us because of beholding ourselves and our sins afore done, and some because of everyday sins and broken covenants. She says this dread is sometimes taken for meekness, but it is a foul blindness and weakness, coming subtly of Enmity and against truth.
Chapter 78
Julian names four dreads: sudden affright coming through frailty, which helps purge a person like bodily sickness; dread of pain, which wakes a person from the sleep of sin and stirs them to seek God's mercy; doubtful dread, which God wills to be turned into love by knowing love; and reverent dread, the only dread that fully pleases God.
Chapter 79
Julian calls love and dread brethren, rooted in us by the Goodness of our Maker and never taken from us without end. We have both by nature and by grace. They are not parted asunder yet are not one, being two in property and working, and neither may be had without the other; so whoever loves also dreads, though they feel it but little.
Chapter 79
Julian says all dreads other than reverent dread, even those proffered under the colour of holiness, are not so true and may be known apart. The true dread makes a person hastily flee from all that is not good and fall into the Lord's breast like a child into the mother's bosom, knowing their feebleness and God's goodness, cleaving to Him with sure trust. All contrary to this is wrong or mingled with wrong; the remedy is to know both and refuse the wrong.
Chapter 79
Julian urges praying to dread God reverently, love Him meekly, and trust mightily, for reverent dread and meek love keep trust from being in vain; the more we trust, the more we please and worship God. If we fail in reverent dread and meek love, our trust is soon misruled for the time. Without this, she says, no man may please God.
Chapter 79
Julian states that God can do all we need, and names three needs: love, longing, and pity. Pity in love keeps us in the time of our need, while longing in the same love draws us up into Heaven. She frames these as shared with God, who longs toward the same end.
Chapter 80
Julian sees three longings in God, all to one end, and says we have the same in us by the same virtue and for the same end. First, God longs to teach us to know and love Him as is fitting and helpful. Second, God longs to bring us up to His bliss, as souls taken out of pain into Heaven. Third, God longs to fulfill us in bliss on the Last Day.
Chapter 80
Julian says that, as the Faith teaches, pain and sorrow shall end for all who shall be saved. The saved shall not only receive the same bliss that souls before have had in Heaven, but also a new bliss plenteously flowing out from God to fulfill them. These goods were ordained from without beginning, treasured and hid in God, and no creature was mighty or worthy to receive them until that time.
Chapter 80
Julian says that in this fulfilling we shall see verily the cause of all things God has done, and evermore the cause of all things He has permitted. The bliss shall be so deep and high that all creatures shall have great reverent dread of God, surpassing what was seen or felt before, so that the pillars of heaven shall tremble and quake. This dread has no pain; it is meek joy marvelling at God's greatness and creation's littleness.
Chapter 80
Julian states that the soul which beholds the fair nature of our Lord Jesus hates no hell but sin. Such a soul hates sin more for its vileness and horribleness than all the pain in hell. She adds that it is God's will we know sin, pray busily, and seek teaching meekly so we fall not blindly, and rise readily if we do fall.
Chapter 81
Julian says a soul seeking rest, when another's sin comes to mind, should flee it as the pain of hell and seek God for remedy and help. Beholding others' sins makes a thick mist before the soul's eyes, hiding God's fairness, unless one beholds them with contrition, compassion, and holy desire to God for that person. Without this, it harms and tempests the soul.
Chapter 81
Julian understands the most wisdom and the most folly a creature may do in this life. The most wisdom is to act after the will and counsel of one's highest sovereign Friend, Jesus, holding fast to Him homely in whatever state, foul or clean. The most folly is the opposite: heeding the enemy's false dread that would pull us back from our courteous Lord.
Chapter 81
Julian says the enemy stirs doubting dread through our own folly and blindness, telling us we are wretched, sinful, and unfaithful because we break the Command and fall again into the same sins, especially sloth and losing time. His meaning is to make us so heavy and weary that we let out of mind the fair, blissful beholding of our Everlasting Friend.
Chapter 81
The remedy is that we be aware of our wretchedness and flee to our Lord, for the more needy we are, the more speedful it is to draw nigh to Him. We should think that though we have a shrewd pain, our Lord is All-Mighty, All-Wisdom, and All-Goodness, and lovingly abide in this beholding.
Chapter 82
The penance that man takes of himself was not shown specified. Rather, it was specially and highly shown that we shall meekly bear and suffer the penance that God Himself gives us, with mind on His blessed Passion, so that we suffer with Him as His friends did who saw it.
Chapter 82
All that is contrary to love and peace is of the Fiend. We fall of our feebleness and folly, but by mercy and grace of the Holy Ghost we rise to more joy. If the enemy wins aught by our falling, he loses manifold more in our rising by charity and meekness, which burns him with envy.
Chapter 82
This life is penance and this place is prison, yet in the remedy God wills that we rejoice, since our Lord is with us, keeping and leading into fullness of joy. We should be as homely with Him as heart may think, but beware not to take this homeliness so recklessly as to leave courtesy, for He is sovereign homeliness and very courteous.
Chapter 82
Julian says our sin is so vile and horrible that God, of His courtesy, will not show it to us except by the sweet gracious light of Himself—His grace and mercy. He measures the sight to us, showing less than there is, because we could not endure to see it as it is.
Chapter 83
Julian lists four: that He is our Ground from whom we have all life and being; that He mightily and mercifully keeps us while we are in sin among enemies; that He courteously keeps us and makes us know we go amiss; and that He steadfastly abides us, changing no regard, willing us to be turned and oned to Him in love.
Chapter 83
Julian was taught this when she failed to attend to a showing and the Lord stopped teaching until she had grace to attend. She concludes that though we be highly lifted into contemplation by God's special gift, we still need knowledge and sight of our sin and feebleness, for without this knowing we may not have true meekness, and without meekness we may not be saved.
Chapter 83
Julian says we may not have this knowing from ourselves, nor from any of our spiritual enemies, for they do not will us so great good; if it were by their will, we would not see it until our ending day. Therefore we are greatly beholden to God, who for love shows it Himself in time of mercy and grace.
Chapter 83
Julian says she was taught to see her own sin and not other men's sin, except when it may serve for the comfort and help of her fellow-Christians. She first took the showing that she would sin as applying to her own singular person, but later understood it as meant for the general Man, All-Man, sinful until the last day, of which she hopes she is a member by God's mercy.
Chapter 84
Julian says that in dread she has matter of meekness that saves her from presumption, and in the blessed showing of love she has matter of true comfort and joy that saves her from despair. She notes she was not told the measure or greatness of sin, and does not know how she shall fall, so she remains in dread for unsureness of herself.
Chapter 84
Julian warns that if we are stirred to be more reckless in our living or in keeping our hearts because we have knowledge of this plenteous love, we need greatly to beware. She says such a stirring, if it comes, is untrue and ought greatly to be hated, for it has no likeness of God's will. All that we see or feel contrary to this homely love is of the enemy, not of God.
Chapter 84
Julian says that when we fall by frailty or blindness, the courteous Lord touches, stirs, and calls us, and wills that we see our wretchedness and meekly be aware of it. But He wills not that we abide thus, nor busy ourselves greatly about accusing ourselves, nor be wretched over ourselves; rather He wills that we hastily turn to Him, for He abides us and has haste to have us to Him.
Chapter 84
Julian says man stands by three things: the use of man's natural Reason, the common teaching of Holy Church, and the inward gracious working of the Holy Ghost. She insists all three are of one God—God is the ground of natural reason, the teaching of Holy Church, and the Holy Ghost—and that these are sundry gifts working in us continually together, of which we have here only a little knowing, as an A.B.C., with fulness in Heaven.
Chapter 85
Julian states that God alone took our nature, none but He; that Christ alone did all the works belonging to our salvation, none but He; and that He alone does the last end—dwelling with us, ruling and governing us in this living, and bringing us to His bliss. She adds that even if only one soul were left to come to heaven, He would be with that soul alone until He brought it up to His bliss.
Chapter 85
Julian explains it means all the true feeling we have in ourselves—contrition and compassion—and all sorrowing and moaning that we are not oned with our Lord. Such feeling as is speedful is Christ in us. Though some feel it seldom, it never passes from Christ until He brings us out of all woe, for love suffers never to be without pity. When we fall into sin, Christ alone keeps all the charge.
Chapter 85
Julian says when we fall into sin and leave the mind of Him and the keeping of our own soul, Christ alone keeps all the charge, standing sorrowfully and moaning. She says it belongs to us, for reverence and kindness, to turn hastily to our Lord and not leave Him alone, since only for us He is here. Yet His Goodness never suffers us to be alone: He is lastingly with us, tenderly excuses us, and shields us from blame in His sight.
Chapter 85
Julian says that although God showed Himself in diverse manners in heaven and earth—in the Incarnation, the Passion, and as in a point—He takes no place save in man's soul. There He has His resting-place and worshipful City, from which He shall never rise nor remove without end.
Chapter 86
Julian says nature's longing in us is to God an aye-lasting penance, which He works in us and mercifully helps us bear. She calls this our natural penance and the highest, as to her sight, and says it never goes from us until we are fulfilled and shall have Him to our meed.
Chapter 86
Julian says God wills that we readily answer to His gracious touching, more rejoicing in His whole love than sorrowing in our often fallings. She argues it is the most worship to Him that we live gladly and merrily for His love in our penance, since He beholds us tenderly and sees all our living as penance.
Chapter 86
Julian says God wills that we set our hearts in the Overpassing—that is, pass from the pain we feel into the bliss we trust. Her footnote ties this to 2 Corinthians 4:17, where light affliction works an exceeding eternal weight of glory.
Chapter 86
The Lord beholds the servant with pity and not with blame. Julian understands that this passing life does not require living wholly without blame and sin. God loves us endlessly though we sin customably, and shows Himself full mildly; then we sorrow discreetly and turn to behold His mercy, cleaving to His love and goodness, knowing Him as our medicine.
Chapter 87
She says if any such lover exists on earth, she does not know it, for it was not shown to her. What was shown is that in falling and in rising we are ever preciously kept in one Love. In the Beholding of God we fall not; in the beholding of self we stand not; both are true as to her sight, but God's Beholding is the highest soothness.
Chapter 87
While we are in this life it is full speedful to see both at once. The higher Beholding keeps us in spiritual solace and true enjoying in God; the lower keeps us in dread and makes us ashamed of ourselves. Our good Lord wills that we hold us much more in the higher, yet not leave the knowing of the lower, until we are brought above.
Chapter 87
By the great desire she saw in our blessed Lord that we live in longing and enjoying, as the lesson of love shows, she understood that what is contrarious to us is not of Him but of enmity. He wills that we know this by the sweet gracious light of His kind love.
Chapter 87
Julian says she had, in part, touching, sight, and feeling in three properties of God: Life, Love, and Light. She states the strength and effect of all the Revelation stand in these, and they were seen in every Shewing, most properly in the Twelfth. In life is marvellous homeliness, in love gentle courtesy, and in light endless Nature-hood.
Chapter 88
Julian says she beheld with reverent dread and great marvelling that our Reason is in God, understanding it to be the highest gift we have received, and that it is grounded in nature. She says these properties were in one Goodness, unto which her Reason would be oned and cleave with all its might.
Chapter 88
Julian says that at the end of woe our eyes shall suddenly be opened, and in clearness of light our sight shall be full. That light is God, our Maker and Holy Ghost, in Christ Jesus our Saviour. Thus she saw and understood that our faith is our light in our night, and that this light is God, our endless Day.
Chapter 88
Julian says she had three manners of understanding of this light, Charity: Charity unmade, Charity made, and Charity given. Charity unmade is God; Charity made is our soul in God; Charity given is virtue. She calls the last a precious gift of working in which we love God for Himself, ourselves in God, and what God loves for God.
Chapter 89
The author writes that, despite our simple living and blindness here, our courteous Lord beholds us rejoicing, and that we may please Him best by wisely and truly believing and by enjoying with Him and in Him. This trust and delight, rather than any achievement, is what she says God most values in our present condition.
Chapter 90
She states that as verily as we shall be in God's endless bliss, praising and thanking Him, so verily we have been in God's foresight, loved and known in His endless purpose from without beginning. In that unbegun love He made us, keeps us, and never suffers us to be hurt in any manner by which our bliss might be lost.
Chapter 90
The author says that when the Doom is given and all are brought up above, we shall clearly see in God the secret things now hidden from us. Then no one will be stirred to say 'Lord, if it had been thus, then it had been full well'; instead all shall say with one voice that He is blessed, for it is thus, it is well, and all things were done as ordained before anything was made.
Chapter 90
Fifteen years and more after the showing, Julian was answered in ghostly understanding: "Wouldst thou learn thy Lord's meaning in this thing? Learn it well: Love was His meaning." She was told that Love showed it, Love was what was shown, and it was shown for Love; holding therein she would learn more, but never any other thing without end.
Chapter 91
Julian says she saw full surely that ere God made us He loved us, and that this love was never slacked nor ever shall be. In that love He has done all His works, made all things profitable to us, and in it our life is everlasting. Our making had a beginning, but the love wherein He made us was in Him from without beginning.
Chapter 91
The scribe prays that the book come only to those who will be Christ's faithful lovers, submit to the faith of holy Church, and obey the wholesome understanding and teaching of men of virtuous life, sober age and sound learning. He warns against taking one thing by affection and leaving another, calling that the condition of a heretic, and urges taking everything together.
Chapter 91
The scribe says this Revelation is high divinity and high wisdom, so it may not dwell with one who is thrall to sin and the Devil. He insists nothing be taken by personal liking while another part is left, since that is the heretic's condition; rather take everything with everything, and truly understood, all is according to holy Scripture and grounded in it.
Chapter 91
Text used: Project Gutenberg eBook #52958 (Public domain in the United States). Generated from the full text; cards paraphrase the source.
Version: Public domain edition. Retrieved 2026-10-28. Cards reviewed 2026-10-28.
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