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Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love
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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”
ONE time our good Lord said: All thing shall be well; and another time he said: Thou shalt see thyself that all MANNER [of] thing shall be well; and in these two [sayings] the soul took sundry understandings. 63
One was that He willeth we know that not only He taketh heed to noble things and to great, but also to little and to small, to low and to simple, to one and to other. And so meaneth He in that He saith: ALL MANNER OF THINGS shall be well. For He willeth we know that the least thing shall not be forgotten.
Another understanding is this, that there be deeds evil done in our sight, and so great harms taken, that it seemeth to us that it were impossible that ever it should come to good end. And upon this we look, sorrowing and mourning therefor, so that we cannot resign us unto the blissful beholding of God as we should do. And the cause of this is that the use of our reason is now so blind, so low, and so simple, that we cannot know that high marvellous Wisdom, the Might and the Goodness of the blissful Trinity. And thus signifieth He when He saith: THOU SHALT SEE THYSELF if [1] all manner of things shall be well. As if He said: Take now heed faithfully and trustingly, and at the last end thou shalt verily see it in fulness of joy.
And thus in these same five words aforesaid: I may make all things well, etc., I understand a mighty comfort of all the works of our Lord God that are yet to come. There is a Deed the which the blessed Trinity shall do in the last Day, as to my sight, and when the Deed shall be, and how it shall be done, is unknown of all creatures that are beneath Christ, and shall be till when it is done.
[” The Goodness and the Love of our Lord God” will that we wit [know] that it shall be; And the “Might and the Wisdom of him by the same Love will” 64
hill [conceal] it, and hide it from us what it shall be, “and how it shall be done.”]
And the cause why He willeth that we know [this Deed shall be], is for that He would have us the more eased in our soul and [the more] set at peace in love—leaving the beholding of all troublous things that might keep us back from true enjoying of Him. This is that Great Deed ordained of our Lord God from without beginning, treasured and hid in His blessed breast, only known to Himself: by which He shall make all things well.
For like as the blissful Trinity made all things of nought, right so the same blessed Trinity shall make well all that is not well.
And in this sight I marvelled greatly and beheld our Faith, marvelling thus: Our Faith is grounded in God’s word, and it belongeth to our Faith that we believe that God’s word shall be saved in all things; and one point of our Faith is that many creatures shall be condemned: as angels that fell out of Heaven for pride, which be now fiends; and man in earth that dieth out of the Faith of Holy Church: that is to say, they that be heathen men; and also man that hath received christendom and liveth unchristian life and so dieth out of charity: all these shall be condemned to hell without end, as Holy Church teacheth me to believe. And all this [so] standing, methought it was impossible that all manner of things should be well, as our Lord shewed in the same time. 65
And as to this I had no other answer in Shewing of our Lord God but this: That which is impossible to thee is not impossible to me: I shall save my word in all things and I shall make all things well. Thus I was taught, by the grace of God, that I should steadfastly hold me in the Faith as I had aforehand understood, [and] therewith that I should firmly believe that all things shall be well, as our Lord shewed in the same time.
For this is the Great Deed that our Lord shall do, in which Deed He shall save His word and He shall make all well that is not well. How it shall be done there is no creature beneath Christ that knoweth it, nor shall know it till it is done; according to the understanding that I took of our Lord’s meaning in this time.