The Centrality of Christ's Passion
The Centrality of Christ's Passion
challenging visions and alternative insights. She battles away with the tension between orthodoxy (what "Holy Church" teaches) and what she believes she has been led to see by God. Notable examples are her reflections in the Long Text chapters 9 and 10. Thus in chapter 9 she affirms that "I am sure that there are many who never had revelations or visions, but only the common teaching of Holy Church, who love God better than I." And again, "in everything I believe as Holy Church preaches and teaches." Julian does not deal with Church organization, hierarchical order, or sacramental theology in any technical sense. However, there is an extensive consideration in the Fourteenth Revelation of the nature of prayer as a relationship with God, but with no mention of actual spiritual practices.
The Centrality of Christ's Passion In my judgment, in terms of describing the heart of Julian's theology there are three vital keys. First of all, Julian's initial visionary experience of Jesus' suffering and Passion is the provocation for her theological reflections and for everything that she subsequently writes. Towards the beginning of her Long Text (chapter 3), Julian describes how she lay gravely ill and apparently dying aged thirty and a half. Her local priest was sent for and he brought a crucifix to place by her bed in order to comfort her. This led her to be filled with a recollection of the Passion. In chapter 4, she describes seeing blood running from under the crown of thorns, "hot and flowing freely and copiously, a living stream." Yet, she says, suddenly the Trinity "filled my heart full of the greatest joy." This leads her to affirm the Trinitarian nature of God as our lover, joy, and bliss. Here is the first of a series of rich reflections on God‐as‐Trinity that permeate her text and which I will develop further in Chapter 4 on Julian's theology of God. Her imagery of the suffering Christ continues in subsequent chapters. Thus in chapter 5, at the same time as she continues to see the bleeding from Christ's head, she is shown "a spiritual sight" of God's love. She uses the image of clothing – God is our clothing wrapping us in love. She is also shown the famous image of something small,
"no bigger than a hazelnut," which she is led to understand is creation, "everything which is made." This is created, loved and preserved by God.
In chapter 6 Christ's passion and wounds are intimately linked to an insight about God's goodness and providence. In subsequent chapters
Julian's spiritual vision – in other words, the heart of her spiritual insights and the source of her teaching – continues to be linked to the "bodily" imagery of bleeding as she explicitly affirms in chapter 7. "And during all the time that our Lord showed me this spiritual vision which I have now