Mystic, Julian of
Norwich
KJ Psalm 128:2
For thou shalt
eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with
thee.
KJ Isaiah 3:10
Say you to the
righteous, that it shall be well with him: for they shall eat the fruit of
their deeds.
On
our journey to the cross All shall be well When We Meet Jesus
and He is Revealed in the Mystery and Simplicity of the Hazelnut
Last week at Bible Study we talked the
coming Communion and this led to a talk about the Last Supper (which St.
Gabriel’s Episcopal will celebrate in reenactment on Thursday before Good
Friday). And we talked about feasts for Saints.
Part of my daily devotion http://www.d365.org/journeytothecross/ where
they posed in there theme “What would it
be like to see Jesus - really see Jesus “ the question “With whom are you
sharing? Who is hoping that you will notice them today and “be Jesus” to them?”
This led me to
another reading I had pick to think about this week Who Goes With You? http://reflections-dwtx.org/topic-i-call-you-friends/communion-of-saints/who-goes-with-you/.
The author in
developing this theme wrote “The question of Who
Goes With You invoked something much more personal and invited me into a
reflection of the deeper mystery of the communion of saints. If all of us
stopped for a moment and prayerfully recalled those who have shaped our
spiritual journeys, we might be surprised at the familiar faces that would
appear.”
As I read the
writer spoke of Saints who I knew and there I found also the mention of an
unfamiliar name Julian Norwich.
I had first
run across her name when I visited West Minister Abbey and Cathedral and viewed
in passing Julian’s Manuscript on the Hazelnut in the Palm. Her first
revelation “The Crown of Thorns and God's love for all that is made — the
hazelnut” "The Spirit showed me a tiny
thing, the size of a hazelnut," wrote Julian of Norwich. In Julian's
vision, the fragile and insignificant hazelnut contains all of Creation--and
yet it endures "because God loves it."
So I decided
to investigate her further and learn more. And indeed there is a feast for her.
So I sought Wikipedia
and this led me to other sources
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Saint_Julian_of_Norwich,
http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/julianin.htm
At the age of 31, suffering from a severe
illness and believing she was on her deathbed, Julian had a series of intense
visions of Jesus Christ. Julian wrote down a narration of the
visions immediately following them, known as The Short Text which she later expounded
in her major work Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love (ca. 1393).
The
saying, "…All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of
thing shall be well", which Julian claimed to be said to her by God
Himself, reflects her theology. It is one of the most famous lines in Catholic
theological writing, and one of the best-known phrases of the literature of her
era.
The
composer Lydia McCauley used this as the theme of her Sabbath
Day's Journey.
The
20th-century poet T.S. Eliot incorporated this phrase, as well as Julian's
"the ground of our beseeching" from the 14th Revelation, in his
"Little Gidding”:
Whatever
we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us—a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us—a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.
Julian
is honored with a feast day on May 13 in the Roman Catholic tradition ]and
on May 8 in the Anglican and Lutheran traditions
Milancie
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