Love was his meaning

This week, the church remembers, St. Julian of Norwich. In Chapter 86 of Revelations of Divine Love, Julian reflects on the meaning of her entire written work:

“This book has been begun by God’s gift and his grace, but it has not yet been completed, as I see it. We all pray together to God for charity, thanking, trusting and rejoicing by the working of God. This is how our good Lord wills that we pray to him, according to the understanding I drew from all of what he intended us to learn and from the sweet words he spoke most cheerfully, ‘I am the ground of your beseeching.’

For I saw and understood truly from what our Lord intended that he showed it because he wills to have it known better than it is. In this knowing he wills to give us grace to love him and cleave to him. He beholds his heavenly treasure with such great love on earth that he wills to give us more light and solace in heavenly joy, drawing our hearts from the sorrow and darkness they are in.

From the time of the showing, I desired frequently to understand what our Lord’s meaning was, and more than fifteen years afterward I was answered by a spiritual understanding that said, ‘Do you want to understand your Lord’s meaning in this experience? Understand it well: love was his meaning. Who showed it to you? Love. What did he show you? Love. Why did he show it? For love. Hold yourself in this truth and you shall understand and know more in the same vein. And you will never know or understand anything else in it forever.’

Thus was I taught that love is our Lord’s meaning. And I saw most certainly in this and in everything that before God made us he loved us, and this love never slackened and never shall. In this love he has done all his works, in this love he has made all things profitable for us, and in this love our life is everlasting. In our creation we had a beginning, but the love by which he made us was in him from without beginning, and in this love we have our beginning. And all this we shall see in God without end.”