All Shall Be Well: A Journey Through Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love with Kris McGregor
Episode 11: The Thirteenth Shewing (Part 3) —
Sin, Contrition, and the Tenderness of God’s Love
Summary:

In this episode, we are guided into a deeper into the closing chapters of the Thirteenth Shewing. Julian confronts the painful reality of sin, but also the astonishing way God transforms even our wounds into worship. She sees how contrition, compassion, and longing for God purify the soul and prepare it for heaven, and how shame is turned into joy. Julian insists there is no harder hell than sin itself, yet reminds us that Christ’s mercy always seeks to heal and restore. Through her visions, she teaches us to hate sin for love of God while endlessly loving the soul as God loves it. This episode concludes with Julian’s reassurance that we are kept securely in God’s mercy, called to live lives of repentance, prayer, and sacramental grace as we await the day when truly “all shall be well.

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 11:
From Revelations of Divine Love, Long Text, Chapters XXXVII-XL, trans. Grace Warrack, Methuen & Co., 1901 (PDF edition).
The Universality of Sin and the Tenderness of God

“GOD brought to my mind that I should sin. And for pleasance that I had in beholding of Him, I attended not readily to that shewing; and our Lord full mercifully abode, and gave me grace to attend. And this shewing I took singularly to myself; but by all the gracious comfort that followeth, as ye shall see, I was learned to take it for all mine even-Christians: all in general and nothing in special: though our Lord shewed me that I should sin, by me alone is understood all.”(Ch. 37)

When Sin Is Turned to Worship

“Also God shewed that sin shall be no shame to man, but worship. For right as to every sin is answering a pain by truth, right so for every sin, to the same soul is given a bliss by love: right as diverse sins are punished with diverse pains according as they be grievous, right so shall they be rewarded with diverse joys in Heaven according as they have been painful and sorrowful to the soul in earth. For the soul that shall come to Heaven is precious to God, and the place so worshipful that the goodness of God suffereth never that soul to sin that shall come there without that the which sin shall be rewarded; and it is made known without end, and blissfully restored by overpassing worship.” (Ch. 38)

The Three Medicines of the Soul

“As long as we are in this life, what time that we by our folly turn us to the beholding of the reproved, tenderly our Lord God toucheth us and blissfully calleth us, saying in our soul: Let be all thy love, my dearworthy child: turn thee to me — I am enough to thee — and enjoy in thy Saviour and in thy salvation. And that this is our Lord’s working in us, I am sure the soul that hath understanding therein by grace shall see it and feel it.

And though it be so that this deed be truly taken for the general Man, yet it excludeth not the special. For what our good Lord will do by His poor creatures, it is now unknown to me.” (Ch. 39)


Hating Sin, Loving the Soul
“But now if any man or woman because of all this spiritual comfort that is aforesaid, be stirred by folly to say or to think: If this be true, then were it good to sin so as to have the more meed, or else to charge the less guilt to sin,