Christ's Passion

In the Eighth Revelation, Julian of Norwich is led into a realistic vision of the terrible dying of Jesus Christ.
After this, Christ shewed a part of his passion near his dying. I saw the sweet face as it were dry and bloodless with pale dying; and afterward more deadly pale, languring; and then [it] turned more deadly into blue; and afterward more brown blue, as the flesh turned more deeply dead. For his passion shewed to me most explicitly in his blessed face, and especially in his lips, there I saw these four colors—those lips that were before fresh and ruddy, lively and pleasing to my sight. This was a terrible change, to see this deep dying. And also the nose withered together and dried, to my sight, and the sweet body waxed brown and black, all changed and turned out from the fair, fresh, and lively color of himself into dry dying.

Julian describes the death process through the four colors of Jesus’ face, but most especially the lips: bloodless pale, more deadly pale, deathly blue, and finally, brownish blue. She is watching Christ expire in front of her, as she watched loved ones die in wave after wave of the Great Pestilence. She knows the shriveling of the nose, of the whole body, the progression of color from the blue of deep bruising to brown and thence to black, as the bodily fluids dry up, the blood clots and ceases to flow. This Revelation is both a concrete image of Christ’s unique death and a reliving of all the individual deaths Julian has ever witnessed.

There is more:
For in that same time that our blessed savior died upon the rood, it was a dry, bitter wind, wondrous cold as to my sight. And at the time all the precious blood was bled out of the sweet body that might pass therefrom, yet there dwelled a moisture in the sweet flesh of Christ, as it was shewn. Bloodlessness and pain dried from within, and the blowing of the wind and cold coming from without, met together in the sweet body of Christ. And these four, two without and two within, dried the flesh of Christ over the course of time. And though this pain was bitter and sharp, yet it was very long-lasting, as to my sight. And the pain dried up all the lively spirits of Christ’s flesh.

The wind blew frigid, as if blasting from the North Sea, across the broad waters and into Norwich. Julian knew the biting saltiness and searing coldness of that unrelenting wind, and it seemed to be howling that day on Calvary. The wind and the bitter cold are nowhere documented in the gospels, nor are there any details of the endless bleeding and descriptions of Christ’s great pains. In fact, the four gospel accounts do not describe his sufferings at all. This is Julian’s own gospel, told with great attention to the drying up of Christ’s face, lips, and all the life-elements of his body. She is finally and truly “there,” in the midst of the passion, as she had longed to be. And it is more dreadful than she ever could have imagined . . .
The blessed body dried all alone a long time, with the wrenching of the nails and weight of the body. For I understood that because of the tenderness of the sweet hands and the sweet feet, by the largeness, hardness, and grievousness of the nails, the wounds waxed wide. And the body sagged because of its weight from a long time hanging, and piercing and scraping of the head, and binding of the crown, all baked with dry blood, with the sweet hair clinging the dry flesh to the thorns, and the thorns to the flesh, drying. And in the beginning, while the flesh was fresh and bleeding, the continual pricking of the thorns made the wounds wide. And furthermore, I saw that the sweet skin and the tender flesh, with the hair and with the blood, were all raised and loosened above by the thorns, and broken in many pieces, and were hanging as if they would hastily have fallen down while they had natural moisture. How it was done I saw not, but I understood that it was with the sharp thorns and the rough, grievous pushing on of the garland, not sparing and without pity, that all at that time broke the sweet skin, with the flesh and the hair, and loosed it from the bone. For which reason it was broken in pieces as a cloth and sagging downward, seeming as if it hastily would have fallen for heaviness and for looseness. And that was great sorrow and dread to me, for it seemed to me that I would not for my life have seen it fall. . . . The garland of thorns was dyed with the blood. And that other garland and the head, all was one color, as clotted blood when it is dried. The skin and the flesh that seemed part of the face and of the body was slightly wrinkled, with a tawny color, like a dry board when it is aged, and the face was more brown than the body.

Julian does not spare us any aspects of what she saw in her vision. This is perhaps the most graphic account of the crucifixion in medieval literature. It is filled with details that remained indelibly imprinted in Julian’s memory as a result of her keen observation. There is the inexorable “drying” of the body, the enlarging of the wounds in the hands due to the great sagging of the body, with hair clinging to the flesh and thorns, and the thorns mingled with flesh and hair, all caked with dried blood.

​As we continue our Lenten journey to the cross with Christ, let us take time to read and meditate on Julian's Revelations to enter more deeply into the great sufferings our Savior endured for us, in our stead. Yes, we suffer greatly, as does every human being, but he took on all the sins and all the sufferings of all people of all time. Let us offer our own sufferings, whatever they may be, in union with his, that we may be united with him on the cross, in our death, and rise to the eternal joy of his glorious resurrection.

​NOTE: Quotations translated from the Middle English and excerpts above are from my book, Julian’s Gospel: Illuminating the Life & Revelations of Julian of Norwich (Orbis Books).