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Feast of the Sacred Heart

6/28/2019

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In the Tenth Revelation, while Julian of Norwich is immersed in contemplating Christ on the cross, she sees him gaze into the wound on his right side with a joyous expression. Through this shift in the focus of Christ’s eyes, Julian understands that he is inviting her to enter mystically, through the open wound, into the depths of his Sacred Heart. It is such a magnanimous gesture, like the resurrected Christ showing his five wounds to Thomas and inviting him to touch and “do not doubt but believe” (Jn 20:27).
 
Yet it is even more intimate than that. Christ is offering Julian a profound insight into the abundance of divine love within his human heart. Her mind passes through the physical cleft in his flesh into “a fair, delectable place,” a spiritual heaven, that is “large enough” not only for herself, but “for all mankind that shalle be saved to rest in peace and in love.” While he walked the earth, Christ had offered this same invitation: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (Mt 11:28). Here, Christ allows Julian to experience, very personally and very tenderly, another dimension of heavenly bliss: the ineffable joy of entering into the Heart of God.
 
The Sacred Heart

Devotion to the Sacred Heart had its foundation in Benedictine and Cistercian monastic life of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. It was believed that Christ’s wounded Heart of love could be approached through contemplation of the physical wound in his side. William of St. Thierry (d.1148) wrote that he longed to come “to the most holy wound of His side . . . that I may put in not only my finger or my whole hand, but enter wholly into the very Heart of Jesus, into the Holy of Holies.” St. Bernard of Clairvaux (d.1153) taught that the piercing of Christ’s side shows forth his goodness and the love of his Heart for us. And Richard of St. Victor (d.1173) believed there was no tenderness comparable with that of the Heart of Jesus. In the thirteenth century, the Ancrene Riwle for enclosed women counseled the wounds of Christ as the refuge against temptation:
Name Jesus often, and invoke the aid of his passion, and implore him by his sufferings, and by his precious blood, and by his death on the cross. Fly into his wounds; creep into them with thy thought. They are all open. He loved us much who permitted such cavities to be made in him, that we might hide ourselves in them. And, with his precious blood, ensanguine thine heart.
 
St. Bonaventure (d.1274) wrote frequently on the Sacred Heart: “Who is there who would not love this wounded Heart? Who would not love, in return, him who loves so much?”7 And St. Gertrude (d.1301) had profound revelations concerning the Heart of Jesus. In one vision she received on the feast day of St. John the Evangelist, Gertrude recorded that she was invited to “lay her head” near the wound in Christ’s breast, where she heard the beating of his Sacred Heart. She became bold enough to ask St. John if, at the Last Supper, when he lay his own head on Christ’s breast, he had felt the delightful pulsing of the Lord’s Heart and if so, why had he never recorded it in his gospel. He replied, “Because I was charged with instructing the newly-formed Church concerning the mysteries of the Uncreated Word.” St. John then told Gertrude that the grace of learning of the Sacred Heart was reserved to her century, to rouse it from its lethargy so that it would be inflamed with the great worth of Divine Love.

Throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Franciscans, Dominicans, and Carthusians prayed to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, but only as a personal and contemplative practice. The Five Wounds of Christ on the cross (in both hands, both feet, and in his heart) were often acknowledged in prayer as symbols of his great suffering and salvific love. But there was no liturgical movement in the church encouraging devotion to the Sacred Heart, and it was not yet at all common among the laity. Julian’s Revelation, while in a long and completely orthodox tradition of private devotion, suggests a fresh and poignant invitation by Christ to see the wound in his side as both the physical and mystical entry point into his Sacred Heart. Julian writes:
And therewith he brought to mind his dearworthy blood and his precious water which he let pour all out for love. And with the sweet beholding he showed his blissful heart split completely in two. And with this sweet enjoying he sh
0wed to my understanding, in part, the blessed godhead, to the extent that he wished to at that time, strengthening the poor soul to understand what can be said: that is to mean, the endless love that was without beginning, and is, and shall be forever.
 
It is important here to distinguish between Christ’s physical heart, which poured out blood and water from the cross, and his symbolic heart as unconditional love, forever emptying itself and pouring forth mercy and grace. The physical piercing by Longinus with a lance split Christ’s human heart “completely in two.” By this act, Julian recognizes the Savior’s love being symbolically pierced by sin and apathy in every age. “But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed” (Is 53:5). The gaping wound from the spear in his flesh becomes the graphic image of Christ’s broken heart, which in turn becomes the spiritual dwelling place for all humankind.
 
Is this not the all-compassionate Sacred Heart that still and always pours out mercy and love on our sinful, suffering world? Let us offer our own hearts to his Heart on this feast day and every day, that we may ourselves become conduits of divine love, healing, and peace.

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Faith on Fire

6/6/2019

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For Julian of Norwich, it is faith, and faith alone, that enables us to know our true origin, who we are, and our ultimate destination. Julian understood that faith and all the other virtues come from the Holy Spirit, and that without the Spirit’s gifts no one receives any virtue. Julian sees faith as the most exalted kind of understanding.
For faith is nothing else but a right understanding with true belief and seker trust within our being, that we are in God and he is in us, which we cannot see.
 
Noticeably, Julian does not lay out a set of doctrines that must be affirmed to have faith (although she never denies that faith involves believing what the church teaches). Her concentration here is different. For her, faith is the secure trust that, within the ground of our being, the soul is in God and God is in the soul. Faith is precisely the spiritual insight that enables us to know what we cannot comprehend by human reasoning alone. It is an inspired understanding of our creation and redemption which, because of the blindness caused by sin, we are obviously unable to experience directly. Sin has deprived humanity of the ability to “see” God, but faith appears as inner vision. It is essential to our self awareness. As St. Paul has written: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb 11:1, italics added). If we dare to believe, faith (along with all the other virtues that God grants the soul) “works great things in us.”
 
Of course, it is actually Christ who does the monumental work of mercy in the soul at all times, constantly reconciling us to himself. By his divine activity we are made able to see and understand more and more, through the gifts and virtues of the Holy Spirit. Julian identifies this inner working of the Lord as that which enables us to become “Christ’s children and christian in living.” It is always and ever Christ’s work in our souls, not our own. Julian affirms that Christ is our way, continually leading us and teaching us by his laws. He delights in this work, as does his Father. Julian recalls the Ninth Revelation, in which she saw Christ bear all who are members of his Mystical Body into heaven, where he presents them to his Father, who receives these souls thankfully and then graciously returns them to his Son.
Which gift and working is joy to the father, and bliss to the son, and liking to the holy ghost. Of all the things that we are obliged to do in this life, we must give God the greatest pleasure by rejoicing in this joy. And notwithstanding all our feeling, woe or wele, God wills we understand and believe that we are more truly in heaven than on earth.
 
What an astounding statement! Julian is certain that, because Christ has already saved us and incorporated us into his Mystical Body, our true lives are not here, in our mortal bodies, but in the joyful embrace of the Trinity. For Julian, we are more spiritual than fleshly, more at home in heaven than on earth. She further describes faith as arising from “the natural love of our soul” for what is good and from “the clear light of our reason,” which enables us to think and inform the will in order to make good decisions, as well as from the “steadfast memory” that we have of God in our creation. We might consider faith as a sacred remembrance that never forgets where we have come from: God. It is a spiritual homesickness that longs to return where it belongs.

This coming Pentecost, let us pray for an infusion of faith from the Holy Spirit that will inspire us —in times of “woe or wele”—to lead lives that are truly on fire with faith!
 
PLEASE NOTE: Excerpts above are from Julian's Gospel: Illuminating the Life & Revelations of Julian of Norwich (Orbis Books, 2013), Copyright © 2013 by Veronica Mary Rolf. All rights reserved. This article may not be copied or reprinted without the express permission of the author.
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  • Award-WInning Books on Julian of Norwich
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