Advent I - St. Julian of Norwich

During Advent, I would like to focus on a different saint every week - a saint that will help us experience this lovely and prayerful season leading up to Christmas. St. Julian of Norwich was a mystic who lived in a small cell attached to St. Julian's Church in Norwich, England (from this she took her name - we don't know her real name). One window of her small room looked into the sanctuary for Mass and another opened to the street where the people would come by for her counsel and for prayer. Julian experienced her “showings,” as she called them, on the night of May 8, 1373. These were a series of revelations and visions she had received from God, all in one night. Julian wrote about these showings in her book Revelations of Divine Love, the first book published in English by a woman. St. Julian experienced and wrote of a compassionate, relational, and joyful God. She writes: “For before he made us, he loved us; and when we were made, we loved him. And this is our substantial goodness, the substantial goodness in us of the Holy Spirit. It is nothing we create; it is our substance. ... And in this endless love, the human soul is kept whole as all the matter of creation is kept whole.” We are one with God and with creation. I pray that you feel this unity during Advent. - - - Fr. Jim