God's Mercy
God's Mercy
God's Mercy Julian frequently refers to God's mercy. When she does this, what does she mean by "mercy"? The word is often understood mainly, even exclusively, as the gracious forgiveness of debt or of the faults and offenses of humanity. In human terms, the word "mercy" can also imply clemency or forbearance by those with power for those without power – the underclass who are at the mercy of powerful people or of impersonal forces.
Such a viewpoint was frequently projected onto God.
However, even the Oxford Dictionary definition of mercy suggests something more. Mercy implies kind treatment, especially a disposition to forgive or to show compassion rather than the opposite. If mercy is linked to compassion – literally "to suffer with" (imaged in the life and death of Jesus Christ) – it embraces sympathy, fellow feeling, and, not least, an inclination to offer help to those in need.
From a Christian perspective, the foundation of our understanding of mercy is that it is an attribute of God and includes compassion. Human mercy is founded upon God's mercy, and is inspired by God. There is a realization that the human self, and all that it can do and give, does not have purely autonomous, individual, and self‐focused "rights." There is an inherent solidarity in human existence in which both those who give and those who receive share the same foundation – that is, God's fullness. Mercy also, therefore, involves compassion towards those who do not have an obvious claim to our kindness and from whom no recompense is expected.
In her chapters 47 and 48 Julian tells how she was led to reinterpret God's mercy. She notes in chapter 47 that "by the teaching [of the Church] which I had before" God's mercy refers to how God remits the natural reaction of anger at human sins. This would make mercy a welcome experience for people "whose intention and desire is to love" because for such spiritually inclined people the anger of God "would be harder than any other pain." Julian then notes that at no point did this kind of mercy appear in her revelations.
Julian proceeds to diagnose the everyday human condition that forms the background to her reinterpretation of God's mercy. Recalling Julian's concept of "sensuality" as a dimension of human identity, we are changeable in this life. We fall into sin through ignorance. We are weak and can easily be assailed by sorrow and woe. Behind this lies a blindness that results from not seeing God consistently. In contrast, Julian gratefully acknowledges that in her revelatory experience she "saw" and "felt" in ways that "were great and plentiful" compared to "our common feeling in this life." She had a sight of God that drew her towards rejoicing and hope even though she knew that such experience could not persist. Yet she had hope in God's endless love and that "I should be protected by his mercy and brought to bliss."
Sin and Salvation
Chapter 48 then outlines the true nature of God's mercy as Julian experienced it and believed that she was mandated to teach all her fellow
Christians. The Holy Spirit is "endless life dwelling in our soul" who protects us, gives us peace, brings us ease, and reconciles us to God. "And this is the mercy and the way on which our good Lord constantly leads us." Julian goes on to state that the foundation of God's mercy is love and "the operation of mercy is our protection in love." Indeed, this was revealed to Julian in such a way that she could not see any other aspect of mercy "than as if it were all love in love." Anger and wrath do not belong to God, so that the notion of mercy as the remission of God's wrath is overturned in what Julian was shown. Indeed, she firmly asserts that wrath is a purely human emotion and "is nothing else but a perversity and an opposition to peace and love."
Interestingly, in chapter 48 Julian goes on to make an early reference to motherhood. She states that "mercy is a compassionate property, which belongs to motherhood in tender love." In the context of this chapter, motherhood is implicitly but not explicitly related to God. Julian concludes chapter 48 by listing the "works" of God's mercy as protecting, enduring, vivifying, and healing. In addition grace‐filled mercy raises, rewards, and endlessly exceeds what human performance deserves. In this, mercy is associated closely with God's plenty, generosity, and "his wonderful courtesy."
In the chapters on either side of the parable of a Lord and a Servant, Julian continues to address the tension she experiences. In chapter 50 she lays her fundamental problem before God. As fallible humans "we sin grievously all day and are very blameworthy." Indeed, "We are often dead by the judgment of men on earth." Yet, to her astonishment, Julian has been led to understand that God shows no sign of blame. Indeed in the sight of God "the soul which will be saved was never dead and never will be." The effective dynamic of human existence is that "in this mortal life mercy and forgiveness are the path which always leads us to grace."
Confronted with this paradox as a result of her interior insights, Julian cries out to God to be taught and told all she needs to know to resolve this conflict. The following chapter 51 and its parable is the medium for God to answer Julian. In chapter 52, as we have already seen, Julian asserts that God sees things one way and we see things in another way.
Concretely, we "see" our falling and sinning and the harm that comes from these. Yet this becomes the medium for us also to "know the everlasting love which he [God] has for us, and his plentiful mercy."
Finally, at certain points in her elucidation of the two dimensions of human identity, substance, and sensuality (chapters 53–59), Julian seems to link the notion of "mercy" specifically to sensuality. That is to say that God's mercy operates most overtly in the context of our contingent existence which is incomplete and always "on the way" towards a full