Revelations of Divine Love

by Julian of Norwich

  And God showed all this most gloriously, with this meaning, ‘See that I am God. See that I am in everything. See that I do everything. See that I have never stopped ordering my works, nor ever shall, eternally. See that I lead everything on to the conclusion I ordained for it before time began, by the same power, wisdom and love with which I made it. How can anything be amiss?’ Thus powerfully, wisely and lovingly was the soul tested in this vision. Then I saw truly that I must comply with great reverence, rejoicing in God.

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  The fourth revelation – how it pleases God better to wash us from sin in his blood rather than in water, for his blood is most precious.

  And after this I saw, as I watched, the body of Christ bleeding abundantly, in weals from the scourging. It looked like this: the fair skin was very deeply broken, down into the tender flesh, sharply slashed all over the dear body; the hot blood ran out so abundantly that no skin or wound could be seen, it seemed to be all blood. And when it reached the point where it should have overflowed, it vanished; nevertheless, the bleeding continued for a while so that it could be observed attentively. And it looked so abundant to me that I thought if at that moment it had been real, natural blood, the whole bed would have been blood-soaked and even the floor around.

  And then it came to me that God has provided us on earth with abundant water for our use and bodily refreshment, because of the tender love he has for us, yet it pleases him better that we should simply take his holy blood to wash away our sins; for there is no liquid created which he likes to give us so much; it is as plentiful as it is precious by virtue of his holy Godhead. And it shares our nature and pours over and transports us by virtue of his precious love. The beloved blood of our Lord Jesus Christ is as truly precious as it is truly plentiful. Behold and see. The precious plenty of his beloved blood descended into hell and burst their bonds and freed all who were there who belonged to the court of heaven. The precious plenty of his beloved blood overflows the whole earth and is ready to wash away the sins of all people of good will who are, have been or will be. The precious plenty of his beloved blood ascended into heaven to the blessed body of our Lord Jesus Christ, and there in him it bleeds and intercedes for us with the Father – and this shall be as long as there is need. And it flows throughout the heavens for ever, rejoicing in the salvation of all mankind who are there and shall be there, and making up the number that is lacking.

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  The fifth revelation is that the temptation of the Fiend is overcome by the Passion of Christ, to increase our joy and the Fiend’s sorrow, eternally.

  And afterwards, before God revealed any words, he allowed me to contemplate him for a sufficient time, and all that I had seen, and all the significance which was in it as far as my simple soul might grasp it. Then he, without any voice or opening of his lips, formed these words in my soul: ‘By this is the Fiend overcome.’ Our Lord said these words meaning overcome by his blessed Passion, as he had shown it earlier. Now our Lord was revealing how with his Passion he defeats the Devil. God showed that the Fiend is still as wicked as he was before the Incarnation and works as hard, but he continually sees that all those to whom salvation is due escape him gloriously through the power of Christ’s dear Passion, and that grieves and humiliates him severely; for everything that God allows him to do turns into joy for us and into shame and vexation for him. And he feels as much sorrow when God allows him to work as when he does not work; and that is because he may never do as much evil as he would wish, for God holds all the Devil’s power in his own hand.

  But it seems to me that there can be no anger in God, for our good Lord is always thinking of his own glory and the good of all who shall be saved. With power and justice he stands up against the reprobates who out of wickedness and malignity work hard to plot and act against God’s will. I also saw our Lord scorn the Fiend’s wickedness and despise his lack of power, and he wants us to do the same. At this revelation I laughed heartily and that made those who were around me laugh too, and their laughter pleased me. I wished that all my fellow Christians had seen what I saw and then they would all have laughed with me. But I did not see Christ laughing; yet I understood that we may laugh to cheer ourselves and to rejoice in God because the Fiend has been conquered. And when I saw him scorn the Devil’s wickedness, it was because my understanding was led within God; that is to say, I received an inward showing of truth, without any change of his outward expression; and it seems to me to be a noble quality of God that he is unchanging.

  And after this I became grave, and said, ‘I can see three things: delight, scorn and seriousness. I see delight that the Fiend is defeated; I see scorn because God scorns him and he shall be scorned; and I see seriousness because he is defeated by the blessed Passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ which took place in all seriousness and with weary hardship.’ When I said, ‘He is scorned’, I mean that God scorns the Devil, which is to say that he sees him now as he will do for ever; for here God showed that the Fiend is damned. And this is what I meant when I said, ‘He shall be scorned’: I meant by the great body of people who will be saved on Judgement Day, whose consolation he greatly envies; for then he will see that all the sorrow and suffering which he has caused them will be turned into eternal heightening of their joy; and all the sorrow and suffering he would have liked to bring them will go with him eternally to hell.

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  The sixth revelation is of the glorious gratitude with which God rewards his servants; and it has three joys.

  After this our good Lord said, ‘I thank you for your suffering, especially in your youth.’ And at that my understanding was lifted up into heaven where I saw our Lord as a lord in his own house who has invited all his beloved servants and friends to a solemn feast. Then I saw the Lord take no seat in his own house, but I saw him reign royally there, and fill it with joy and delight, himself gladdening and comforting his beloved friends familiarly and courteously, with a marvellous melody of endless love in his own fair, blessed face; the glorious face of the Godhead which fills heaven full of joy and bliss.

  God showed three degrees of bliss which every soul who has willingly served God shall have in heaven, whatever his degree on earth. The first is the glorious gratitude of our Lord God which he will receive when he is freed from his sufferings; the gratitude is so exalted and so glorious that it would seem to fill the soul, even if there were nothing more; for I thought that all the pain and trouble that could be suffered by all living men might not deserve the glorious gratitude which one man shall have who has willingly served God. The second degree is that all the blessed beings who are in heaven will see that glorious gratitude, and all heaven will know about his service. And then this example was shown: it is a great honour to a king’s servants if he thanks them; and if he makes it known to the whole realm, then the honour is greatly increased. The third degree is that this pleasure will for ever seem as new and delightful as it did when it was first felt. And I saw that this was revealed in a sweet and simple way: every man’s age shall be known in heaven, and he will be rewarded for his willing service and for the time he has served; and more especially the age of those who willingly and freely offered their youth to God is surpassingly rewarded and they are wonderfully thanked; for I saw that whenever a man or woman has turned truly to God, even for one day’s service with the wish to serve for ever, he shall have all these three degrees of bliss.

  And the more the loving soul sees this generosity in God, the gladder he is to serve him all the days of his life.

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  The seventh revelation is about frequent feelings of joy and sorrow; and how it is expedient for man sometimes to be left without comfort, even when he has not sinned.

  And God’s next showing was a supreme spiritual pleasure in my soul. I was filled with eternal certainty, strongly sustained, and without any tormenting fear. This feeling was so joyful and so inward that I felt completely peaceful and at rest, as though there were nothing on earth that could hurt me. Thi
s only lasted for a while, and then my feeling was reversed and I was left to myself, oppressed, weary of my life, and so disgusted with myself that I could hardly bear to live. There was no comfort or ease for me but faith, hope and love, and these I had in reality, but I could not feel them in my heart. And immediately after this, our blessed Lord again gave me the spiritual rest and comfort, with certainty and pleasure so joyful and so powerful that no fear, no sorrow, no bodily pain that one might suffer could have distressed me. And then the sorrow was revealed to my consciousness again, and first one, then the other, several times, I suppose about twenty times. And in the moments of joy I might have said with Saint Paul, ‘Nothing shall separate me from the love of Christ.’ And in the moments of sorrow I might have said with Peter, ‘Lord save me, I perish.’15

  This vision was shown to me, as I understand it, because it is helpful for some souls to have such experiences, sometimes to be strengthened, sometimes to falter and be left by themselves. God wishes us to know that he safely protects us in both sorrow and joy equally. And to benefit his soul, a man is sometimes left to himself, though not always because of sin; for at this time the changes were so sudden that I could not have deserved by sinning to be left alone. Neither did I deserve the feeling of bliss. But our Lord gives generously when he so wishes and sometimes allows us sorrow; and both come from the same love. So it is God’s will that we should hold on to gladness with all our might, for bliss lasts eternally, and pain passes and shall vanish completely for those who are saved. And therefore it is not God’s will that we should be guided by feelings of pain, grieving and mourning over them, but should quickly pass beyond them and remain in eternal joy.

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  The eighth revelation is of the pitiful agony of the dying Christ, and of the discolouring of his face and the drying of his flesh.

  After this Christ showed the part of his Passion when he was near death. I saw his dear face as it was then, dry and bloodless with the pallor of death; and then it went more ashen, deathly and exhausted, and, still nearer to death, it went blue, then darker blue, as the flesh mortified more completely; for his sufferings were most distinct to me in his blessed face, and especially in his lips; there I saw these four colours, though before they appeared to me fresh, red-tinted and lovely. It was a sorrowful change to see this extreme mortification, and, as it appeared to me, the nose shrivelled and dried, and the dear body was dark and black, quite transformed from his own fair living colour into parched mortification; for at the time when our Lord and blessed Saviour was dying on the cross it seemed to me that there was a bitter, dry wind and it was wonderfully cold; and it was shown that while all the precious blood that could bleed from the dear body had done so, there yet remained some moisture in Christ’s dear flesh. Loss of blood and pain drying him from within, and blasts of wind and cold coming from without, met together in the dear body of Christ. And these four, two without and two within, gradually dried the flesh of Christ as time passed. And though this pain was bitter and sharp, it seemed to me that it lasted a very long time, and painfully dried up all the vitality of Christ’s flesh. So I saw Christ’s dear flesh dying, seemingly bit by bit, drying up with amazing agony. And as long as there was any vital spirit in Christ’s flesh, so long did he suffer pain. This long agony made it seem to me that he had been dead for a full week – dying, on the point of passing away, suffering the final throes of death. And when I say that it seemed to me as though he had been dead for a full week, it means that the dear body was as discoloured, as dry, as withered, as deathly and as pitiful as if he had been dead a full week, yet dying continually. And I thought that the dying of Christ’s flesh was the greatest agony, and the last, of his Passion.

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  Of Christ’s grievous bodily thirst, caused in four ways; and of his pitiful crowning; and of the greatest pain to a loving friend.

  And in this dying the words of Christ were brought to my mind: ‘I thirst’;16 and I saw in Christ a double thirst, one bodily, the other a spiritual one which I shall speak of in the thirty-first chapter; for in these words was revealed to me the bodily thirst which I understood was caused by the loss of moisture, for the blessed flesh and bones were left altogether without blood and moisture. The blessed body was abandoned and drying for a long time, becoming distorted because of the nails and its own weight; for I understood that because the dear hands and the dear feet were so tender, the great size, hardness and grievousness of the nails made the wounds become wider, and the body sagged with its own weight from hanging for such a long time. And the piercing and twisting of the head, bound with the crown of thorns and all baked with dry blood, with the dear hair and the dry flesh clinging to the thorns, and the thorns to the dying flesh; and at first, while the flesh was fresh and bleeding, the continuous grip of the thorns made the wounds wide. And furthermore I saw that the dear skin and the tender flesh, with the hair and the blood, was all raised and loosened from the bone by the thorns where it was slashed through17 in many pieces, like a sagging cloth, as if it would soon have fallen off, it was so heavy and loose while it still had its natural moisture; and that caused me great sorrow and fear, for I thought I would not for my life have seen it fall off. How this was done I did not see, but understood that it was with the sharp thorns and the rough and grievous way the crown was pressed on to his head, mercilessly and without pity.

  This continued for a while and soon it began to change, and I watched and marvelled how it might be. And then I saw that it was because it began to dry, and to lose some of its weight and congeal about the garland of thorns. And so it surrounded his head, like one garland upon another. The garland of thorns was dyed with the blood, and the other garland of wounds, and the head, all was one colour, like dry, clotted blood. Where the skin of the flesh of his face and body appeared, it was fine and wrinkled, with a tanned colour, like a dry board when it has been scorched; and the face darker than the body. I saw four ways in which it had been dried up: the first was loss of blood; the second was the torment which then followed; the third, being hung in the air, as a cloth is hung to dry; the fourth, that his bodily nature needed liquid, and he was given no kind of help in all his grief and pain. Ah! His pain was hard and grievous, but it was much more hard and grievous when the moisture was exhausted and everything began to dry and shrink. The pains that were revealed in the blessed head were these: the first done to the dying body while it was moist; and the second a slow pain as the body dried and shrank with the blowing of the wind from without that dried him more, and tormented him with cold as much as I could imagine, and other torments, from which I saw that everything I could say would be quite inadequate, for they were indescribable.

  This showing of Christ’s pain filled me with pain, though I knew well he only suffered once, yet he wanted to show it to me and fill me with awareness of it as I had wished previously. And in all this time of Christ’s pain the only pain I felt was for the pain of Christ. Then I thought to myself, ‘I little knew what pain it was that I asked for’, and repented like a wretch, thinking that if I had known what it would be like, I would have been loath to pray for it; for I thought that it was worse than bodily death, my pain. I thought, ‘Is any pain like this?’, and I was answered in my reason, ‘Hell is another pain, for there is despair. But of all the pains which lead to salvation, this is the greatest pain: to see your love suffer.’ How could any pain be greater to me than to see him who is my whole life, all my bliss and all my joy, suffering? Here I truly felt that I loved Christ so much more than myself that there was no pain that could be suffered comparable to the sorrow I felt to see him in pain.

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  Of the spiritual martyrdom of our Lady and other lovers of Christ; and how everything suffered with him, good and bad.

  Here I saw part of the compassion of our Lady Saint Mary, for Christ and she were so united in love that the greatness of her love for him caused the intensity of her pain; in this I saw the essential character of the love, natural but maintained by
grace, which all creation has for him; this natural love was shown in his dear Mother most abundantly, and indeed supremely, for just as her love for him surpassed that of anyone else, so did her suffering for him; for the higher, the stronger, the dearer that love is, the greater the sorrow that the lover feels to see the beloved body in pain. And all his disciples, and all those who truly loved him, suffered greater pain than they would for their own bodily death; for I am certain, from my own feelings, that the humblest of them loved him so much better than themselves, that it goes beyond all that I can say.

  Here I saw a great union between Christ and us, as I understand it; for when he was in pain, we were in pain. And all creatures who were capable of suffering, suffered with him, that is to say, all the creatures that God has made to serve us. At the time of Christ’s dying, the firmament and the earth failed for sorrow, each according to their nature. For it is their natural property to recognize as their God him in whom all their natural power is grounded; when he failed then by their very natures they had as far as possible to fail with him from sorrow at his pain. And so those who were his friends suffered pain from love. And everyone without exception – that is to say even those who did not know him – suffered from a failure of all comfort except the strong and mysterious care of God. I am thinking of two sorts of people, who can be represented by the example of two men: one was Pontius Pilate, the other was Saint Denis of France,18 who at that time was a pagan; for when he saw the marvellous sorrows and terrors which happened at that time, he said, ‘Either the world is coming to an end, or else he who made all nature is suffering.’ Therefore he had this written on an altar: ‘This is the altar of the unknown God.’19 God in his goodness makes the planets and the elements function according to their nature both for the blessed and for the damned, but at that time this goodness was withdrawn from both. And that is how it was that people who did not know him were sorrowful at that time.