ABSTRACT
In May of 1373, Julian was so ill that she and the people with her believed she was on the verge of death. Suddenly, Julian saw a vision at once “living and vivid and hideous and fearful and sweet and lovely”: the face of Jesus on the cross began to bleed from under the crown of thorns. Given, as she says, “space and time” to contemplate this one image, Julian marveled as it gave rise to fifteen more “showings,” or revelations, about God’s love. These showings vividly impressed Julian with God’s intimate presence to her, and their gentle power made her feel both loved and whole within herself and fundamentally at one with God and her fellow Christians. Years later she would write, “The love of God creates in us such a unity that when it is truly seen, no man [sic] can separate himself from another.” Julian had understood that spiritual and social realities are not opposed to one another; at the profoundest level of spiritual integration, “we are all one in love.”
