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When our middle daughter was in college, she spent Spring semester of her junior year studying at Queen Mary University in London, and we visited her. It was a charmed trip with many unforgettable moments.
A highlight for me was traveling to the coastal region of Norfolk and visiting the Church of St. Julian in Norwich, made famous by its history with Catholic mystic Julian of Norwich.
Although we don’t know exact dates, Julian was born in December of 1342, and likely lived until 1430. At the age of 30, as Julian describes, “God sent me a bodily sickness” so grave that she expected to die.
A priest brought her a crucifix, and Julian looked at Jesus and was healed. That’s when she experienced sixteen “showings,” messages from God. She spoke candidly with Christ on the cross, even asking Him questions.
These intimate, direct conversations with the Lord are Dame Julian’s greatest gift. In her best-known conversation, Christ told her, “All shall be well, and all shall be well. And thou shalt see thyself that all manner of thing shall be well.”
Julian’s revelations took place during the span of a few hours, but it took her 40 or more years to ponder and write, Revelations of Divine Love. For the final 25 years of her long life, Julian became a hermit, living in a cell attached to the Church of St. Julian--and most likely taking the name of Julian from that saint.
Dame Julian, as she was called in her time, received frequent visitors seeking spiritual instruction, “for the anchoress was an expert in such things and could give good advice,” Margery Kempe explained in her autobiography. As Pope Benedict XVI observed, Julian “had become a mother to many.”
She is fittingly hailed as “patron saint of the anxious” by author Hannah Matis. “If we can bring ourselves to believe her… we can become more aware of the quiet, insidious extent of our habitual anxieties and how they have unconsciously affected our understanding of Christ. Julian challenges us to ask ourselves how much good of God are we really prepared to believe.”
Julian’s words comfort me, but also persistently provoke me.
The confident trust she professes in God and in God’s movement in life’s details, is not romantic optimism or positivity. Hers is a confidence grounded in reality, as life truly is.
It is an affirmation that, yes, all things will be well—not because they will turn out as I want them to, but because no matter what comes next, God is with me.
All is grace. God transfigures all, converts all, even suffering and anxiety, into grace and goodness.
Julian’s confident trust that “all shall be well” is grounded on acknowledging God and God’s care for us, in our particular reality. She reminds me that this God of Love speaks to us, reveals Himself to us, precisely in the most intimate, quotidian details of my life.
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This column was first published in the February 2021 issue of Liguorian Magazine, as the regular column, “Just Live It”
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Notes on the icons / images above – image 1: Lady Julian of Norwich, icon by Anna Dimascio; image 2: This quote from Dame Julian has been taped to my bathroom mirror for years!; image 3: Dame Julian and Margery Kemp, icon by Brother Leon of Walsingham
