This weekend, 62 Companions of Nazareth from around the world are participating in an online retreat from Norwich. The retreat is entitled Praying with Julian of Norwich.
Julian of Norwich was a fourteenth-century anchoress who lived a life of enclosed prayer and solitude. She has captured the imagination of our time in a remarkable way. She shares with her readers the deepest and most intimate experiences of her life through her writings, which are sustained reflections on the 16 visions which appeared to her during an illness.
Julian was to spend the next 20 years reflecting on those visions. She writes in a lively and unpretentious manner and her theology is precise without being pedantic: above all she has a gift for expressing profound thoughts in the simplest language. She speaks of perplexity and delight, her experiences of wretchedness and joy, always pointing us back to God’s love. In a time of immense upheaval in the fourteenth century, Julian speaks of God’s love shown forth on the cross of Jesus Christ – and the responsive love in the beholder towards the Maker, Keeper, and Lover. This love, she believed, creates all that exists, sustains and redeems all that is and will bring humanity home to God. This love is ‘plenteous’ beyond our imagining, and though we may face suffering and trial, this love can never be overwhelmed.
He did not say, ‘You shall not be tempest-tossed, you shall not be work-weary, you shall not be discomforted.’ But he said, ‘You shall not be overcome’. God wants us to heed these words so that we shall always be strong in trust, both in sorrow and joy.
Revd Catherine Duce
