Prayer and the Spiritual Life
Prayer and the Spiritual Life
awareness of the historic notion of the "spiritual senses."4 However, in his recent full scholarly edition of Julian's texts, Barry Windeatt does note that this reference to all five senses in one place is exceptional in her text.5
Julian refers to "truly seeing," "wholly feeling," "hearing him [God] spiritually," "delectably smelling him," and "sweetly tasting him."
The notion of the spiritual senses originates with the early Christian theologian Origen of Alexandria (c.185–c.254 ce), especially in his interpretation of the Song of Songs in the Hebrew bible as the highpoint of the mystical life. This was further developed in the writings of another patristic theologian, Gregory of Nyssa (c.335–c.395 ce). The notion of spiritual senses also had a significant influence on the Western mystical tradition, especially on the Cistercian Bernard of Clairvaux and on the Franciscan theologian Bonaventure, not least in his Itinerarium mentis ad Deum. Fundamentally, our outer material lives operate through five physical senses. The inner, spiritual dimension of a person also has five spiritual senses which echo the physical senses. In a way the notion of "spiritual senses" underlines an integration of the sensory or bodily with the spiritual dimension of human experience. Such a sensory framework for contemplation effectively counteracts any tendency towards a purely intellectualist approach to the notion of contemplative awareness of, or "oneing" with, God.6
Origen understood the spiritual senses not only as an expression of spiritual sensitivity but also as the basis for our ability to discern between good and evil. They are a gift of God's grace. However, interestingly, while Origen suggests that not everyone has these inner spiritual senses because they are hindered by sin, Julian's language is more inclusive. She states that "we shall all come into our Lord" and her apparent reference to the spiritual senses seems to apply to all her "evenchristen."
Prayer and the Spiritual Life For orthodox medieval Christians such as Julian, an important dimension of a life of prayer, or of prayer‐as‐life, was participation in the Church's public worship and reception of the sacraments. As I have already discussed in Chapter 1, on balance I believe that it is unlikely that Julian had previously been a monastic nun before entering the anchorhold attached to St Julian's Church in Norwich. For example, in the context of Julian's participation in public worship it is striking that there is no mention of, or echoes of, the liturgy of the Divine Office which is so central to monastic life. It is also interesting that on the two occasions in her chapters 4 and 8 when Julian uses a Latin phrase, Benedicite dominus, it seems to echo a phrase sung in the monastic Office of Prime and the greeting of
Prayer: A Journey of Desire
one monastic person to another. However, the phrase as used by Julian is grammatically incorrect. This seems unlikely if she had been a former nun.
In fact, there are relatively few references to public worship or the sacraments in Julian's texts although those that do appear are thoroughly conventional.7 In both the Short Text, chapters i and ii and the Long Text, chapter 2, Julian refers to the three graces or gifts that she had asked for before her illness and revelatory experiences. The second of these was a severe bodily sickness "so that I might in it receive all the rites which Holy
Church has to give me (Long Text, chapter 2)." In the medieval Church this refers to what were known as the Last Rites: personal Confession and Absolution, the Viaticum or reception of Communion, and Extreme
Unction which was the anointing of the sick person with blessed oil. In her Long Text, chapter 57, Julian writes of the classical seven sacraments in relation to the gift of faith. "Also in our faith come the seven sacraments, one following another in the order God has ordained them in for us." Finally, in chapter 60 in her treatment of the theme of Jesus as Mother,
Julian refers specifically to the Eucharist and more generally to "the life of the sacraments."
The mother can give her child to suck of her milk, but our precious Mother Jesus can feed us with himself, and does, most courteously and most tenderly, with the blessed sacrament, which is the precious food of true life; and with all the sweet sacraments he sustains us most mercifully and graciously…. I am he whom Holy
Church preaches and teaches to you. That is to say: All the health and the life of the sacraments, all the power and the grace of my word, all the goodness which is ordained in Holy Church for you,
I am he.
(Chapter 60) In terms of Julian's approach to the progress of a spiritual life, a number of commentators have already noted that she broke with a common approach to this in other medieval theological and spiritual writers. That is, Julian does not describe the spiritual journey in terms of distinct stages such as the classic three‐fold way (triplex via).8 In this tradition, spiritual transformation led people through the successive stages of "the way of purgation" or purification (beginners), followed by "the way of illumination" or contemplation (proficients), and ending with the "way of union"
(the perfect). Other writers, such as Franciscans associated with the school of Bonaventure, posited that the three "ways" were dimensions of the spiritual path that might be experienced simultaneously rather than in a temporal sequence. If Julian does not adopt this way of portraying