James G. Ward is a writer and a Benedictine oblate living in Sahuarita, Arizona, where he listens to the desert. | Spirit & Life July-August 2009 |
We need to careful in examining the writings of someone like Julian of Norwich, who wrote over six hundred years ago, lest we interpret her writings in our own historic context rather than hers. In his Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580 ( Yale University Press, 1992 ), historian Eamon Duffy makes the point that traditional Catholic religion in England prior to the Reformation was a period of strong incarnational piety and much of devotional practice centered on the Passion of Christ. Julian's work reflects this. The showings began when Julian was deathly ill, and the priest who attended her placed a crucifix before her eyes so that she might meditate upon it. This ritual of offering the comfort of the cross is described by St. Bernard in his work Ordo visitandi. Duffy says it was a common practice for English priests of the period to exhort on their deathbed to make a confession, comfort them with absolution, and reinforce the dying person's resolve to continue vigilantly opposing the entreaties of the evil one. | This emphasis on the Passion included a strong devotional focus on the Wounds of Christ, the Seven Words of Christ on the cross, and Christ's thirsting. The fact that all of these are part of the Showings of Julian of Norwich is not in the least surprising. This early incarnational view of piety makes a contemporary incarnational interpretation of Julian appropriate. Having written Showings or Revelations of Love near the age of 30, and during an extreme illness, Julian of Norwich chronicled her series of visions of Christ and his Passion. She spent the next 20 years of her life reflecting on these visions and interpreting them, producing a rich repository of material. As stated earlier, Julian describes Christ's thirst as both physical and spiritual. While the thirst I experienced sitting on my patio was physical, could it not also be spiritual in the sense that I was meditating? A drink of water to satiate my physical thirst, and a sense of the Divine to satisfy my spiritual thirst -- I had to satisfy both thirsts. Julian continues, For as truly as there is in God a quality of pity and compassion, so truly is there in God a quality of thirst and longing; and the power of this longing in Christ enables us to respond to his longing, and without this no soul comes to heaven. As there is human thirst or longing for spiritual fulfillment, so too does Christ thirst for us. The Body of Christ thirsts for us. God desires and longs for us.. We may respond affectively to Julian's ecstasy about Christ's Passion per se, but what has this to do with us in 21st century life? |