All Shall Be Well: A Journey Through Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love with Kris McGregor

Episode 13: The Anent Reflections, Part One — Mercy, Wrath, and Peace

Summary:

In this episode, we begin Julian of Norwich’s Anent reflections, a meditative pause in her Revelations of Divine Love. Instead of recounting new visions, Julian turns inward to contemplate the truths already revealed to her. These reflections open a contemplative space filled with theology and spiritual insight, helping us see what God has shown her more clearly.

We explore Julian’s teaching on God as unchanging Truth, Wisdom, and Love, and how our souls are created to share in those very attributes. We also reflect on her striking claim that there is no wrath in God — only goodness and mercy. Julian teaches that our judgment is distorted by sin, but God’s gaze remains fixed on the soul as He created it, whole and beloved.

Julian then introduces five inner movements of the soul: enjoying, mourning, desire, dread, and sure hope. Each one reveals a layer of the soul’s journey with God and helps us understand how grace is at work, even in moments of struggle.

Finally, we hear her deep assurance that God’s mercy never ceases. No matter how often we fail, fall, or fear, His gaze of love never turns away. In God’s sight, the soul that belongs to Him has never died, nor ever shall.

For other episodes in this series visit: All Shall Be Well: A Journey Through Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love with Kris McGregor

Full Julian of Norwich Quotations Used in Episode 13:

From Revelations of Divine Love, Long Text, Chapters 41-43, trans. Grace Warrack, Methuen & Co., 1901 (PDF edition).

Truth, Wisdom, and Love

“Truth seeth God, and Wisdom beholdeth God, and of these two cometh the third: that is, a holy marvellous delight in God; which is Love. Where Truth and Wisdom are verily, there is Love verily, coming of them both. And all of God’s making: for He is endless sovereign Truth, endless sovereign Wisdom, endless sovereign Love, unmade; and man’s Soul is a creature in God which hath the same properties made, and evermore it doeth that it was made for: it seeth God, it beholdeth God, and it loveth God. Whereof God enjoyeth in the creature; and the creature in God, endlessly marvelling.” (Ch. 44)

God’s Judgment and Ours

GOD deemeth us [looking] upon our Nature-Substance, which is ever kept one in Him, whole and safe without end: and this doom is [because] of His rightfulness [in the which it is made and kept]. And man judgeth [looking] upon our changeable Sense-soul, which seemeth now one [thing], now other,—according as it taketh of the [higher or lower] parts,—and [is that which] showeth outward. And this wisdom [of man’s judgment] is mingled [because of the diverse things it beholdeth]. For sometimes it is good and easy, and sometimes it is hard and grievous. And in as much as it is good and easy it belongeth to the rightfulness; and in as much as it is hard and grievous [by reason of the sin beheld, which sheweth in our Sense-soul,] our good Lord Jesus reformeth it by [the working in our Sense-soul of] mercy and grace through the virtue of His blessed Passion, and so bringeth it to the rightfulness.” (Ch.45)

God Is Not Wroth

“For I saw truly that it is against the property of His Might to be wroth, and against the property of His Wisdom, and against the property of His Goodness. God is the Goodness that may not be wroth, for He is not [other] but Goodness: our soul is oned to Him, unchangeable Goodness, and between God and our soul is neither wrath nor forgiveness in His sight. For our soul is so fully oned to God of His own Goodness that between God and our soul may be right nought.” (Ch. 46)

The Five Workings of the Soul

“For I felt in me five manner of workings, which be these: Enjoying, mourning, desire, dread, and sure hope. Enjoying: for God gave me understanding and knowing that it was Himself that I saw; mourning: and that was for failing; desire: and that was I might see Him ever more and more, understanding and knowing that we shall never have full rest till we see Him verily and clearly in heaven; dread was: for it seemed to me in all that time that that sight should fail, and I be left to myself; sure hope was in the endless love: that I saw I should be kept by His mercy and brought to His bliss. And the joying in His sight with this sure hope of His merciful keeping made me to have feeling and comfort so that mourning and dread were not greatly painful.”(Ch. 47)

The Working of Mercy

“For I saw full surely that where our Lord appeareth, peace is taken and wrath hath no place. For I saw no manner of wrath in God, neither for short time nor for long; for in sooth, as to my sight, if God might be wroth for an instant, we should never have life nor place nor being. For as verily as we have our being of the endless Might of God and of the endless Wisdom and of the endless Goodness, so verily we have our keeping in the endless Might of God, in the endless Wisdom, and in the endless Goodness. For though we feel in ourselves, frail wretches, debates and strifes, yet are we all-mannerful enclosed in the mildness of God and in His meekness, in His benignity and in His graciousness. For I saw full surely that all our endless friendship, our place, our life and our being, is in God.” (Ch. 49)

AND in this life mercy and forgiveness is our way and evermore leadeth us to grace. And by the tempest and the sorrow that we fall into on our part, we be often dead as to man’s doom in earth; but in the sight of God the soul that shall be saved was never dead, nor ever shall be.” ” (Ch. 50)