It is important that we nourish our souls; it makes for lasting health and wholeness. If we are to live a life in tune with God, a life of prayer, then it is vital. We can do that in any number of ways, fill our lives with good influences, well-meaning and dedicated people, wholesome books, pay attention to the goodness around us, insist with ourselves that our speech always be worthy.
Today I want to direct you in one of those ways, namely getting to know people who have lived with God and have known God. They can be the means of lifting us out of the quagmire of so much that keeps us chained, be that with despair, self-absorption, addiction, guilt, whatever.
I would like to introduce you to someone who may just fit that bill for you. Don’t try to read her in her original old English, go rather to the many worthwhile modern day translations. She is the 13th century English anchorite, the Lady Julian of Norwich. We do not know her real name, since she lived attached to the church of St Julian in Norwich and was simply called the Lady Julian of Norwich.
Julian is well known for her words, “All shall be well, all shall be well and you shall see for yourself, that all manner of things shall be well.” So many of us have taken heart with these words considering that she wrote them in the middle of the Black Plague, the Hundred Years War, dead bodies going past her anchorite window and general despair and anarchy across the country.
There is however another meaning and intention to them. Julian wrote them after a revelation from God, where Jesus explained the nature of sin to her and more importantly the nature of his mercy. He explained that there is never any need for sin to define us, rather there is every need to let God’s mercy and love define who we are.
That is far healthier and once we have known it and seen what God can do with sin, how sin mixed with his mercy can widen our hearts and vision, giving us a new start, then we know the truth that all is well, all is well and I have seen for myself, that all manner of things are well. St Augustine said, “There is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future.” All is very well indeed.
Julian heard Jesus saying that sin was necessary. That seems very strange to some of us but when we reflect on it, there is a great deal of sense here. The experience of sin tells me who I am without God, tells me how loved I am by God, gives me the experience of a new life, another chance, lets me in on the anguish of others, and if I stay with the mercy of God in my life, that experience can make me a channel of the mercy of God for another. Indeed God so often entrusts that very worthy gift to a sinner who has known the grace of God.
A face comes to me as I write, the face of little girl whose hair was so blond it was almost white. The more so because of the red swollen face that went with it one cold July day. Let’s call her Aimee. She is probably a grandmother today.
I saw a crying Aimee come off the school bus and knew something was wrong. Her little body was hunched over. When she got to the classroom I asked her, “Aimee whatever is wrong?” And through hiccoughs of prolonged crying, out came the story.
She had been in big trouble before she got on the bus. I can’t remember the nature of her bad behaviour but I do remember her anguish. I heard myself say, “Well that’s over now darling. You are here with me and we are going to have a wonderful day.” I watched the skipping little frame make her way to the bus line that afternoon; we had indeed had a wonderful day.
Haven’t you been Aimee once? And hasn’t God said to your soul, “That’s over now, leave it with me.” Julian was right: “All shall be well, all shall be well and you will see for yourself that all manner of things shall be well.” What a joy for God if you and I remember that.