Near the end of her Revelations of Divine Love, Julian of Norwich writes: I had a partial touching, sight, and feeling of three properties of God, in which the strength and effect of all the revelations stand. And it was seen in every showing, and most properly in the twelfth, where it says oftentimes: “I it am.” The properties are these: life, love, and light. In life is marvelous homelyhed [intimacy], in love is gentle courtesy, and in light is endless being. The “I it am” litany [the Twelfth Revelation] had come to Julian as an internal locution from Christ, expressing who God is in an outpouring of psalmic words. Now she sums it up using just three: “life, love, and light.”
By God’s life, she means his familiarity, intimacy, and enduring closeness to us in the ground of our being, out of which he will never come. By God’s love, she understands his all-embracing and courteous care for our souls. And by God’s light, she sees his everlasting Being that will never change or alter its expression toward us. She recognizes this trinity of properties as the one goodness of God, to which her mind wants to be united and her heart wants to cleave “with all its powers.”
Julian marveled at the sweet feeling of unity she gained from realizing that our human reason exists in God. She appreciated, with much greater depth after many years of contemplation, that this reason “is the highest gift that we have received, and it is grounded in nature.” In addition to our reason:
Our faith is a light, naturally coming from our endless day that is our father, God; in which light our mother, Christ, and our good lord, the holy ghost, lead us in this mortal life . . . And at the end of woe, suddenly our eye shall be opened, and in clearness of sight our light shall be full, which light is God our maker, father and holy ghost in Christ Jesus our savior. Thus I saw and understood that our faith is our light in our night, which light is God, our endless day.
Julian further identifies the source of our light as none other than “charity” or spiritual love, which is measured out as is most profitable to us, according to the wisdom of God. The light of divine love is never allowed to be quite bright enough for us to be able to see our salvation clearly, nor is the heavenly light kept completely hidden from us, but it is enough light in which to live and work productively, thereby earning “the honorable thanks of God.” “Thus charity keeps us in faith and in hope, and faith and hope lead us in charity. And at the end alle shalle be charity.”
Julian was also shown three ways of understanding this light of charity: uncreated charity (which is God’s love), created charity (which is the soul within God’s love), and charity given (which is the virtue of love). This gift of love that is bequeathed to us through the working of grace enables us to “love God for himself, and our self in God, and all that God loves, for [the sake of] God.”
She marveled greatly at this virtue of love because she realized that even though we live foolishly and blindly here on earth, yet God always beholds our efforts to lead lives of love. And he takes great joy in our good deeds. Julian reiterates that the best way we can please God is by wisely and truly believing that we please him, and “to rejoice with him and in him.”
For as truly as we shall be in the bliss of God without end, praising and thanking him, as truly have we been in the foresight of God, loved and known in his endless purpose from without beginning, in which unbegun love he created us. In the same love he keeps us, and never suffers us to be hurt by which our bliss might be lessened. And therefore when the dome [final judgment] is given, and we are all brought up above, then shall we clearly see in God the privities [divine workings] which now are hidden from us.
We will not understand how it is that each soul is given plenteous grace to rise again after every fall, or how even the most hardened sinners are converted into saints, until at last we come up to heaven and see in God’s eyes the hidden mystery of the magnificent process of salvation. But we can be sure of one thing: we will see that all has been done by God to perfection. This will be the Great Deed (about which Julian writes at length).
And then shall none of us be moved to say in any thing: “Lord, if it had been thus, it would have been well.” But we shall all say with one voice: “Lord, blessed may thou be, because it is thus, it is well. And now we see truly that everything is done as it was thine ordinance to do, before anything was made.”
I invite you to listen to my twenty-five LIFE, LOVE, & LIGHT podcasts on the Revelations of Julian of Norwich, available for free on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, iHeartRadio, and Buzzsprout:
https://lifelovelight.buzzsprout.com/ Scroll down to listen to the first episode from April 17th, 2020.
Note: Quotations above and translations from Julian's Middle English are from my book: Julian's Gospel: Illuminating the Life & Revelations of Julian of Norwich (Orbis Books).
By God’s life, she means his familiarity, intimacy, and enduring closeness to us in the ground of our being, out of which he will never come. By God’s love, she understands his all-embracing and courteous care for our souls. And by God’s light, she sees his everlasting Being that will never change or alter its expression toward us. She recognizes this trinity of properties as the one goodness of God, to which her mind wants to be united and her heart wants to cleave “with all its powers.”
Julian marveled at the sweet feeling of unity she gained from realizing that our human reason exists in God. She appreciated, with much greater depth after many years of contemplation, that this reason “is the highest gift that we have received, and it is grounded in nature.” In addition to our reason:
Our faith is a light, naturally coming from our endless day that is our father, God; in which light our mother, Christ, and our good lord, the holy ghost, lead us in this mortal life . . . And at the end of woe, suddenly our eye shall be opened, and in clearness of sight our light shall be full, which light is God our maker, father and holy ghost in Christ Jesus our savior. Thus I saw and understood that our faith is our light in our night, which light is God, our endless day.
Julian further identifies the source of our light as none other than “charity” or spiritual love, which is measured out as is most profitable to us, according to the wisdom of God. The light of divine love is never allowed to be quite bright enough for us to be able to see our salvation clearly, nor is the heavenly light kept completely hidden from us, but it is enough light in which to live and work productively, thereby earning “the honorable thanks of God.” “Thus charity keeps us in faith and in hope, and faith and hope lead us in charity. And at the end alle shalle be charity.”
Julian was also shown three ways of understanding this light of charity: uncreated charity (which is God’s love), created charity (which is the soul within God’s love), and charity given (which is the virtue of love). This gift of love that is bequeathed to us through the working of grace enables us to “love God for himself, and our self in God, and all that God loves, for [the sake of] God.”
She marveled greatly at this virtue of love because she realized that even though we live foolishly and blindly here on earth, yet God always beholds our efforts to lead lives of love. And he takes great joy in our good deeds. Julian reiterates that the best way we can please God is by wisely and truly believing that we please him, and “to rejoice with him and in him.”
For as truly as we shall be in the bliss of God without end, praising and thanking him, as truly have we been in the foresight of God, loved and known in his endless purpose from without beginning, in which unbegun love he created us. In the same love he keeps us, and never suffers us to be hurt by which our bliss might be lessened. And therefore when the dome [final judgment] is given, and we are all brought up above, then shall we clearly see in God the privities [divine workings] which now are hidden from us.
We will not understand how it is that each soul is given plenteous grace to rise again after every fall, or how even the most hardened sinners are converted into saints, until at last we come up to heaven and see in God’s eyes the hidden mystery of the magnificent process of salvation. But we can be sure of one thing: we will see that all has been done by God to perfection. This will be the Great Deed (about which Julian writes at length).
And then shall none of us be moved to say in any thing: “Lord, if it had been thus, it would have been well.” But we shall all say with one voice: “Lord, blessed may thou be, because it is thus, it is well. And now we see truly that everything is done as it was thine ordinance to do, before anything was made.”
I invite you to listen to my twenty-five LIFE, LOVE, & LIGHT podcasts on the Revelations of Julian of Norwich, available for free on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, iHeartRadio, and Buzzsprout:
https://lifelovelight.buzzsprout.com/ Scroll down to listen to the first episode from April 17th, 2020.
Note: Quotations above and translations from Julian's Middle English are from my book: Julian's Gospel: Illuminating the Life & Revelations of Julian of Norwich (Orbis Books).
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