It is upbeat, optimistic and makes us feel reassured. But on its own I feel it doesn’t adequately sum up what Divine Revelations is about, which is a shame, because it is a superbly apposite book for our current moment.
We know very little about Julian of Norwich, not even her name. ‘Julian’ comes from the Church of St. Julian in which she lived in permanent seclusion as an anchorite. She wrote Revelations during the reign of Edward III, and it represents the first known piece of writing by a woman in the English language.
Julian lived through the Black Death, the Peasants’ Revolt, and the suppression of the Lollards. Despite this, we read that Julian spent significant amount of time praying not for deliverance, immunity or comfort, but for a life-threatening illness.
Her prayers were answered, and during this illness she received the ‘shewings’ of Christ’s suffering and death (often called his Passion) which form the bulk of Revelations.
Julian has been invoked during the current pandemic for a variety of reasons; the need for the wisdom of one who has known urban solitude for extended periods of time; Julian’s familiarity with the spread of deadly pestilence and her own encounter with the Shadow of Death; the need for a feminine voice in the midst of rigid, male-dominated and increasingly confrontational power structures, both within the Western church and society. The list goes on.
I read Revelations of Divine Love in chunks on the train in the early mornings of the New Year, on the eve of the viral outbreak, and learnt many valuable lessons from this text which have served me well in navigating isolation, uncertainty and a general awareness of enormous global suffering. Here’s what I feel I can share.
Julian is incredibly preoccupied with the physical suffering of Christ, a fixation that may come across as unnecessarily gruesome to a modern audience. Chapter 17, in which Julian realises that seeing the Lord in pain is itself “the worst kind of suffering”, is particularly visceral.
What makes Revelations so radical is the fact that, though gory, Julian’s writing is centred on Christ’s love. Yes, Julian’s dreams, like her world, were filled with suffering, torment and oppression. But, in an era preoccupied with the despair and fear of God’s divine punishment, none of his wrath is present in Divine Revelations.
It is for love that Christ suffers, and we can be sure that “God keeps us equally secure, in good times and bad” (chapter 15) and that “we are kept equally securely in His love, whether in bad times or in good, by the goodness of God” (chapter 1).
Julian is assisted in making this point by her famous hazelnut, which she holds in her hand and compares to all that has ever been created. “God made it. God loves it. God keeps it.” (chapter 5)
The knowledge of this love is a source of great comfort but does not eliminate the prospect of suffering or grief. Understanding this love is a journey of living with a deeper knowledge of our own fallibility and weakness, as well as the imperfections in the world we live in. These will always be a source of sorrow and shame. What Julian reassures is that although we may fail all the time, God also loves us all the time. As Christ himself said, it is not the healthy who require a physician.
Julian begins Revelations by speaking of her desire to be one of Christ’s followers at the moment of His historical death; with Mary His Mother and Mary Magdalene at the foot of the cross, so that she might be able to suffer with Him.
Julian compares the suffering of Christ to the suffering of all creation and all people. She quotes St Denis of France, who also lived in a time of suffering and tumult, who said “Either the world is now at an end, or he that is Maker of that world is suffering.” (chapter 17). It is similar to Pope Francis’ writing in Laudato Si’, in which he links the ‘cry of the poor’, with the ‘cry of the earth’.
It also reminded me of the Passionists, a religious order who have a presence in my home city of Birmingham. Like Julian, they are committed to the memory of Christ’s passion. In the UK, their motto reads “Crucified Christ, Crucified People, Crucified Earth.”
The current viral outbreak has, for many of us, brought us closer to a sense of suffering unfamiliar to us, but deeply familiar to many communities around the world. The poorest have suffered most from the scourge of Covid-19, as they do from accelerating ecological breakdown.
Julian offers us an alternative to the immediate return to comfort and self-indulgence as a form of self-care which will surely be aggressively sold to us in the aftermath of this outbreak. Julian radically orientates herself around the Passion of Christ.
Christ suffers not only for the world, but with it, and promises us that whatever we do for the suffering, scourged and marginalised of the world, we do also for Him.
The revival of Julian’s work at this moment excites me because in it I hope that a knowledge of God’s overwhelming love for his creation would drive us not towards introspective self-pity, but towards a solidarity with the suffering of Christ and the people and creation He loves beyond all understanding.