1. See p. 47 of Enfolded in Love, or ch. 68 of Revelations of Divine
she is the submissive daughter of the Church. Facing realistically the paradoxes and sufferings of the Christian life, she is yet grounded in that peace which comes from total belief in and acceptance of the love of God. 'He did not say "you shall not be afflicted, you shall not be tempest-tossed,"' she writes, 'but he did say "you shall not be overcome"."
This blessed assurance stemmed from the visions she was granted by God on 8 May 1373. After a week's illness involving great physical and spiritual distress, and which it was thought could culminate only in death, she received while she gazed at a crucifix sixteen understandings of the amazing love of God. For many years before, she had patiently sought his will; for twenty years and more afterwards she patiently teased out the significances of these 'shewings' by prayer and profound thought. In a sense, too, she has patiently waited 600 years for a generation receptive to her message, for, until this century, her book has been largely unknown. And it is not insignificant that 'patience' and 'suffering' have the same linguistic root, for Julian knows a great deal about the pain of life and the problem of evil.
Her theology may well start, as has been said, 'from the sun, not the clouds', but she has an acute sense of sin. 'The shadows are deep because the light is so bright.' Julian is a realist about the human condition, with no hint of the airy-fairy ecstatic mystic about her. Mystic she may be, but she is utterly
1. See p. 47 of Enfolded in Love, or ch. 68 of Revelations of Divine Love.
down-to-earth because her heart and mind are so utterly in heaven.
It is probably these qualities which have made Julian's thought so helpful and relevant to twentiethcentury men and women. In a Church and society which have lamentably divorced head and heart so often — over-cerebral and materialistic on the one hand, and sensation-seeking and woolly-minded on the other — Julian's realization that God is concerned with the whole person — body, mind, and spirit - and her insistence on the fundamental unity of our being with the all-embracing love of God, have much to teach us today.
A selection such as this book contains, taken from only the first half of the Revelations, cannot cover all her thought. But most of her leading ideas are at least foreshadowed in these pages, and it may be useful to point to a few of them in the hope that readers will be encouraged to explore the full text of her book.
The Central Vision First, like authentic mystics of all religious traditions, she has an overwhelming sense of the centrality of God. God is '...our Maker and Keeper, . .
. our evelasting love, our joy, our bliss'.' He 'is all that is good... and God has made all that is made." So the perfect response of man is to seek that good: 'This seeking with faith, hope and love pleases our Lord, and the finding pleases the soul
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