(I hesitated a bit to publish this text on the pages of our magazine. Because Julian of Norwich was not a Carmelite. (She lived at the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries in seclusion near a church in Norwich, England.) I also keep in mind the restraint that Saint John of the Cross advises regarding private revelations or visions, or even about their recording.
But I kept wondering: Katka would not translate and offer us something that wasn’t worth our attention… So I returned to the text of Julian of Norwich once more, more attentively. I also looked up a small book The Wisdom of Julian of Norwich, published by the Carmelite Publishing House in 1997. And inspired by the spirit of these texts, I present the following excerpt to all of you. – For clarification, P. Gorazd.)
“I was still awake when the Lord opened my spiritual eyes and showed me, in the middle of my heart, my soul. I saw my soul so spacious, as if it were a kingdom… as if it were a beautiful city.
In the middle of this city sits our Lord Jesus, true God and true man, handsome and tall, worthy of reverence, the greatest Lord. And I saw him in splendor, surrounded by honors. He sits upright in the soul, in peace and rest, and at the same time rules and guards heaven and earth and everything that is. Humanity and divinity sit peacefully here, and divinity reigns and watches over everything, without any instruments or efforts. And my soul is blessedly filled with divinity: highest power, highest wisdom, and highest goodness.
The place that Jesus occupies in our soul will never be emptied, because in us is his most own home, and for Him to dwell there is the greatest pleasure. It was a comforting sight, full of peace, for it truly is so, forever and ever. (…)
And after I contemplated this with great attention, our Lord very humbly revealed words to me (without a voice and without moving his lips, as he had done before), and said very seriously: Know well that what you saw today was no hallucination; accept it and believe it and hold firmly to it, and nothing will overcome you.
These last words were spoken to me to teach me the perfect certainty that it is our Lord Jesus who has revealed all this to me…
Nothing will overcome you. And this lesson and this true strengthening apply generally to all my fellow Christians, as I have said, and such is God's will.
And these words: Nothing will overcome you, were spoken very emphatically and powerfully, so that I might have certainty and strength in every adversity that may come. He did not say: You will no longer experience any attacks, you will not be burdened with work, you will not know unrest, but he said: Nothing will overcome you.
God wants us to pay attention to these words, and to always be strong in our certainty, whether in the midst of prosperity or in the midst of calamities, because He loves us and takes delight in us, and so He wants us to also take delight in Him and trust in Him mightily, and all will be well.
And soon after, everything was covered, and I saw nothing.”
(From the book Julian of Norwich: Showings (ch. 22, short text). Paulist Press, 1978.)
Translated from English by Katka Lachmanová.
