The following by Julian of Norwich, below at end of post, has been so helpful in the past week and two and now starting week three of sinus infection that is hanging on in this hermit.
While having a pup in the hermitage, with me, now, has been difficult in time of sickness, she also has helped me physically force to keep going, with His Real Presence providing the impetus of body, mind, heart, and soul in all aspects.
The dog has been a temporal comfort and of responsibility, both. She needs food, water, attention as much as a very ill hermit can give, mostly from bed, and to be taken outside for her elimination needs which for awhile was most difficult on me physically.
But God be praised and to God be the glory! We are making it through. His grace is sufficient for me. All Scripture and the added writings of holy mystics of yore have been so helpful, beyond what I can express of word and emotion. I'm simply, profoundly grateful to His Real Presence.
Thank you, Julian of Norwich, hermit recluse of latter 14th c. for your words of inspiration and reality. I feel and experience these thoughts, words, feelings, and spiritual realities with you, Julian. You "get it", as I think and say of those mystics, my friends, of whom I've come to know personally through their writings and in His Spirit. Thank you again and again to His Real Presence for bringing me into the Catholic Church in part due to so many of these Christian mystics having gone through much of what I have gone through, have learned, have seen through, have progressed through and now learning and progressing in ways I cannot know to express much or well until later on, after the progression and if His Real Presence wishes me to write and share.
All this until I am taken by Jesus, when He comes back for me, and our marriage, the wedding of our souls, is then to be consummated. I am blessed with looking forward to this event, yet while still here I pray to do far better than I have been, and to raise my spirit and love of His Real Presence, to be a better person and soul, to be as He wills and wants of me.
Julian of Norwich (1342-after 1416) recluse Revelations of divine love, ch. 52 (trans. copyright Classics of Western Spirituality)
"Do you see anything?"
I saw that God rejoices that he is our Father, God rejoices that he is our Mother, and God rejoices he is our true spouse, and that our soul is his beloved. And Christ rejoices that he is our brother, and Jesus that he is our savior (...).
During our lifetime here we have in us a marvelous mixture of both well-being and woe. We have in us our risen Jesus Christ, and we have in us the wretchedness and harm of Adam's falling (...). We are so afflicted in our feelings by Adam's falling in various ways, by sin and by different pains, and in this we are made dark and so blind that we can scarcely accept any comfort. But in our intention we wait for God and trust faithfully to have mercy and grace; and this is his own working in us. And in his goodness he opens the eye of our understanding, by which we have sight, sometimes more, sometimes less, according to the ability God gives us to receive. And now we are raised to the one, and now we are permitted to fall to the other.
This mixture is so marvelous in us that we scarcely know, about ourselves or about our fellow-Christians, what condition we are in, these conflicting feelings are so extraordinary. But what matters is that we say a holy “yes” to God which we make when we feel him, truly willing with all our heart to be with him, and with all our soul and all our might. And then we hate and despise our evil inclinations (...). And so we remain in this mixture all the days of our life....
God bless His Real Presence in us! Love in His Love!
