8. See ch. 62 of Revelations of Divine Love.
and fills it full of joy." It is a journey which has its end in the vision of God, yet even here and now we have glimpses of his glory: 'I saw him and I sought him, and I had him and I lacked him.'
The vision of God, both here and hereafter, is possible because God is the ground of all that exists — its maker, sustainer, and redeemer. Nothing is outside his constant creative will. In her famous vision of a little thing 'the size of a hazelnut, in the palm of my hand', or in the 'shewing' of God as the 'still point',' she is led to understand God's loving concern for all he has made. And this leads her to the realization that God loves our fallen human nature just as much as our redeemed humanity. In fact there is no division between the two, for Christ in assuming the former at the incarnation can raise it to the latter by the power of his resurrection life. God wills that what
Julian calls our 'sensuality' should be raised to the same glory as our inner being or 'substance' as she calls it. 'Every kind of "nature" that he has caused to flow out of himself to fulfil his purpose will be brought back and restored to him." So it is that her most famous aphorism, 'all shall be well', is not an optimism grounded in humanist hope, but a divinely-given certainty that what God loves — and he loves all that is — he will take to himself. An age which tends to separate the 'spiritual' and the 'material' needs to hear this, and certainly it challenges
4. p.2
5. p. 26.
6. See p. 11 of Enfolded in Love, or ch. 5 of Revelations of Divine Love.
Tee p. 19 of Enfolded in Love, or ch. 11 of Revelations of Divine Love.
8. See ch. 62 of Revelations of Divine Love.
our attitude towards the creation, especially our own humanity. For Julian, to be fully human is to be in God, and the supernatural is what is most truly natural.
The Compassionate God Julian arrives at this understanding because she is so vitally aware of the incredible totality of God's love.
This love is all-enfolding, warm and tender. As Julian gazed at the image of the Crucified she saw that in the passion of the Son (the supreme act of divine love) there is a revealing of the essential compassion of the Father. Certainly she sometimes writes of the inexpressible glory and majesty of God, his utter transcendence, but generally she is at pains to underline this compassion, his intimate yearning love for each soul. She piles image upon image — most notably, perhaps, in her image of Christ's motherhood — in the attempt to describe this generous gentle love. God is the courteous Lord who offers us a princely friendship, and wants us to be joined to him in joyful love.
Such an understanding has two consequences.
First, it makes any belief in a wrathful God quite impossible. There can be no anger in him. What we seem to experience as anger, what we call anger, is in fact completely in ourselves, and is simply a name to express the sensation caused in a sinner by the fire of God's love. 'Anger is no more than a perversity and striving against peace and love. And it is caused either by lack of strength, or lack of wisdom, or lack
of goodness. This lack is not found in God, but in us."
The second consequence is that it leads us to understand that we must love ourselves. This is no new idea; Jesus himself taught it, following the old
Law, 'thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself'. But it is a command too frequently neglected. 'It is his will that we should be like him in wholeness of endless love towards ourselves and our fellow-Christians.
And just as he does not stop loving us because of our sin, so he wills that we should not stop loving ourselves or our fellow-Christians."" It is probable that more harm has been caused to people's healthy development by self-hatred than by immoderate selflove. Julian teaches us to love the soul as God loves it. That all-too-common distortion of Christianity which emphasizes self-abnegation to the point of despising or rejecting self, and the frequently found inability to forgive self, are corrected by Julian's true humanity.
Yet, as has already been pointed out, Julian is a realist. She knows, both from her personal history and the revelation of the price Christ paid on the cross, the bitter reality of sin and pain. But God shows her that his love is so great that by his mercy all the falls and suffering which human beings endure are somehow taken up into his divine purpose, and are used by him to bring us to perfection.
This is a message of great joy and hope to those of us