Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love
CHAPTER I “A Revelation of Love—in Sixteen Shewings”
CHAPTER II “A simple creature unlettered.—Which creature afore desired three gifts of God”
CHAPTER III “I desired to suffer with Him”
CHAPTER V “God, of Thy Goodness, give me Thyself —only in Thee I have all”
CHAPTER VII “The Shewing is not other than of faith, nor less nor more”
CHAPTER IX “If I look singularly to myself, I am right nought”
CHAPTER X “God willeth to be seen and to be sought: to be abided and to be trusted”
CHAPTER XI “All thing that is done, it is well done: for our Lord God doeth all.” “Sin is no deed”
CHAPTER XIII “The Enemy is overcome by the blessed Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ ”
CHAPTER XVI “A Part of His Passion”
CHAPTER XVIII “When He was in pain, we were in pain”
CHAPTER XXIII “The Glad Giver” “All the Trinity wrought in the Passion of Jesus Christ”
CHAPTER XXVI “It is I, it is I”
CHAPTER XXIX “How could all be well, for the great harm that is come by sin to the creature?”
CHAPTER XXXVIII In Heaven “the token of sin is turned to worship.”— Examples thereof
CHAPTER XLI “ I am the Ground of thy beseeching.
CHAPTER XLIII “Prayer uniteth the soul to God”
CHAPTER LV “Christ is our Way”—“Mankind shall be restored from double death”
CHAPTER LVII “In Christ our two natures are united”
CHAPTER LX “The Kind, loving, Mother”
CHAPTER LXIV “ Thou shalt come up above
CHAPTER LXIX “I was delivered from the Enemy by the virtue of Christ’s Passion”
CHAPTER LXXI “Three manners of looking seen in our Lord’s Countenance”
CHAPTER LXXIV “There is no dread that fully pleaseth God in us but reverent dread”
CHAPTER LXXVI “The soul that beholdeth the fair nature of our Lord Jesus, it hateth no hell but sin”
CHAPTER LXXII “In falling and in rising we are ever preciously kept in one Love ”
CHAPTER LXXXIII “Life, Love, and Light”
CHAPTER LXXXV “Lord, blessed mayest Thou be, for it is thus: it is well”
HERE I saw a part of the compassion of our Lady, Saint Mary: for Christ and she were so oned in love that the greatness of her loving was cause of the greatness of her pain. For in this [Shewing] I saw a Substance of Nature’s Love, continued by Grace, that creatures have to Him: which Kind Love was most fully shewed in His sweet Mother, and overpassing; for so much as she loved Him more than all other, her pains passed all other. For ever the higher, the mightier, the sweeter that the love be, the more sorrow it is to the lover to see that body in pain that is loved.
And all His disciples and all His true lovers suffered pains more than their own bodily dying. For I am sure by mine own feeling that the least of them loved Him so far above himself that it passeth all that I can say.
Here saw I a great oneing betwixt Christ and us, to mine understanding: for when He was in pain, we were in pain. 40
And all creatures that might suffer pain, suffered with Him: that is to say, all creatures that God hath made to our service. The firmament, the earth, failed for sorrow in their Nature in the time of Christ’s dying. For it belongeth naturally to their property to know Him for their God, in whom all their virtue standeth: when He failed, then behoved it needs to them, because of kindness [between them], to fail with Him, as much as they might, for sorrow of His pains.
And thus they that were His friends suffered pain for love. And, generally, all: that is to say, they that knew Him not suffered for failing of all manner of comfort save the mighty, privy keeping of God. I speak of two manner of folk, as they may be understood by two persons: the one was Pilate, the other was Saint Dionyse of France, which was [at] that time a Paynim. For when he saw wondrous and marvellous sorrows and dreads that befell in that time, he said: Either the world is now at an end, or He that is Maker of Kind suffereth. Wherefore he did write on an altar: THIS IS THE ALTAR OF UNKNOWN GOD. God that of His goodness maketh the planets and the elements to work of Kind to the blessed man and the cursed, in that time made withdrawing of it from both; wherefore it was that they that knew Him not were in sorrow that time.
Thus was our Lord Jesus made-naught for us; and all we stand in this manner made-naught with Him, and shall do till we come to His bliss: as I shall tell after. 41