Session 6
Chapters 44-54
Ch. 44 - “the human soul was created to see, contemplate, and love God. We are made for love and in love God will keep us.”
Ch. 45 - In her revelations Julian saw that God does not assign blame. She could not find blame or anger anywhere in God. She saw an irreconcilable tension between the judgments the church proclaims and the absolute lack of blame and anger in God. “All I can do is keep this question in my heart where it will remain until the day I die.”
Ch. 46 - Divine love is boundless and infinite, unending. This is her summary of the whole revelation! We deserve blame, however, God’s “power, wisdom, and loving-kindness leave no room for anger.”
Ch. 47 - we have two duties: 1. Reverently marvel. 2. Humbly endure.
Ch. 48 - “I never saw any anger in my showings, except on the part of human beings and God forgives us for that. Anger is nothing but a stubborn opposition to peace and love. It comes from a lack of power.”
“The ground of mercy is love, and the flowering of mercy is the way love protects us.”
“God’s mercy and forgiveness are all about abating and absorbing our anger, not his.”
Ch. 49 - God cannot forgive because He cannot be angry. Even when we are lost in anger we are enfolded in God.
Ch. 50 - Julian continues to struggle with her sense that we are blameworthy (as taught her by the church) and yet she continues to see that God does not blame us for anything. She cries out to Jesus to please help her resolve this tension.
In the previous chapter Julian asks this question, “What if I concluded that there is no such thing as sin and we are not to be blamed for our transgressions?” She then says, “If I am going to live here on earth, it seems to me necessary for me to know the answer to that question.” The answer came in the form of the parable that begins Chapter 51.
In the parable a servant of a master falls into suffering through no fault of his own. It is seemingly simply in his human nature to get tripped and to miss the mark. The servant represents Adam, the master represents God. The master looks on the servant with nothing but gentleness and tenderness and the master loves the servant deeply. “In God’s sight, all humanity is one person, and all people are a single humanity.”
When we miss the mark it is our own pain that punishes us, not God. God offers only comfort, kindness, love, and a desire to bring us joy.
In the parable the master was “sitting on the bare earth.” This symbolizes the truth that “God created the human soul as his throne and his dwelling place. Of all his creation, we please him the most.”
The servant gardens in order to bring the fruits of the garden to the master. The servants job is to help the entire garden flourish.
The servant reflects Adam and also Christ, the second person of the Trinity.
The servant’s fall in the parable is the Son’s fall into the “maiden’s womb.”
Ch. 52 Five supreme joys of God: the he is our Father, our Mother, our Beloved and true lover, Christ is our Brother, and Jesus is our Savior.
God is with us in “well and woe” in three ways: in paradies, here on earth, and dwelling eternally within us, “directing and protecting us.”
Missing the mark is simply a part of life.
We must hold ourselves accountable for our actions and God continuously forgives us.
Ch. 53 - God is so good that he can never banish anyone forever.
In every soul there is a divine will that cannot sin. This part of you is eternally oned with Christ. This seems to be Julian’s True self equivalency.
Julian writes, “In spite of this eternal oneing, it is still necessary [for Christ to redeem us from our sins by paying off our debt].” She makes this nearly contradictory statement perhaps to keep herself out of trouble with the church authorities. Which is smart!
There was no beginning to God’s love for us. God loved us before we were born. Neither is there any end to God’s love for us. God’s love is literally infinite.
We are endlessly connected to Christ in a powerful and “endlessly holy knot.”
Ch. 54 - “God’s love for humanity is so vast that he makes no distinction between the blessed Christ and the least soul among us.”
God dwells in us and we dwell in God.
“I saw no difference between the divine substance and human substance; it was all God.