Julian of Norwich[1]

To know the goodness of God is the highest prayer of all, as it is a prayer that accommodates itself to our most lowly needs. It quickens our soul, and vitalizes it, developing it in grace and virtue. Here is the grace most appropriate to our need, and most ready to help. Here is the grace which our soul is seeking now, and which it will ever seek until that day when we know for a fact that he has wholly united us to himself.[2]

Julian of Norwich is an extraordinary woman for many reasons. First, she should never have lived to see her thirty-first birthday, as an unidentified sickness brought her to the brink of death at approximately thirty years of age. It was only through an intervening miracle by God through Christ that her life was spared.[3] Second, it is remarkable that we even know anything about her at all. She wrote only one book, entitled Showings, but this work was lost to time and did not become popular until the beginning of the twentieth century.[4] On top of this, the only book to chronicle personal interaction with Julian was unknown until 1934.[5] Third, Julian was the first woman to write a book in English, and it is a masterful work of rhetoric, which “merits comparison with Geoffrey Chaucer,” and theology, which demonstrates she was “familiar with a wide range of the classical spiritual writings that were the foundations of the monastic contemplative tradition of the Western Church.”[6]
Based upon these significant events that are a part of Julian’s life, as well as miracle of how we even know about them, it seems God may have something he wishes to say to us in our contemporary world about the context and message he spoke through Julian of Norwich, his servant, who lived more than six hundred years ago. It is to the context in which Julian lived that attention will now be turned.

Key Challenges of the Church during the Time of Julian
Some tend to idealize the many people and places with which history presents us, especially those who study the figures of historical theology. In the context of Julian’s life, it is hard not to emphasize the chivalry and romanticism of fourteenth-century England, the time in which Julian lived, especially because of the literary influence of Chaucer. Added to this idealistic picture is the fact that the city of Norwich was the second most important metropolitan area in England.[7] This city was measured at a square mile, was protected by walls on each side, and supported a population of approximately six thousand.[8] In terms of industry, Norwich was known for its booming agricultural businesses, as well as specialties in textile and clothing that could not be matched in all of Europe.[9]
Four major events would shatter this ideal picture of Norwich and English life, however, beginning in the middle and going at least to the end of the fourteenth century. First, a hundred year war between England and France began in 1338, which completely drained the monetary resources and manpower of England.[10] Second, England faced a severe food shortage due to an extremely bad crop harvest in 1369. Many people were dying of starvation and those that did not die became so desperate they declared war against their local governments.[11] Third, the Roman Catholic Church began an internal battle that caused even more blood-shed.[12] Finally, there were three breakouts of the Black Plaque, which killed over one-third of Norwich’s population alone.[13] It was in the midst of this dark, destructive, and bloody context that Julian ministered, prayed, received personal revelation of God through visions, and wrote about what she experienced and learned from this revelation.

Recognizing the Pressing Concerns of Julian’s Context
For Julian, death was something she saw and smelled on a consistent basis. If it was not people being burned at the stake or run through with the sword, it was people starving to death or having their bodies be ravaged by blisters, which could be the size of oranges, that would ooze pus and blood then turn into black boils on their skin just before they died.[14] Very little could be done to stop the death, war, and starvation the English population endured in the fourteenth century.[15]
Added to this intense physical suffering was the spiritual suffering brought on by the teaching of the Church, as “[m]ost of the people in medieval Norwich went in fear of Judgment Day.” In fact, it was a constant fear because in almost all the Norwich’s churches there was a painted picture on the arch (called the chancel arch) that surrounded the altar, placed where all could see it, of sinners being “boiled in oil,” as well as “stripped and beaten.” After which, “grinning devils [would] drag the souls of [these] miserable sinners through the jaws of hell into the eternal torment that an angry God decrees for them.”[16]
Because of Julian’s first-hand experience of people’s physical and spiritual suffering, it is not difficult to comprehend how she was able to recognize the needs of those with which she was in contact. Living in a one square mile city with six-thousand people shoved into it, where one can easily see people actually falling dead in the street and, in some cases, being left there does not leave one with the impression that there was little Christian work to do.

Addressing the Pressing Needs of Julian’s Context
As previously mentioned, in the fourteenth century, it was very difficult to stop the massive amounts of deaths that occurred from war and disease, or to feed the starving as food was in short supply. Julian, however, faced with this overwhelming physical suffering, addressed the needs of her day in contemplation, meditation, and prayer before the Lord, and, from this, developed a theology of hope that, regardless of her gender, she felt compelled to share out of love stating:

But I know very well that what I am saying I have received by the revelation of him who is the sovereign teacher. But it is truly love which moves me to tell it to you, for I want God to be known and my fellow Christians to prosper, as I hope to prosper myself, by hating sin more and loving God more. But because I am a woman, ought I therefore to believe that I should not tell you of the goodness of God, when I saw at that same time that it is his will that it be known?[17]

Julian was anchoress, which means she “took [a] vow…to live a solitary life of prayer and meditation.”[18] Her home was small, and, according to the rules of anchoresses, may have had only three windows. One window gave entrance “into the church so she could hear the Mass and receive the sacrament.” The second opening was to give her access to food and provide a way to take out waste and garbage. The last window was provided to give Julian access to see what was going on in the city and counsel people who needed help.[19]
Unfortunately, many today, including myself, find it difficult to believe that reflection and prayer alone could be the way of addressing the most complex and overwhelming needs of our day, as we evangelicals tend to overemphasize the “doing” part of the Christian life rather than reaching out to God in prayer and meditation. But Julian’s life teaches that contemplation before the Lord can provide peace in the midst of suffering as we begin to understand who we are, who God is, and what the God-human relationship entails.[20] It is into Julian’s contemplation concerning God that this paper will now turn.

Julian’s Theological Reflection Based upon the Needs of Her Day
Julian received several revelations from God that she reflected on for more than twenty years in an attempt to understand what they meant and pass on that knowledge to others by writing down her visions. These visions from God began as she faced the reality of her death at approximately thirty years of age. With her unable to move, as well as losing her sight and ability to breathe, she was instructed to look at a cross. When she did, she was miraculously healed.[21] But looking at the cross did more than heal her. It also gave her a vision of Christ’s Passion.[22] In this picture, she understood the complete love God has for humanity, which taught her how good God really is, as well as how he never lets go of his creation.[23]
After addressing the question of who God is, Julian wrestled with the concept of sin and the wrath of God. According to Julian, although humanity is responsible for sin and God has every reason to judge people for it, he does not.[24] In fact, because of Christ, he sees us “as clean and holy as the angels in heaven.”[25] For Julian, sin is a necessary part of human nature,[26] because “we come to know God better through having sinned than we could have done without it.” In other words, sin was the only thing that could reveal Christ, and his sacrifice on the cross demonstrated “God’s love in a way that nothing else could have made possible.”[27] Therefore, our relationship with God is, first and foremost, based upon his forgiveness and love, not his anger and wrath.[28]
Julian’s emphasis on the love of God led her to a conclusion that is not common to our contemporary evangelical ears, namely that God is a mother as well as a father.[29] She emphasized Christ’s motherhood in three ways. First, Julian suggested that just as our earthly mother births us into a world of pain and physical death, Jesus births us into joy and eternal life by suffering pain and death on the cross in order to give humanity spiritual birth.[30] Second, she said that just as newborn babies must be fed by their mothers as they have no ability to provide food for themselves, people require the same type of food spiritually from Christ, which they receive in the form of the sacrament.[31] Finally, she believed that just as a mother must teach her child by allowing them to experience the difficult journey of life, so Christ allows humanity to experience the pains and problems of life in the hope that we will run to him after experiencing such hardships in order to receive his love, acceptance, comfort, and grace in our pain, just as instinctively as a child would immediately run back to their mother knowing they will receive tender and loving care.[32]
Finally, it is important to examine Julian’s perspective on prayer, as this was her area of specialty to which she vowed to practice for the majority of her life. For Julian, prayer is primarily the means for preparing our souls to be responsive to God in terms of aligning our will with his.[33] Prayer is an activity where we can rest and recognize that God is always close to us, and therefore we never need to pray for God’s presence to be near.[34]
Prayers of petition are important, but secondary, as we must first learn to trust God by meditating on who he is and what he has done.[35] Why is the emphasis on trusting God in prayer important? So that we can truly believe and be comforted by the fact that God will bring good out of every evil situation. By learning about and trusting who God is, we will begin to experience God’s love for us when evil occurs and realize that God understands the pain we endure physically, emotionally and spiritually, as we come “to recognize that no place is so dark or so painful that God has not been there before us and stays there with us.”[36]

Julian’s Message and Influence for Our Twenty-First Century Context
Julian’s theology is one of hope that is intended to provide us comfort in a loving, caring, and nurturing God. Such a message is still as relevant today as it was in Julian’s fourteenth century context, considering that we recently left a century that saw more intentional death through violence than any time before it,[37] not to mention this most recent decade, which has seen the rise of terrorism, the tsunami disaster of 2004 as well as two recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, all of which have killed hundreds of thousands.
How should we respond to such evil? Many of us want to “do” something about it through political and social reforms, providing finances for relief aid, or going to help rebuild what have been destroyed. Although our participation in such activities is helpful and warranted, these activities are not the only, nor the first things we should do. Julian’s answer is that we first should contemplate, reflect, meditate, and pray, trusting in God’s love and care for all of creation, as only through knowing who God is can we know ourselves and respond to the suffering of the world in the way Christ would have us to in accordance with his will.
Does our pursuit to know God through prayer, acting in accordance with his will mean that evil will simply cease? No. But, Julian understood the complexity of prayer and how it can change and teach us in profound ways, as Sheila Upjohn notes:

We shall never be able to feed all the hungry, clothe all the naked, comfort all the dying, [and] cure all the sorrows of the world. But we can enter into all this through prayer and, entering, bring it before God. The pathways of prayer lead to unforeseen destinations.[38]

Endnotes
[1] At the outset of this paper, it is important for the reader to know that Julian’s writing is generally categorized into two main versions, as this paper will utilize both. The first is referred to as the “short” text. According to Clifton Wolters, “[o]nly one copy of the shorter version exists,” which does not stand on its own, but is part of larger book comprised of several essays on the topic of “medieval devotion.” The second is called the “long” text. Three manuscripts of this version exist including two located in Britain, called Mss. Sloan 2499 and 3705, and one located in Paris, referred to as Ms. 40 Fonds Anglais. Wolters, Revelations of Divine Love, 13. Of the three, Wolters says “Sloan 2499 [is] generally accepted as the most reliable of the extant versions.” Wolters, Revelations, 14. This paper will cite the “short” text from the translation provided by Colledge and Walsh’s translation entitled Julian of Norwich: Showings (1978) and the “long” text from Wolters’ Revelations (1966).
[2] Wolters, Revelations, 70.
[3] Julian describes her illness and miraculous healing in Colledge and Walsh, Showings, 129-30, as well as Wolters, Revelations, 64-66.
[4] A brief but excellent account of how Julian’s book was lost to history and found its way back again is provided by Upjohn, In Search of Julian of Norwich, 2-9. The modern version of the long text was translated in 1670. According to Colledge and Walsh, however, the “French translation…seems to have been more widely known that the English.” Julian’s work became known first through the “short” text, which was bought by British Museum (now known as the British Library) in 1909. Colledge and Walsh, Showing, 17.
[5] This work is entitled The Book of Margery Kempe. It is the first autobiography written in English. Kempe, who could not read or write, orally communicated the book to a priest who produced the written form. Windeatt, Margery Kempe, 9-10. In fact, Julian was so lost to English history that no one in her hometown of Norwich had even heard of her. The people of Norwich became interested in her life and work, when strangers from all over the world simply started showing up one day at the Norwich church to celebrate the 600th anniversary of her life. Before this time, however, the people of Norwich did not know her name, did not know Julian was a woman, and did not know she had written a book. UpJohn, In Search, 1-2. Although much has been discovered about Julian since the beginning of the twentieth century, there are still many unknowns about her including: “where she was born, who or what her family were, what her religious history was or when she died.” Colledge and Walsh, Showings, 19.
[6] Colledge and Walsh, Showings, 19-20. Although Julian’s literary style and theological insight are not questioned, how she came to be so thoroughly educated is disputed considering there are “several places she protests that she is ignorant…and that at the time of the visions she knew…‘no letter.’” Colledge and Walsh, Showings, 19. The minority opinion says Julian’s claim to knowing “no letter” leads to the conclusion that she was uneducated at the time of her visions, but later learned how to read and write in order to pass on what she had learned between the onset of the visions and the next twenty years she spent in prayer and contemplation interpreting what the visions meant. For this opinion, see Upjohn, In Search, 68-73. The best defense of this position is presented by Benedicta Ward “Julian the Solitary,” in Julian Reconsidered, ed. Kenneth Leech and Benedicta Ward (Oxford: SLG, 1988). Most scholars, however, believe Julian was highly educated, proposing that references to her lack of education are “nothing but a well-known, often-employed rhetorical device, appealing for benevolence from the reader by dispraising the writer’s abilities…saying no more than that when she received her revelations she lacked literary skills[.]” Colledge and Walsh, Showings, 19. Still others believe the claim of being “unlettered” simply means Julian “probably…had no skill in church Latin,” which only a minute part of the population could read. Wolters, Revelations, 17. One excellent idea is that Julian’s self-identification to being “ignorant” refers her lack of spiritual discernment and Godly wisdom in understanding the meaning of the visions at the time she received them, recognizing that no formal educational study would help her decipher such images. So, “the revelation is bestowed on [Julian,]…a figure who desires God but lacks the skills that would help her find out divine truths by bookish means.” Watson and Jenkins, The Writings of Julian of Norwich, 7-10.
[7] Upjohn, In Search, 10.
[8] Upjohn, In Search, 12.
[9] Upjohn, In Search, 10.
[10] Upjohn, In Search, 10, 23-24.
[11] Upjohn, In Search, 25-26.
[12] Upjohn, In Search, 26-28.
[13] Upjohn, In Search, 24-25.
[14] These are only a few of the symptoms of the Black Death. For more information, see http://www.middle-ages.org.uk/black-death.htm.
[15] Many will realize how little has been or can be done in the places of our contemporary context where war, death, and disease are an everyday reality for hundreds of millions of people around the world.
[16] Upjohn, In Search, 46-47. The Church’s theology of judgment worked incredibly well during the fourteenth century, as they could use the natural and political evils of Julian’s day to control an uneducated population’s thoughts and actions by using guilt and manipulation to achieve whatever agenda(s) the Church wished.
[17] Colledge and Walsh, Showings, 135.
[18] Upjohn, In Search, 14.
[19] Upjohn, In Search, 16. This description of Julian’s home is based upon a work entitled The Anchoress Rules (also called Ancrene Riwle, Ancren Riwle, or Ancren Wisse). This book was originally written in the late 12th or early 13th century for three sisters to instruct them on how to conduct their lives in public and private, as well as order their daily routines. It became an authoritative guide for the life of an anchoress in the medieval period. For a good translation of this text see Anne Savage and Nicholas Watson, trans., Anchoritic Spirituality: Ancrene Wisse and Associated Work (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1991).
[20] In fact, Julian’s most famous phrase is “All will be well.”
[21] Colledge and Walsh, Showings, 127-28, as well as Wolters, Revelations, 64-66.
[22] Colledge and Walsh, Showings, 129-30, as well as Wolters, Revelations, 66-67. Julian’s description of the Passion is quiet graphic: “I saw the red blood trickling down from under the crown, all hot, flowing freely and copiously [meaning “abundantly”], a living stream, just as it seems to me that is was at the time when the crown of thorns was thrust down upon his blessed head.” Colledge and Walsh, Showings, 129.
[23] So Julian says: “It was at this time that our Lord showed me spiritually how intimately he loves us. I saw that he is everything that we know to be good and helpful. In his love he clothes us, enfolds and embraces us; that tender love completely surrounds us, never to leave us. As I saw it he is everything that is good.” Wolters, Revelations, 67-68. In an overlapping vision, Julian saw a small nut that, to her, represented how small creation is compared to God. She was well aware that people often seek created things rather than the creator and that this “materialism,” for lack of a better term, indicated a spiritual problem. By continuously pursing material objects, Julian understood that such an obsession was evidence that the souls of many lacked peace and rest, a burdensome condition that only God could address. According to Julian, it is this uneasiness of people’s souls that leads them to the psychological question of who they are. Colledge and Walsh, Showings, 130-32. Julian believed, however, that such a question could not be answered until people knew God, because “our soul is so intricately knitted to God that we cannot know one without knowing the other.” Upjohn, In Search, 33-34.
[24] So Julian writes: “So throughout this vision I thought I was being obliged to recognize that we are sinners, who commit evil things that ought not to be done, and who omit many good deeds that ought to be done. We deserve to suffer pain and God’s anger! Yet in spite of all this I saw plainly that our Lord was never angry – nor would be. For he is God – goodness, life, truth, love, peace. The integrity of his love will not permit him to be angry, for he is nothing but goodness.” Wolters, Revelations, 133.
[25] Upjohn, In Search, 36.
[26] So Julian states: “In my foolish way I had often wondered why the foreseeing wisdom of God could not have prevented the beginning of sin, for then, thought I, all would have been well. This line of thought ought to have been left well alone; as it was I grieved and sorrowed over it, with neither cause nor justification. But Jesus…answered, ‘Sin is necessary – but it is all going to be all right; it is all going to be alright; everything is going to be alright.’” Wolters, Revelations, 103.
[27] Upjohn, In Search, 43.
[28] Many contemporary evangelicals, holding to an Arminian view of God’s providence, would not agree with Julian’s understanding of sin, because of her implication that God can cause evil as well as be the best example of love which humans can know. Many see this as being a blatant contradiction concerning the nature of God. Even in her day, Julian understood the problem implied in proposing that God caused evil. She seems to have found peace, however, in trusting that God would bring good out of evil stating: “Thus I was taught by God’s grace to hold steadfastly to the faith I had already learned, and at the same time to believe quite seriously that everything would turn out all right, as our Lord was showing. For the great deed that our Lord is going to do is that by which he shall keep his word in every particular, and make all that is wrong turn out well.” Wolters, Revelations, 111. In examining Julian’s view of God and evil, it is important to keep in mind that she was indirectly combating the Church’s view of God that emphasized his judgment rather than his love, and therefore was attempting to bring spiritual hope to a people that had none. She was not answering philosophical questions about the problem of evil.
[29] So Julian states: “So when he made us God almighty was our kindly father [and]…the Second Person [of the Trinity]…is our Mother, Brother, and Saviour.” Wolters, Revelations, 165. In saying Jesus is a mother, Julian is not claiming Christ was factually a female, but simply that Jesus acts in motherly ways. Upjohn, In Search, 53.
[30] So Julian states: “We know that our own mother’s bearing of us was a bearing to pain and death, but what does Jesus, our true Mother, do? Why, he…bears us to joy and eternal life!...And he is in labour until the time has fully come for him to suffer the sharpest pangs and most appalling pain possible – and in the end he dies.” Wolters, Revelations, 169.
[31] So Julian states: “The human mother will suckle her child with her own milk, but our beloved Mother, Jesus, feeds us with himself, and…does it by means of the Blessed Sacrament, the precious food of all true life. And he keeps us going through his mercy and grace by all the sacraments.” Wolters, Revelations, 170.
[32] So Julian states: “A kind, loving [earthly] mother who understands and knows the needs of her child will look after it tenderly just because it is the nature of a mother to do so. As the child grows older she changes her methods – but not her love…she allows the child to be punished so that its faults are corrected and its virtues and graces developed. This way of doing things, with much else that is right and good, is our Lord at work in those that are doing them.” Wolters, Revelations, 170-71. Julian continues: “A mother may allow her child…to fall, and to learn the hard way for its own good.” And, after experiencing such a fall, the child may choose to run away from its mother. “But our patient Mother [Jesus] does not want us to run away [from God]: nothing would be more displeasing to him. His desire is that we should do what a child does: for when a child is in trouble or is scared it runs to its mother for help as fast as it can.” Wolters, Revelations, 172.
[33] So Julian says that one of the ways “we should best use prayer” is to allow our will to “be joyfully subject to the will of the Lord.” Wolters, Revelations, 126.
[34] So Julian says that “when the soul is tossed and troubled and alone in its unrest, it is time to pray so as to make itself sensitive and submissive to God. Of course prayer cannot…make God sensitive to the soul: for this is what, in his love, he always is.” Wolters, Revelations, 129.
[35] So Julian states: “This is our Lord’s intention: that our prayer and our trust alike be large hearted. If we do not trust as much as we pray we do not fully honour our Lord in our prayer.” Wolters, Revelations, 126.
[36] Upjohn, In Search, 85. Julian’s emphasis on the love and control God has for and over creation leads to the question of our role in prayer. In other words, why pray if God is in control, will see his will done, and knows what we will pray before we ask him? For Julian, prayer gives us the opportunity to participate in the good God is doing in the world. God rewards our prayers and delights in answering our prayers, even more so if they are in accordance with his will. For a fuller response of Julian to the question of why we should pray, see Wolters, Revelations, 128.
[37] According to Niall Ferguson, a Harvard professor of history, 167 to 188 million people have been killed by organized human violence in the twentieth century alone. Ferguson, War, 649. Thanks go to Dr. Steven Studebaker for providing this reference.
[38] Upjohn, In Search, 89.