Session Five
Chapters 41-50
Gratitude is the result of true inner awareness
Ch 42- God Wants us to know beyond all doubt that He is the ground of existence and root our lives in this truth.
Julian notes as does Teresa of Avila that the thing that thrills God the most is that we pray that our will and His be united. When God “reveals himself to your soul, we have all that we desire.” The purpose of prayer is to be made one with One we long for.
Ch. 44 - “the human soul was created to see, contemplate, and love God. We are made for love and in love God will keep us.”
Ch. 45 - In her revelations Julian saw that God does not assign blame. She could not find blame or anger anywhere in God. She saw an irreconcilable tension between the judgments the church proclaims and the absolute lack of blame and anger in God. “All I can do is keep this question in my heart where it will remain until the day I die.”
Ch. 46 - Divine love is boundless and infinite, unending. This is her summary of the whole revelation! We deserve blame, however, God’s “power, wisdom, and loving-kindness leave no room for anger.”
Ch. 47 - we have two duties: 1. Reverently marvel. 2. Humbly endure.
Ch. 48 - “I never saw any anger in my showings, except on the part of human beings and God forgives us for that. Anger is nothing but a stubborn opposition to peace and love. It comes from a lack of power.”
“The ground of mercy is love, and the flowering of mercy is the way love protects us.”
“God’s mercy and forgiveness are all about abating and absorbing our anger, not his.”
Ch. 49 - God cannot forgive because He cannot be angry. Even when we are lost in anger we are enfolded in God.
Ch. 50 - Julian continues to struggle with her sense that we are blameworthy (as taught her by the church) and yet she continues to see that God does not blame us for anything. She cries out to Jesus to please help her resolve this tension.