This was a conference given at the 2024 annual retreat for oblates of Saint John’s Abbey. The theme of the retreat was ‘Benedictine Heroes.’
God, of your goodness, give us yourself; for you are enough to us, and we can ask for nothing that is less that can fully honor you. And if we ask for anything that is less, we shall always be in want; for only in you have we all. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Introduction
When Tracy offered me a chance to share some reflections on St. Julian of Norwich with you all, I was both delighted and daunted. I am no expert on her life and work. My academic research focuses on theologians who lived and died long before her. So in that sense, I can speak with no greater intellectual authority than I’m sure many of you have. And I can list at least 5 people off the top of my head who have prayed with her and meditated on her work far longer and far deeper than me.
But Julian has been a particularly dear companion among the saints since I first found my way back to Christianity. So, rather than speaking as a scholar or a sage, I’d like to speak to you all as her friend. I’d like to introduce (or reintroduce) you to a remarkable woman who has shown me what it looks like to climb the steps of humility towards that perfect love which casts out all fear (RB 7:67; 1 Jn. 4:18)—a woman who has helped me understand what it means to pursue holiness and conversatio morum out of love for Christ, not fear of hell (RB 7:69).
I spent the most formative years of my childhood steeped in a pretty ruthlessly Calvinist expression of Evangelical Protestantism. We’re talking about the flavor of Evangelicalism that puts “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards on the Sunday School reading list. This wasn’t the Joel Osteen, Prosperity Gospel variety where conspicuous consumption is a sign of God’s favor. Actually, the spiritual life I saw modeled in my community was often marked by an ascetical focus on prayer & fasting, holy reading, and virtue which (on the surface) could seem quasi-monastic. In particular, I heard a lot about humility—a theme quite familiar to those of us formed in the Benedictine tradition.
But despite a surface-level similarity, the emphasis on asceticism and humility I grew up with was fundamentally different from the deep discretio and measured humanitas that St. Benedict embodied and strove to communicate in the Rule that we follow as oblates. It was not a process of growth and transformation as we journey towards the “loftier summits of teaching and virtue” (RB 73:9). It was a project of anxiously striving to reassure ourselves that God had predestined us to heaven, not hell. The ascetical “humility” was rooted in a belief that our fallen human nature is fundamentally repulsive to God and that we only have value if we are among the elect. Within that mindset, virtues like humility were merely desperately-longed-for indicators that you are indeed among those whom Jesus has chosen to shield from the Father’s revulsion and wrath.
I say this, not so you pity 10-year-old Jayan, but to explain the theological and spiritual backdrop against which I first met St. Julian and why I found such refreshment in her theology of sin, humility, and God’s love for us. Not long after I’d found my way back to Christianity via the Episcopal Church, I was talking with an acquaintance about my new-found love for the Liturgy of the Hours. She recommended that I check out the Order of Julian of Norwich—a monastic community within the Episcopal Church, who live under the Rule of Benedict with St. Julian as their patron. This was actually what reintroduced me to St. Benedict as well. I remembered reading the Rule in school, but only vaguely. And I had never heard of this Julian woman. So, intrigued, I started reading more, and I absolutely fell in love.
In Benedict, I found a spirituality which valued humility just as much (if not more) than what I’d grown up with, but which rooted that humility in a far more balanced vision of the human person. And in Julian, I found a mentor whose theological vision has greatly enriched my understanding of Benedictine humility in the years since I met her. I’d like to share a piece of that enrichment with you. So, I will provide a brief biographical sketch and a short summary of key themes in her theology. But then I’d like to reflect a bit on how Julian’s insight into God’s perspective on us offers us a fresh lens for reading Chapter 7 of the Rule and helpful tools for cultivating Benedictine humility.
Who is Julian of Norwich?
So, first: who is Julian of Norwich?
Well, she lived in 14th century Norwich, in England. But as with many medieval mystics, what we don’t know far outweighs what we do know. We actually aren’t even sure what her original name was. It’s likely that she took the name Julian from the Church of St. Julian when she was enclosed there as an anchoress. It is there in her anchorhold that Julian appears in the autobiography of Margery Kempe, a laywoman who traveled to Norwich to seek the anchoress’ spiritual guidance. Clearly Julian already had a reputation for being wise and discerning, but this is really the only solid reference to Julian outside her own writings. So we can only make educated guesses about her life before her enclosure.
This means, of course, that we can’t be sure that Julian was actually a Benedictine herself. Many assume that her enclosure as an anchoress meant she had “come through the test of living in a monastery” and had “passed beyond the first fervor of monastic life” as Benedict describes in Chapter 1 (RB 1:3). I personally like this theory, but many scholars, like the late Sr. Benedicta Ward, have been skeptical of this for good reasons. So maybe Julian wasn’t actually a Benedictine herself. But regardless, she would have at the very least been exposed to the Benedictine ethos in Norwich, a cathedral city centered on a Benedictine monastery.
Julian lived in tumultuous times. Norwich and the rest of England (the rest of Europe, really) was going through a lot: the Black Death, the Hundred Years’ War, the Peasants’ Revolt, and new religious movements like Lollardy. (Pandemic, war, political unrest, and religious reform… Sound familiar?) Then, in the midst of this turmoil, pain, and uncertainty, Julian fell gravely ill, at just 30 years old. On May 8, 1373, a priest came to give her Last Rites, and that’s when God gave her a remarkable gift. The priest held up a crucifix so that she could find comfort in the image of her “Maker and Savior” (RDL 2), and as she lay there, apparently dying, Julian received a series of 16 mystical visions over the course of several hours. These visions, which she called “showings,” centered on Christ’s Passion and provided profound insights into God’s unconditional love, the nature of sin and suffering, and the promise of redemption (that “all shall be well”).
Julian recovered from her illness. And soon afterwards she wrote down an initial account of experiences—what we now call the “Short Text” of the Revelations of Divine Love. But she didn’t stop there. The anchoress spent the next two decades in prayer, reflecting on her showings and contemplating their meaning and significance. This period of reflection resulted in the “Long Text,” which is about six times longer than the Short Text and incorporates Julian’s mature theological insights.
In this extended reflection, written in plain-but-beautiful Middle English prose, Julian invites us (her “fellow Christians”) into an encounter with God’s all-encompassing love, which transcends human failings and embraces all of Creation. Yet even in the Long Text, Julian mentions very little about herself, only sharing what is needed for us to understand her showings. To the historian this is frustrating, but I think to Julian’s friends and “fellow Christians,” it seems fitting that answering “Who is Julian?” quickly brings us back to ask instead, “Who is Julian’s God?”
Julian’s Theology in a Nutshell
There have been many attempts to answer that question—“Who is Julian’s God?”—and honestly all of them fall short. For a theologian with such a singular focus (God’s unrelenting love), Julian’s thought is surprisingly hard to encapsulate briefly. But perhaps the best summary of Julian’s key themes was offered on a podcast back in April by Mother Hilary Crupi, the prioress of the Order of Julian of Norwich I mentioned. I’m reordering her points and putting a slight spin of my own on them, but here are the five takeaways that Mother Hilary offers as the essence of Julian’s Revelations of Divine Love.
Takeaway #1: What is Impossible for Us is Not Impossible for God
The best-known line in all of Julian’s work is probably her refrain: “All shall be well.” It often gets trotted out as a sort of platitude. But for Julian, this refrain is not the mantra of some naive ostrich with its head in the sand. Remember what the world was like in Julian’s day. She is not telling us to minimize or ignore the suffering in the world. But she is calling us, in the midst of that darkness, to trust in the faithfulness of a God who says, “I am able to make everything well, and I know how to make everything well, and I wish to make everything well, and I shall make everything well; and thou shalt see for thyself that all manner of things shall be well” (RDL 31). This is a divine assurance that shifts the burden from us to God. It reminds us that our ultimate well-being is secure in His hands. It invites us to trust deeply in God’s capability to bring about good, even when circumstances seem insurmountable.
Takeaway #2: God Delights in Us
Coming out of my ruthlessly Calvinist background, I found the most immediately refreshing aspect of Julian’s theology to be her conviction that God doesn’t just tolerate us; he genuinely delights in us. In Chapter 23 of the Long Text, Julian writes, “It is God’s will that we have true delight with Him in our salvation, […] for we are His bliss, for in us He delights without end and so shall we in Him with His grace.” Julian’s God is one who finds joy in our existence, who celebrates our very being. Our redemption through Christ’s passion is “a joy, a bliss, an endless delight” to him, because we are an endless delight to him. And this divine delight is a powerful antidote to the often punitive and fearful images of God which many of us may have internalized and which were certainly prevalent in Julian’s day. Julian invites us to see ourselves, not as repulsive disappointments, but as beloved children in whom God takes great pleasure.
Takeaway #3: Where Jesus Appears, the Trinity is Understood
This delight that God has in us is closely intertwined for Julian with the inseparability of the Trinity in the work of redemption. In Chapter 4, she emphasizes that Jesus is inseparably God and human and that the Trinity is inseparably “our Maker…our Keeper [and] our everlasting Lover.” Julian is asserting that the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—has one purpose, one love, and one delight, and that where Jesus appears, the fullness of the Trinity is also present. This might seem obvious in terms of doctrinal theology, but Julian’s emphasis on this is crucial, because it prevents any division or opposition between the persons of the Trinity. All three persons act together in the whole drama of salvation history—including our reconciliation with God through Christ’s passion and death. We cannot, even for an instant, set Jesus up as the merciful counterpoint to the Father’s wrath. The unity and harmony within the Trinity reflect a single, undivided purpose of love for humanity.
Takeaway #4: Jesus is the Corrective to Distorted Gospels
As emphatically Trinitarian as Julian’s understanding of the mechanics of salvation is, she is nevertheless deeply Christocentricin her experience of that salvation. It is from the image of the crucified Jesus that the showings unfold in the first place. And it is in the person of Jesus that Julian finds God’s love epitomized. God’s love ultimately transcends our understanding, but we are led into transcendent contemplation of God through a thoroughly concrete encounter with that love incarnate in Jesus Christ. As the fulfillment of God’s self-revelation, Jesus becomes Julian’s hermeneutical key to understanding the whole of the Church’s teaching and life. For as she says, “He is Holy Church—He is the foundation, He is the essence, He is the teaching, He is the teacher, He is the goal, He is the reward for which every natural soul toils” (RDL 34). This perspective encourages us to read all of Scripture and Tradition with the person of Jesus as our lens, ensuring that our understanding of God centers on Christ as the embodiment of God’s unconditional love.
Takeaway #5: There is No Wrath in God
Perhaps one of the most revolutionary aspects of Julian’s theology (and a consequence of Takeaway #4) is her assertion that there is no wrath in God. Julian distinguishes between our human perspective, which often perceives God as wrathful, and God’s perspective, which is pure love and mercy. “I saw no wrath except on man’s part, and that He forgives in us. For wrath is nothing else but a departure from and an opposition to peace and to love, and either it comes from a failure of power…or of wisdom…or of goodness (which failure is not in God but it is on our part—for we, because of sin and miserableness, have in us a wrath and a continuing opposition to peace and to love” (RDL 48). For Julian, wrath is a product of how we see our own sinfulness. But she invites us to remember that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, nor our ways God’s ways (Isaiah 55:8). And while our own critical gaze might only see only brokenness, we are also held in God’s loving gaze—a gaze that sees us as beloved and valued and eternally united to God.
Gaze & the Ladder of Humility
I place Mother Hilary’s point about God’s wrath (or lack thereof) last, because this nuanced distinction between God’s gaze and ours has been the most helpful piece of Julian’s theology for developing my understanding of our Benedictine tradition. Whether or not Julian was a Benedictine herself, I think her distinction between our perspective and God’s perspective is helpful for understanding Benedict’s ladder of humility, because there are also two kinds of sight present in Chapter 7 of the Rule.
The first step of humility is to keep the fear of God always before our eyes (RB 7:10), with the recollection that we are always seen by God in heaven (RB 7:13), and that all our sinful thoughts and deeds are open and known to God (RB 7:26). This results in a certain vigilance, lest “God may observe us falling at some time into evil and so made worthless” (RB 7:29). While the “fear of God” here can be understood in terms of awe rather than terror, there still seems to be a concomitant fear of becoming “worthless,” as well as a certain “fear of hell” (RB 7:69).
But by step twelve, at the summit of humility, we “arrive at that perfect love of God which casts out fear” (RB 7:67). What we “once performed with dread, [we] will now begin to observe…out of love for Christ, good habit, and delight in virtue” (RB 7:68-69). Our fear of hell and dread of sin seems to have melted away or at least receded into the background. Step twelve seems to be quite a different perspective than step one.
Holding together these two “ends” of Benedict’s ladder of humility has always been challenging for me. As you might expect given my background, I am not naturally drawn to language of dread or fear of hell. But neither do I want to quickly dismiss the idea that Benedict might have a point and that this first kind of fear is an important—even necessary—part of cultivating humility.
Julian’s nuanced distinction between our gaze and God’s—between our perspective on ourselves and God’s perspective on us—has provided the framework that I have needed to understand how the entirety of Benedict’s ladder of humility fits together into a spiritual path that includes both a healthy vigilance against sin and perfect love that casts out all fear.
Crucially, Julian does not dismiss sin as inconsequential: “Our failing is frightful, our falling is shameful, and our dying is sorrowful” (RDL 48). The vigilance Benedict urges in the first step of humility is right. Self-examination and acknowledgment of our sins is necessary: “It is necessary for us to fall, and it is necessary for us to see it. For if we fell not, we would not know how weak and how miserable we are by ourselves” (RDL 61). Indeed, guiding us through this self-examination and judgment is a large part of the Church’s role on earth, especially as it is expressed in the monastic tradition of manifesting our thoughts to a spiritual elder or superior—part of the fifth step of humility (RB 7:44-48).
But for Julian, taking stock of our brokenness should not just reveal our weaknesses and misery by ourselves; it also allows us to “thoroughly know the amazing love of our Creator” (RDL 61). Our contrition over the sins we see from our point of view ought to be inseparably joined to the delight God has from His point of view. Even as we reckon with our sinfulness in our own sight, we must remember that we are also held in Christ’s gaze: “But still in all this, the sweet eye of pity and of love never departs from us, and the working of mercy ceases not” (RDL 48).
If we look only through our eyes and not also through Christ’s, then we cannot be humble—we cannot see the world or ourselves clearly, because we remain ignorant of the full extravagance of God’s love. As Julian says: “This ignorance [of God’s love] is that which most hinders God’s lovers, as I see it, for when we begin to hate sin and amend ourselves by the command of Holy Church, still there persists a fear that hinders us…And this fear we mistake sometimes for humility, but this is a shameful blindness and a weakness” (RDL 73). Abasing ourselves out of hatred of our sin and stopping there might look humble. But true humility combines hatred of sin with faith in God’s love—“a right understanding (with true belief and certain trust) of our being—that we are in God, and God in us—which we do not see” (RDL 54).
With this dual vision—a “both/and” understanding of our perspective and God’s—Julian helps us to see the harmony between the first rung of Benedict’s ladder and the “summit of humility” (RB 7:5). It’s not that the awareness of our sin and its consequences is a juvenile or primitive spiritual posture to be left behind. Taking a good, hard look at ourselves is a necessary part of developing humility. But seeing and acknowledging our sinfulness is not, in itself, humility. We must also learn to see ourselves as God sees us and to see our faults as God sees them: not with blame and wrath but with pity and love. Climbing the ladder of humility is a process of learning to see ourselves both through our own eyes and through God’s.
Julian summarizes this posture of uniting our gaze and God’s as a “gentle self-accusing.” In Chapter 52, she writes: “And just so wills our Lord that we accuse ourselves, willingly and truly seeing and recognizing our falling and all the harms that come therefrom, understanding and being aware that we can never reinstate it, and along with that that we also willingly and truly recognize and acknowledge His everlasting love that He has for us, and His plenteous mercy.”
This gentle self-accusing that unites our perspective with God’s is the key Julian offers for understanding the ladder of humility and climbing it ourselves. Humility does not consist of anxiously cataloging our faults or despising ourselves as totally depraved and incapable of pleasing God. Humility does not even consist of manifesting our thoughts and earnestly trying to do better, hoping to someday escape God’s wrath. Humility is looking honestly at ourselves. We take stock of our sins and our broken selves. But then we learn to see ourselves and our sins through God’s eyes too. And we “run the path of God’s commandments” (RB Prol:49) as a grateful response to God’s gaze of love.
Cultivating Humility with the Hazelnut
So, how do we cultivate that vision? How do we learn to accuse ourselves gently? Maybe I’m overgeneralizing here, but I suspect most of us don't really struggle with the “seeing our sins” part. We’re often acutely aware of our failings and shortcomings. However, many of us do need help uniting that vision with God’s gaze on us. This is the role of the life of prayer and why genuinely climbing the ladder of humility must always take place within the context of a rule of prayer.
As Julian says, “Prayer is a right understanding of that fullness of joy that is to come, with true yearning and certain trust” (RDL 42). Prayer “ones” us to God—unites us to God—returning our hearts and minds to our natural yearning for Him. It reminds us of the reality that we can never be separated from God. The gaze of the Heavenly Spectator, who perceives our thoughts from afar and sees our every action, is one of mercy and love, not blame.
Our lives as Benedictine oblates ground us in prayer and provide many tools for cultivating this dual vision and learning to accuse ourselves gently. The Liturgy of the Hours, Lectio Divina, and the Sacraments all play essential roles in this process. However, I’d like to close by offering an image for you to contemplate. For me, it has served as a shorthand or a totem that helps ground me in the dual vision that Julian invites us into. It’s Julian’s famous vision of the hazelnut.
In Chapter 5, she writes: “Also in this revelation He showed a little thing, the size of a hazelnut in the palm of my hand, and it was as round as a ball. I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and thought: ‘What can this be?’ And it was generally answered thus: ‘It is all that is made.’ I marveled how it could continue, because it seemed to me it could suddenly have sunk into nothingness because of its littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: ‘It continueth and always shall, because God loveth it; and in this way everything hath its being by the love of God.”
Julian goes on to say that we are called to acknowledge our littleness and the littleness of all created things—that humility involves “setting at naught” everything that is created. “Setting it all at naught” might seem harsh and negative, but this image of the hazelnut reminds us that true humility is a dual vision that unites both “ends” of the Benedictine ladder of humility. Setting ourselves and Creation at naught is not a proclamation that we and Creation are worthless. It is an acknowledgment that we see our sins—our frailty and fallenness—and an affirmation that we are held in the gaze of a God who keeps us in being by his love.
Through the contemplative life of prayer, we learn to hold Julian’s dual vision and see ourselves like the hazelnut. We learn to see ourselves both as we are in our frailty and as we are in God’s loving gaze. This vision transforms our self-accusation from a harsh, condemning exercise into a gentle, loving acknowledgment of our dependence on God’s mercy. This is the great gift I have received from my friend Julian. Benedict showed me the ladder of humility, but Julian has been the one teaching me how to climb it—not out of fear, but in trust and love—confident that the God whose gaze sees my sins is the same God in whose sight I am utterly delightful.