The Order of the Sisters of Julian is founded on three basic tenets: first, that the ultimate purpose of human life is union with the Divine—with the Divine; second, that for the members of this Order, the primary way to that union is through the “Revelation of Divine Love”, as given to Dame Julian of Norwich; and third, that together with that teaching, and the theology that developed from it, is an embracing of all that is the Divine’s Truth in every great religion.
The Sisters of Julian believe that the Divine can be known. Not in the way we are accustomed to “know” things, however. Not through any intellectual apprehension of Him as a “thing”, as an object or concept that can be analyzed and then compartmentalized, “figured out”, so to speak. Our minds are not up to that task. We are in the Divine, and we are of the Divine. We exist because of and through the Divine. But we are not as the Divine. Only the Divine is capable of truly knowing Himself in the sense that we understand that faculty. We are beings made in His image and likeness—in possession of powers of reason and free will that resemble His own. We have a moral sensibility, a conscience. But we also have an end, a limit—and a capacity for imperfection that knows no limits. We are finite creatures, facsimiles of our Creator who is infinite, limitless, without beginning or end.
So how, exactly, are we to approach Him, then? If we can not actually know Him—at least not in this life—what is left for us? To only know “of Him” is not enough. It can never fill the emptiness we feel in the depths of our being, in our soul. But it is precisely that emptiness that is the key to solving our dilemma, because it is through our soul that we come closest to the Divine. It is only the soul that can begin to “know” Him. And the sense in which our soul can know the Divine is through union with Him—unitive knowledge. This union with the Divine, however, is in reality a “reunion”. We are creatures whose existence, whose substance, whose very being is of the Divine—that is who and what we are, in toto. It is why we are. To turn to the Divine is to return to the Divine. The emptiness we experience, which manifests itself in so many negative ways—anger, despair, self-obsession, addiction, self-loathing, etc.—is in truth our hunger, our fundamental, elemental need for the Divine. It is the yearning of our soul for its Maker, because without that of which we are, we are nothing.
The way to union with the Divine is through prayer. The Order of the Sisters of Julian is a contemplative Order of nuns. Our function is prayer—contemplative prayer. Contemplative prayer is the silent, wordless prayer of the heart and of the soul, steeped in the loving presence of the Divine. It is the way Christ prayed to his Father—our Father, and it has its approximate corollary in the meditative arts of other religious traditions, for example Yoga and Zen Buddhism (particularly in the Shin school), from which we freely borrow to enhance and enrich our own.
Every Religious Order has its own orientation as regards the nature of its prayer. And just as every Order has its own orientation in prayer, it also has its own explication—the interpretation and focus of its spiritual mission and ministry. For us it is the “Revelation of Divine Love”.
In May, 1373, at the age of thirty, the English mystic and anchorite nun we know as Dame Julian of Norwich was struck with a devastating illness that brought her to the point of death. Having received last rites, she lay lingering in great pain, awaiting her end, when she was blessed through the Grace of the Divine with a Divine revelation that was shown to her in sixteen parts, spread out over two days and nights. In this revelation the Divine made known His message of Divine Love, to be shared with all in this world who seek salvation. Through the Divine’s Grace as well, Julian went on to recover fully and spent the remainder of her life in meditation and prayer, devoted to understanding the meaning and developing the theology of all that was revealed to her. The result was her book, the spiritual classic “Revelation of Divine Love in Sixteen Showings, Made to Dame Julian of Norwich”. That book is, in essence, the exposition of our Order’s faith.
Deus amoris est: the Divine is love. And it is in that love that this faith of ours is firmly rooted. Faith is trust, the action of the virtue of humility—accepting that we do not and cannot understand the Divine’s ultimate purpose in putting us here in a world so full of pain and suffering, but that whatever the reason, it is for and to our good. Faith is trusting in the Divine completely, secure in the knowledge that He does indeed love us, has always loved us, and does so unconditionally. That He has not and will never abandon us, regardless of how many times we abandon Him. It is surrendering our wills to the will of the Divine and living in His Truth—and that Truth is love. the Divine spoke to Dame Julian and told her that in all things “Love is His meaning”, and that in spite—and because—of the seemingly endless rounds of adversity and misfortune that define our existence, “All shall be well”. He also told her this: “If our faith had no enemies, it would deserve no reward”. We are confronted by many “enemies” in this life. Our faith is not just a refuge, it is our first defense.
Equally important to Julian’s theology is understanding the significance of Christ’s passion—his sacrifice and death on the Cross. Ordinarily this is perceived in one of three ways: as the Divine’s ultimate act of sacrifice for the redemption of our sins; as the culmination of a Divine and exemplary life, lived and forfeited that we may see and understand the nature and direction of our true path in this world; or as some combination of the two, with a certain degree of emphasis on one or the other.
For the Sisters of Julian, the definition and purpose of Christian life is a life lived in imitation of Christ—a totally the Divine-centered existence grounded in love and compassion. We hold the crucifixion to be the Divine’s ultimate expression of love for us, the length to which He was willing to go to show us the sacrifice we all must make, a sacrifice not in kind, but in spirit: the dying to the self, the surrendering of our will to live the will of the Divine—the sacrifice of our spiritual apathy and sloth, our self-absorption, of all that is unworthy of us, for the sake of the Divine. We believe Christ died for our sins not to cancel out their debt, but to teach us to understand the nature of those sins, and then to take responsibility for them. And all sin, now or ever, is only the self-will—all evil the absence of the Divine. Accepting responsibility is not about living in guilt, condemnation, or self-pity. It is about choosing to live responsibly. In Christ’s life we have our example of how life is to be lived. In his life we have our own.
While we of this Order have chosen to follow Christ and his teachings as the way to the Divine, we believe that the Divine has revealed His Truth to us at other times and in other places. The teachings of the Vedas, the Buddha, the Tao Te Ching, etc., are no less valid than those of Christ. We believe the choice to commit to one or the other—or to all—is a deeply personal one, and that the Divine, through the Grace of the Holy Spirit, will guide us in making it. The Sisters of Julian incorporate all that is of the Divine into the theology of our Order. We are all one people, there is but one the Divine, and His Truth knows no prejudice.
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