Who was Julian?

Thomas Merton wrote simply, "There can be no doubt that Lady Julian is the greatest of the English mystics." So who was Lady Julian? Nobody knows who she was: she calls herself a simple, unlettered creature. She was careful to conceal any personal details of her life except those that bore directly upon the authenticity of her experience of the Showings. Thus we do not even know her name; yet we do know the exact date of her Revelation-May 8, 1373-and, indirectly, her date of birth, somewhere in December 1342. And while there is no date for her death, she herself tells us that for twenty years following the Showings she dwelled upon their meaning. We also have records of Norwich wills, one of which bequeaths to Dame Julian, still living in 1428, making her a very old lady in her late eighties; but we cannot be certain that this is the same as the author of Revelation.

Julian herself tells us that she experienced her Showings in three ways: one, bodily visions, that is to say she was aware of them with her senses -both sight and hearing and sometimes even smell; second, ghostly visions, by which she means spiritual visions and sayings directly imparted to her soul; and third, intellectual enlightenment, whereby her mind was illumined with new understanding of God.

These are the three classical ways by which the mystic has always experienced God directly. The remarkable characteristic of Julian is that, having undergone dramatic experiences of this nature, she is content to fall back upon the life of faithful prayer and patient practice of religious exercise more familiar to the rest of us.

It is common that the mystic should feel compelled to communicate something of his or her experience. In Julian's case, we feel as if the compulsion came from the very nature of that experience: that, having known the love of God-for all his creation-she needed to share it abroad. This sense of the urgency of her message can be felt again and again in the manner in which Julian writes. At once, she is crying to get her words across and, at the same moment, these very words break and splinter at the sheer burden she wishes them to bear. As Thomas Merton witnesses, no one has uttered more finely in the English tongue.

It was in 1373, when Julian was just over 30 years old, and before she moved into her cell, that she received her visions. In her book she tells that she had desired 3 graces from God (1) to have the consistent recollection of Christ`s Passion, (2) to experience bodily sickness when she was 30 years old (the same age as Jesus as he began his ministry) and (3) to have 3 wounds; true contrition, loving compassion and longing for God. In her 30 th year she became sick to the point of death. The priest came and prepared her for death and gave her the last rites on Easter morning. Suddenly the pain left her and a series of wonderful `Revelations` or `Showings` began. during the next 12 hours she received 15 revelations of God`s love centering on the cross of our Lord; then a 16 th early on Monday morning. She eventually wrote these down in the Middle English of her day: the first book written in English by a woman.

The subject of the Revelations is love - God`s love for mankind shown in the Passion , suffering and death of Jesus Christ, and the response of man towards God, his Maker, Keeper and preserver. This love creates all that exists, it sustains all and redeems all. It is unfailing even in times of sorrow or trial. It is a love plenteous beyond imagining: it is all powerful and all embracing. God`s whole purpose is to bring all into the bliss of heaven. "All shall be well!"

Who was Teresa?

One of the most distinguished ever of all Carmelites was St. Teresa of Avila, who holds her own with St. John of the Cross (who was also a friend of hers) as a great mystic. She was declared a Doctor of the Catholic Church in 1970 along with Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory and Jerome.

Teresa was born in 1515 just twenty-three years after Columbus sailed to America.
She grew up reading the lives of the saints, and playing at "hermit" in the garden. Crippled by disease in her youth, which led to her being well educated at home, she was cured after prayer to Saint Joseph.

Her mother died when Teresa was 12, and she prayed to Our Lady to be her replacement.

Her father opposed her entry to religious life; So after much soul-searching during her teen years, she left home without telling anyone, and entered a Carmelite house at 17. Seeing her conviction to her call, her father and family consented. It was in 1536 that she entered the Convent of the Incarnation at Avila. Here she had a recurrence of her illness, complicated by paralysis, but she recovered in 1542, she believed, as the result of the intercession of St. Joseph.

Dissastified with the laxity and worldliness that had crept into the religious life, Teresa felt inspired to found the Convent of St. Joseph in 1562/1563 with the blessing of Pope Paul IV. Between 1567 an 1582, she founded sixteen other convents of Discalced (unshod) Carmelites. In 1568 she founded a reform convent for Carmelite men of which St. John of the Cross was one of the first two members. He was to become her closest friend.

Teresa was canonized in 1622, only forty years after her death which occured on this day, October 4, 1582.

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