Revelations of Divine Love

by Julian of Norwich

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  It is easier to know God than our soul, for God is nearer to us than that, and therefore if we want to have knowledge of it, we must look in God; and he wants us to long for knowledge of natural mercy and grace.

  And thus I saw quite certainly that it is easier for us to attain knowledge of God than to know our own soul; for our soul is so deeply grounded in God, and so eternally treasured, that we cannot attain knowledge of it until we first know God, the Maker to whom it is united. But in spite of this, I saw that for complete understanding we have to long to know our own soul wisely and truly; and for this reason we are taught to search for it where it is to be found, and that is in God. And so by the gracious guidance of the Holy Ghost we should know them both at once, whether we are moved to know God or our soul; they are both good and true.

  God is nearer to us than our own soul, for he is the ground on which our soul stands and he is the means by which essential being and sensory being are kept together, so that they shall never be separated; for our soul sits in God in complete rest and our soul stands in God in complete strength and our soul is naturally rooted in God in eternal love. And therefore if we want knowledge of our soul and intercourse and communion with it, it behoves us to search in our Lord God in whom it is enclosed. And I saw and understood more of this enclosure in the sixteenth showing, as I shall explain.

  And so far as our essential being and sensory being are concerned, they may rightly be called our soul, and that is because they are united in God. The noble city in which our Lord Jesus sits is our sensory being, in which he is enclosed; and our essential being is enclosed in Jesus, with the blessed soul of Christ sitting and resting in the Godhead. And I saw quite certainly that we must needs be in a state of longing and suffering until the time when we are led so deeply into God that we really and truly know our own soul. And indeed I saw that into these great depths our good Lord himself leads us, in the same love with which he made us, and in the same love with which he bought us through mercy and grace by virtue of his blessed Passion. And in spite of all this we can never attain full knowledge of God until we first know our own soul clearly, for until our soul reaches its full strength we cannot reach full holiness, and that will happen when through the power of Christ’s Passion our sensory being is raised to our essential being, with all the profit which our Lord through mercy and grace will enable us to gain from our tribulations.

  I had some degree of insight into this, and it is a process grounded in nature, that is to say, our reason is grounded in God, who is the summit of essential being. From this essential nature, mercy and grace spring and spread into us, influencing all things in fulfilment of our joy. These are the grounds in which we grow and reach our fulfilment, for in nature we have our life and our being, and in mercy and grace we have our growth and our fulfilment; nature, mercy and grace are three aspects of a single goodness, and where one works they all work in the things which concern us in this life. God wants us to understand, longing with all our heart and with all our strength to know more and more of them until the time when we reach fulfilment; for to know them fully and see them clearly is none other than the eternal joy and bliss which we shall have in heaven. God wants this to begin here in the knowledge of his love; for we cannot profit from our reason alone, unless we also have perception and love; nor can we be saved just because we are naturally grounded in God, unless we have knowledge of this ground and of his mercy and grace, for from these three, working all together, we receive all our goodness. The first of these are the goods of nature; for when we were first made, God gave us abundance of natural goods, but also greater goods such as we could receive only in spirit, for in his eternal wisdom his foreseeing purpose wanted us to have this double nature.49

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  Our essential being is complete, and though we are lacking in our sensory being it will be replenished by mercy and grace; and how the higher part of our nature is bound to God in its creation, and in taking on our flesh Jesus is bound to the lower part of our nature; and how other virtues spring from faith; and Mary is our mother.

  And so far as our essential being is concerned, God made us so noble and so rich that we always work his will and his glory. When I say ‘we’, I mean those who will be saved; for I saw truly that we are what he loves and we always do what pleases him, without limit; and from the great riches and exalted nobility of our essential being, virtues come to our soul in due measure when it is bound to our body and we become sensory beings. And so in our essential being we are complete and in our sensory being we are lacking, but God will remedy this by making mercy and grace flow abundantly into us from his own natural goodness. And so his natural goodness makes mercy and grace work within us; and the natural goodness which we have from him enables us to receive the workings of mercy and grace.

  I saw that our nature is complete in God, and he makes diverse qualities flow into it from him to do his will, and these are sustained by nature, and restored and completed by mercy and grace. And none of these shall be lost; for the higher part of our nature is bound to God in its creation; and God is bound to the lower part of our nature in taking on our flesh. Thus the two parts of us are united in Christ; for the Trinity is included in Christ in whom the higher part of our nature is grounded and rooted, and the second Person of the Trinity has taken on the lower part, a nature which was ordained for him from the beginning; for I saw quite certainly that all the works which God has done or ever shall do were fully known to him and foreseen since before time began; and he made mankind for love, and for the same love chose to be man himself.

  The next good which we receive is our faith, in which our profit begins; and it comes from the great riches of our essential being into our sensory soul; and it is grounded in us and we in it through the natural goodness of God by the operation of mercy and grace. And from this come all the other goods by which we are guided and saved; for from it come God’s commandments, of which we should have two sorts of understanding. These are first to love and obey what he bids, and second to know what he forbids and to hate and reject it. Everything we do is included in these two. The seven sacraments50 are also included in our faith, following each other in order as God has ordained them for us. So are all manner of virtues; for through the goodness of God, the same virtues which we have received from our essential being, given to us by nature, are also by the operation of mercy given to us through grace, renewed by the Holy Ghost. These virtues and gifts are treasured up for us in Jesus Christ; for at the same time that God bound himself to our body in the Virgin’s womb, he took on our sensory soul, and in doing so he enclosed us all within himself and united the sensory soul with our essential being, a union in which he was perfect man; for Christ, having bound into himself each man who shall be saved, is perfect man.

  Thus our Lady is our mother in whom we are all enclosed and we are born from her in Christ; for she who is mother of our Saviour is mother of all who will be saved in our Saviour. And our Saviour is our true mother in whom we are eternally born and by whom we shall always be enclosed. This was shown abundantly, fully and sweetly; and it is spoken of in the first showing where he says that we are all enclosed in him and he is enclosed in us;51 and it is spoken of in the sixteenth showing, where it says that he sits in our soul; for it is his pleasure to reign blissfully in our understanding, and to sit restfully in our soul, and to dwell endlessly in our soul, working us all into himself; and in this working he wants us to help him, giving him all our attention, learning what he teaches, keeping his laws, desiring that everything he does should be done, faithfully trusting in him; for I saw truly that our essential being is in God.

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  God was never displeased with his chosen bride; and of three properties of the Trinity: fatherhood, motherhood and lordship; and how our essential being is in every person, but our sensory being is in Christ alone.

  Just as he is eternal since before time began, so God, the Holy Trinity who is everlasting being, purposed ete
rnally to make mankind, whose fair nature was first assigned to his own son, the second Person of the Trinity. And when he so wished, with the full agreement of the whole Trinity, he made us all at once; and in our making he bound and united us to himself; a union through which we are kept as pure and as noble as we were made. By the power of the same precious union we love our Maker and please him, praise him, thank him and endlessly rejoice in him. And this work that goes on continually in every soul that shall be saved is the godly will mentioned previously. And so in our making, God almighty is our father by nature; and God all wisdom is our mother by nature, along with the love and goodness of the Holy Ghost; and these are all one God, one Lord. And in this binding and union he is a real and true bridegroom, and we his loved bride and his fair maiden, a bride with whom he is never displeased; for he says, ‘I love you and you love me, and our love shall never be divided.’52

  I considered the operation of all the Holy Trinity, and in doing so I saw and understood these three properties: the property of fatherhood, the property of motherhood and the property of lordship, all in one God. In our almighty Father we are sustained and blessed so far as our essential nature is concerned, which belongs to us through our making since before time began; and in the second Person, who is Intellect and Wisdom, we are sustained as far as our sensory being, our redemption and our salvation are concerned; for he is our mother, brother and saviour. And in our good lord the Holy Ghost we have our reward and recompense for our living and suffering; and endless surpassing of all we desire comes from his marvellous generosity, his great and abundant grace.

  For our whole life falls into three parts. In the first we exist, in the second we grow and in the third we are completed. The first is nature, the second is mercy, the third is grace. As for the first, I saw and understood that the great power of the Trinity is our father, and the deep wisdom of the Trinity is our mother, and the great love of the Trinity is our lord; and we have all this by nature and in our essential being. And furthermore, I saw that as the second Person is mother of our essential being, so that same well-loved Person has become mother of our sensory being; for God makes us double, as essential and sensory beings. Our essential being is the higher part, which we have in our Father, God almighty; and the second Person of the Trinity is our mother in nature and in our essential creation, in whom we are grounded and rooted, and he is our mother in mercy in taking on our sensory being. And so our Mother, in whom our parts are kept unparted, works in us in various ways; for in our Mother, Christ, we profit and grow, and in mercy he reforms and restores us, and through the power of his Passion and his death and rising again, he unites us to our essential being. This is how our Mother mercifully acts to all his children who are submissive and obedient to him.

  And grace works with mercy, and in two ways especially, as has been shown – work which belongs to the third Person, the Holy Ghost. He works by giving and by rewarding; the rewarding is a generous gift of truth which the Lord offers to those who have laboured, and the giving is a courteous action which he freely and graciously perfects, surpassing all that humankind deserves. Thus we have our being in our Father, God almighty, and in our Mother through mercy we have our reformation and restoration, and our parts are united and all is made perfect man; and by the generosity and gracious gift of the Holy Ghost we are made complete. And our essential being is our Father, God almighty, and it is our Mother, God all wise, and it is our Lord the Holy Ghost, God all goodness; for our essential being is whole in each Person of the Trinity, which is one God. And our sensory being is only in the second Person, Christ Jesus, in whom are the Father and the Holy Ghost; and in him and by him we are powerfully raised from hell and out of the wretchedness of earth and gloriously brought up into heaven and blessedly united to our essential being, increased in riches and nobility by all the virtue of Christ and by the grace and operation of the Holy Ghost.

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  In the chosen, wickedness is turned into blessedness through mercy and grace, for the nature of God is to do good for evil, through Jesus, our mother in kind grace; and the soul which is highest in virtue is the meekest, that being the ground from which we gain other virtues.

  And we have all this blessedness through mercy and grace; a kind of blessedness which we might never have known if the quality of goodness which is God had not been opposed. It is by this means that we gain this blessedness; for wickedness has been allowed to rise and oppose goodness, and the goodness of mercy and grace has opposed wickedness and turned it all to goodness and glory for all those who shall be saved; for it is the nature of God to do good for evil.

  Thus Jesus Christ who does good for evil is our true mother; we have our being from him where the ground of motherhood begins, with all the sweet protection of love which follows eternally. God is our mother as truly as he is our father; and he showed this in everything, and especially in the sweet words where he says, ‘It is I’,53 that is to say, ‘It is I: the power and goodness of fatherhood. It is I: the wisdom of motherhood. It is I: the light and the grace which is all blessed love. It is I: the Trinity. It is I: the unity. I am the sovereign goodness of all manner of things. It is I that make you love. It is I that make you long. It is I: the eternal fulfilment of all true desires.’

  For the soul is highest, noblest and worthiest when it is lowest, humblest and gentlest; and from this essential ground we all have our virtues and our sensory being by gift of nature and with the help and assistance of grace, without which we could gain nothing. Our great father, God almighty, who is Being, knew and loved us from before the beginning of time. And from his knowledge, in his marvellously deep love and through the eternal foreseeing counsel of the whole blessed Trinity, he wanted the second Person to become our mother, our brother, our saviour. From this it follows that God is our mother as truly as God is our father. Our Father wills, our Mother works, our good lord the Holy Ghost confirms. And therefore it behoves us to love our God in whom we have our being, reverently thanking and praising him for our creation, praying hard to our Mother for mercy and pity, and to our lord the Holy Ghost for help and grace; for our whole life is in these three – nature, mercy and grace; from them we have humility, gentleness, patience and pity, and hatred of sin and wickedness; for it is a natural attribute of virtues to hate sin and wickedness. And so Jesus is our true mother by nature, at our first creation, and he is our true mother in grace by taking on our created nature. All the fair work and all the sweet, kind service of beloved motherhood is made proper to the second Person; for in him this godly will is kept safe and whole everlastingly, both in nature and in grace, out of his very own goodness.

  I understood three ways of seeing motherhood in God: the first is that he is the ground of our natural creation, the second is the taking on of our nature (and there the motherhood of grace begins), the third is the motherhood of works, and in this there is, by the same grace, an enlargement of length and breadth and of height and deepness without end, and all is his own love.

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  How we are redeemed and enlarged by the mercy and grace of our sweet, kind and ever-loving mother Jesus; and of the properties of motherhood; but Jesus is our true mother, feeding us not with milk, but with himself, opening his side for us and claiming all our love.

  But now it is necessary to say a little more about this enlargement, as I understand it in our Lord’s meaning, how we are redeemed by the motherhood of mercy and grace and brought back into our natural dwelling where we were made by the motherhood of natural love; a natural love which never leaves us. Our natural Mother, our gracious Mother (for he wanted to become our mother completely in every way), undertook to begin his work very humbly and very gently in the Virgin’s womb. And he showed this in the first revelation, where he brought that humble maiden before my mind’s eye in the girlish form she had when she conceived; that is to say, our great God, the most sovereign wisdom of all, was raised in this humble place and dressed himself in our poor flesh to do the service and duties of m
otherhood in every way. The mother’s service is the closest, the most helpful and the most sure, for it is the most faithful. No one ever might, nor could, nor has performed this service fully but he alone. We know that our mothers only bring us into the world to suffer and die, but our true mother, Jesus, he who is all love, bears us into joy and eternal life; blessed may he be! So he sustains us within himself in love and was in labour for the full time until he suffered the sharpest pangs and the most grievous sufferings that ever were or shall be, and at the last he died. And when it was finished and he had born us to bliss, even this could not fully satisfy his marvellous love; and that he showed in these high surpassing words of love, ‘If I could suffer more, I would suffer more.’54