Revelations of Divine Love. of Norwich Julian
"pietatis."
[8] The sins that Julian mentions, "despair or doubtful dread," "sloth and losing of time," "unskilful [unpractical, unreasoning] heaviness and vain sorrow," seem to be all akin to that dreaded sin, besetting particularly the Contemplative life, Accidia. See Ancren Riwle p. 287. "Accidies salue is gestlich gledshipe. The remedy for indolence is spiritual joy, and the consolation of joyful hope from reading and from holy meditation, or when spoken by the mouth of man. Often, dear sisters, ye ought to pray less, that ye may read more. Reading is good prayer. Reading teacheth how, and for what ye ought to pray. In reading, when the heart feels delight, devotion ariseth, and that is worth many prayers. Everything, however, may be overdone. Moderation is always best."—(Pub. by the Camden Society).
[9] Canticles ii. 10. St. John xiv. 31.
[10] See the chapter "How an Anchoress shall behave herself to them that come to her," in "The Scale of Perfection," by Walter Hilton (died 1396), edition of 1659, p. 106. "Since it is so that thou oughtest not to goe out of thy house to seek occasion how thou mightest profit thy Neighbour by deeds of Charity, because thou art enclosed; … therefore who so will speake with thee … be thou soon ready with a good will to aske what his will is … for thou knowest not what he is, nor why he cometh, nor what need he hath of thee, or thou of him, till thou hast tryed. And though thou be at prayer, or at thy devotions, that thou thinkest loth to break off, for that thou thinkest that thou oughtest not leave God for to speake with any one, I think not so in this case, for if thou be wise, thou shalt not leave God, but thou shalt find him, and have him, and see him in thy Neighbour as well as in prayer, onely in another manner. If thou canst love thy Neighbour well, to speake with thy Neighbour with discretion shall be no hindrance to thee. … If he come to tell thee his disease [distress] or trouble, and to be comforted by thy speech, heare him gladly, and suffer him to say what he will for ease of his own heart; And when he hath done, comfort him if thou canst, gladly, gently, and charitably, and soon break off. And then, after that, if he will fall into idle tales, or vanities of the World, or of other men's actions, answer him but little, and feed not his speech, and he will soon be weary, and quickly take his leave," etc.
[11] Dante, Paradiso, v. 105.
[Pg xxxiii]
PART II
The Manner of the Book
As an hert desirith to the wellis of watris:
so thou God, my soule desirith to thee. …
The Lord sent his merci in the day:
and his song in the nyght.
Ps. 'Quemadmodum'; from the Prymer.
Without any special study of the literature of Mysticism for purposes of comparison, in reading Julian's book one is struck by a few characteristics wherein it differs from many other Mystical writings as well as by qualities that belong to most or all of that general designation.
The silence of this book both as to preliminary ascetic exercises and as to ultimate visions of the Absolute, might be attributed to Julian's being wholly concerned with giving, for comfort to all, that special sight of truth that came to her as the answer to her own need. She sets out not to teach methods of any kind for the gradual drawing near of man to God, but to record and shew forth a Revelation, granted once, of God's actual nearness to the soul, and for this Revelation she herself had been prepared by the "stirring" of her conscience, her love and her understanding, in a word of her faith, even as she was in short time to be left "neither sign nor token," but only the Revelation to hold "in faith." Moreover, the means that in general she looks to for realising God's nearness, in whatever measure or manner the revelation of it may come to any soul, is the immediate one of faith as a gift of nature and a grace from the Holy Ghost: faith leading by prayer, and effort of obedience, and teachableness of spirit, into actual experience of oneness with God. The natural and common heritage of love and faith is a theme that is dear to Julian: in her view, longing toward God is grounded in the love to Him that is native to the human heart, and this longing (painful through sin) as it is stirred by the Holy Spirit, who comes with Christ, is, in each naturally developed Christian, spontaneous and increasing;—"for the nearer we be to our bliss, the more we long after it" (xlvi., lxxii., lxxxi.). "This is the kinde [the natural] yernings of the soule by the touching of the Holy Ghost: God of Thy goodness give me Thyself: for Thou art enow to me, and I may nothing ask that is less that may be full worshippe to Thee." God is the first as well as the last: the soul begins as well as ends with God: begins by Nature, begins again by Mercy, and ends—yet "without end"—by Grace. Certainly on the way—the way of these three, by falling, by succour, by upraising—to the more perfect knowing of God that is the soul's Fulfilment in Heaven, there is a less immediate knowledge to be gained through experience: "And if I aske anything that is lesse, ever me wantith," for "It needyth us to have knoweing of the littlehede of creatures and to nowtyn all thing that is made, for to love and have God that is onmade." But this knowing of the littleness of creatures comes to Julian first of all in a sight of the Goodness of God; "For [to] a soule that seith the Maker of all, all that is made semith full litil." By the further beholding, indeed, of God as Maker and Preserver, that which has been rightly "noughted" as of no account, is seen to be also truly of much account. For that which was seen by the soul as so little that it seemed to be about to fall to nothing for littleness, is seen by the understanding to have "three properties":—God made it, God loveth it, God keepeth it. Thus it is known as "great and large, fair and good"; "it lasteth, and ever shall, for God loveth it."—Yet again the soul breaks away to its own, with the natural flight of a bird from its Autumn nest at the call of an unseen Spring to the far-off land that is nearer still than its nest, because it is in its heart. "But what is to me sothly [in verity] the Maker, the Keper and the Lover—I cannot tell, for till I am Substantially oned [deeply united] to Him, I may never have full rest ne very blisse; that is to sey, that I be so festined to Him, that there is right nowte that is made betwix my God and me" (v., viii.). This "fastening" is all that in Julian's book represents that needful process wherein the truth of asceticism has a part. It is not essentially a process of detaching the thought from created things of time—still less one of detaching the heart from created beings of eternity—but a process of more and more allowing and presenting the man to be fastened closely to God by means of the original longing of the soul, the influence of the Holy Ghost, and the discipline of life with its natural tribulations, which by their purifying serve to strengthen the affections that remaining pass through them. "But only in Thee I have all." On the way this discovery of the soul at peace must needs be sometimes a word for exclusion, in parting and pressing onward from things that are made: in the end it is the welcome, all-inclusive. And Julian, notwithstanding her enclosure as a recluse, is one of those that, happy in nature and not too much hindered by conditions of life, possess for large use by the way the mystical peace of fulfilled possession through virtue of freedom from bondage to self. For it is by means of the tyranny of the "self," regarding chiefly itself in its claims and enjoyments, that creature things can be intruded between the soul and God; and always, in some way, the meek inherit the earth. "All things are yours; and ye are Christ's."
The life of a recluse