Julian of Norwich

ما المطلق؟ هل الله موجود؟

God is Trinitarian love, Father and also Mother

إله شخصييقوله صراحةً

Julian of Norwich does not argue for God's existence: she describes what was «shown» to her in sixteen revelations during an illness in 1373. In them God is Trinity and is love: in the final chapter of the Long Text she sums up that the meaning of everything shown was love. This God is courteous, homely, rejoices in creatures and holds them in being, like the hazelnut that lasts because God loves it. Her most original contribution is to call God Mother with the same truth with which he is called Father, and to ascribe that motherhood especially to Christ, the second Person. The Absolute is for her a Thou who loves without wrath, whose love precedes creation and never lessens.

من أنا؟ هل توجد ذات حقيقية؟

Our substance is in God; our sensuality awaits union with it

روح مخلوقة خالدةيقوله صراحةً

Julian of Norwich distinguishes in the human being the «substance», the highest part, which was never separated from God, and the «sensuality», the embodied, temporal life where sin and pain occur. In chapter 54 of the Long Text she states that she saw no difference between God and our substance, as if it were all God, and yet understood that our substance is a creature in God. In the parable of the lord and the servant (ch. 51), the soul's fall arises not from malice but from haste to serve. The true self is a created soul, loved forever and kept in God, which is reconciled with itself when substance and sensuality are united through Christ.

لماذا نتألّم؟

Sin was behovely, but all shall be well

الانفصال عن اللهيقوله صراحةً

Julian of Norwich asked why, if God is love, he did not prevent sin, which is the cause of all pain. The answer shown to her is one of the most famous sentences of English mysticism: sin was behovely, but all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. She did not see sin, because she believes it has no substance, and knew it only by the pain it causes. In the parable of the lord and the servant, the fall appears as the stumbling of a servant running to do his lord's will. Suffering arises from separation, but God does not look on it with wrath, and every pain will be turned to honour.

ماذا يحدث بعد الموت؟

A great deed at the end will make all things well

الحياة الأبدية والقيامةيقوله صراحةً

Julian of Norwich's revelations were born at the edge of death: she was thirty and a half, received the last rites, and the priest held a crucifix before her, before which the visions began. Her hope is the Church's: eternal life in God, joy and bliss. But she adds something of her own: in chapter 32 she is shown that there is a great deed that the Trinity will do on the last day, hidden from every creature, by which all shall be well. Julian acknowledges the tension with the Church's teaching on damnation and does not resolve it: she holds it in faith and in the promise that what is impossible for her is not so for God.

كيف يُبلَغ التحرّر أو الخلاص؟

God is the ground of our beseeching

بالنعمة والمحبةيقوله صراحةً

Julian of Norwich sees salvation as the work of God's love that precedes everything: in chapter 41 of the Long Text she is shown that God is the ground of our beseeching, that it is he who makes us desire and ask for what he wishes to give us. The human role is real but humble: to pray, to trust, not to despair of one's own sin, and to remain in the faith of the Church. In chapter 68 she receives the promise that the soul will not be overcome, though it be tossed and afflicted. Liberation consists in Christ, our Mother, restoring us to the union of substance and sensuality, and keeping us in a love that never withdraws.

هل نحتاج إلى معلّم؟

What was shown is received within the Church's common faith

الجماعة والتقليديُستنتج من تعاليمه

Julian of Norwich does not raise the question of the spiritual teacher; she received her revelations directly and spent some twenty years meditating on them. But she refuses to make them a separate authority. In chapter 9 of the Long Text she declares that she is not good because of the visions, but only if she loves God more, and that what she saw she believes according to the teaching of Holy Church. In chapter 80 she sums up the three things by which a human being stands in this life: the use of natural reason, the common teaching of the Church and the inward working of the Holy Spirit. Her text, moreover, is addressed to all her «fellow Christians», not to disciples.

هل العالم حقيقي؟

All creation fits in a hazelnut and lasts because God loves it

خلقٌ صالح وحقيقييقوله صراحةً

Julian of Norwich's best-known image answers this question. In the first revelation, God shows her in the palm of her hand a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, round as a ball, and she is told that it is all that is made. Julian marvels that it can last, for it seems that, in its littleness, it might suddenly fall into nothing; and she is answered that it lasts and ever shall because God loves it. In that vision she understands three things: that God made it, that God loves it and that God keeps it. The world is real, fragile and small before its Creator, and good because it is loved.

ما الحب؟

Love was the meaning of everything shown

محبة الله والقريبيقوله صراحةً

Julian of Norwich's Long Text ends with the answer to the question she had asked herself for fifteen years: what the Lord's meaning was in what he showed her. She was answered that it was love: who showed it to her, love; what he showed her, love; why he showed it, for love. Julian adds that she saw with certainty that God loved us before he made us and that this love has never diminished nor ever shall. Love is God's essence, and from it proceeds the love creatures have for one another: her text is addressed to all her fellow Christians, because what was shown was for all, and in loving them she sees the concrete form of loving God.

هل نحن أحرار أم أن كل شيء مقدَّر؟

God does all that is done; the how remains a secret

لم يُبدِ رأيًا

Julian of Norwich does not treat human freedom as a problem. What is shown to her points elsewhere: in the third revelation she sees God in a point and understands that he is in all things and does all that is done; nothing happens by chance, but by God's foreseeing wisdom. That raises for her the question of sin, which is no deed, and she resolves it by trusting that all that is done is well done. She neither denies human responsibility —she speaks of repentance, prayer and the fall— nor theorises about predestination: she leaves the how in God's secret, who in his time will make all things well.

لماذا نتأمّل أو نصلّي؟

Prayer unites the soul to God, who is its ground

صداقة مع اللهيقوله صراحةً

Julian of Norwich devotes several chapters of the Long Text to prayer. There she is told that God is the ground of beseeching: it is he who makes us desire what he wants to give, and so prayer is never in vain, even when it seems dry or fruitless. Prayer unites the soul to God: although the soul is always like God in nature, it is often unlike him through sin, and prayer makes it like him in will. She distinguishes beseeching, which asks, from contemplation, in which the soul can no longer ask but only behold and give thanks. The tone is one of homely trust: God is courteous and wants to be spoken to with the simplicity of a child with its mother.

هل يستطيع العقل أن يعرف الحقيقة القصوى؟

Natural reason, the Church's teaching and the Spirit's work

الإيمان والعقل يتعاونانيقوله صراحةً

Julian of Norwich presents herself as an «unlettered creature», but her work shows great theological intelligence, and she gives reason an explicit place. In chapter 80 of the Long Text she lists the three things by which the human being stands in this life and by which God is honoured: the use of natural reason, the common teaching of Holy Church and the inward gracious working of the Holy Spirit, and adds that all three come from one God. The revelations do not replace reason: Julian spent twenty years meditating on them in order to understand them, and the Long Text is the fruit of that reflection. Reason helps; faith and grace complete.

الانسحاب من العالم أم تغييره؟

An anchoress who writes for all her fellow Christians

الانسحاب لكي نجديُستنتج من تعاليمه

Julian of Norwich lived as an anchoress, enclosed in a cell attached to the church of Saint Julian in Norwich, from which she probably takes her name; wills of the period mention her as an anchorite in the early fifteenth century. Her form of life was thus the strictest withdrawal known to the medieval Church. But her work does not argue for enclosure or despise those who live in the world: she declares that what was shown is not only for her but for all her fellow Christians, and her theology of God's love addresses ordinary life, the falling and falling again of anyone. From the cell, the window opened onto the street.