See the Conqueror mounts in triumph;
See the King in royal state,
Riding on the clouds, his chariot,
To his heavenly palace gate!
Hark! The choirs of angel voices
By the grace of the Spirit, the glory of the servants of God emerged after the ascension of the eternal Lord. Concerning this, Solomon, son of David, a man most accomplished in poems, a ruler of nations, sang in spiritual enigmas and spoke these words:
Destined to fare hence unto His Father’s kingdom, the mighty Prince, the Lord of angels, spoke this word: “Rejoice in heart, never will I forsake you but I will fulfill my love upon you and give you might; and I will dwell with you forever, that by my gift you may never lack any good thing. Fare you well over all the spacious earth, throughout the wide ways.
God always was and always is, and always will be; or rather, God always is. For was and will be are fragments of our time, and of changeable nature. But he is Eternal Being; and this is the Name he gives himself when giving the oracles to Moses in the Mount.
The phrase “he remains with you” is what someone who himself is leaving would say. And so, to calm their grief, he says that as long as he remains with them the Spirit won’t come, which means they wouldn’t come to know the greater or more sublime things to come. He wanted them, in other words, to see his departure as a blessing.
The uniqueness of Julian’s writings includes her incredible optimism in the face of the cultural chaos and confusion of her day, and her ability to transcend that confusion. Her phrase “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well” is not a Pollyanna-esque blindness to reality, but the results of a deep faith that God is indeed in control of all,
In that cemetery at St. Gabriel’s, on the 9th day of April, 1896, it being the Thursday in Easter week, there was committed to the ground the mortal body of one of the noblest and most remarkable women of our day; a body once the earthly tabernacle of a vigorous mind, a clear intellect, a resolute will, and a great heart full of love to God and man.
As Julian of Norwich said, creation “would fall to naught for littleness” (Revelations, 5). To me this truth is sheer joy. His creation of you is not something that happened once, x many years ago; he is still at it. His healing, creative hands are upon your body, upon your mind, upon that fine point of your spirit where his likeness is stamped on you—not a static likeness but an evolving reality.
When we think about groups in the history of spirituality that did not fit, one of the unavoidable questions is: where are the women? The priorities of clerical élites and uniformity made lay people in general an “under class” but, as we focus on women in particular, these priorities are expressed primarily by the dominance of male experience over female.
After a year’s stay in Rome, which somewhat disappointed his high anticipations, Augustine was invited to Milan as a teacher of rhetoric. The pious bishop of Milan, Ambrose, was disturbed at the prospect of Augustine’s arrival, knowing his opposition to Christianity, and the pernicious influence he would be likely to exert, and publicly warned his people against him.