Two Lenses

Julian was having a fine time enjoying a vision of God, when God reminded her she would sin, and she wasn’t so much in a hurry to think about that. So then, “Our Lord very kindly waited and gave me grace to pay attention…” 

This reminder of sin turned out to be about humankind in general, but there was a deeper point to it: awareness of our sinfulness is something that can never be left aside. And it cannot be considered without recognition of our salvation and how God encloses us. These two are actually two aspects of the two judgments, the two truths, that God showed Julian in the revelations: in our sight we do not always stand, in God’s sight we do not fail, and both are true, and the need to remember both is constant.

Several times in the Revelations Julian refers to things God wants us to pay attention to. There are six basic themes but they can be boiled down to these two aspects: remaining aware of our own sin with humility, contrition, and compassion; and to delight God by rejoicing in our safekeeping from the peril of sin and our salvation with joy, love, and longing. 

These two are extremely important, because the fact is that how we pay attention to anything is just what we will become. Do we pay attention to things with fear or anxiety, with desire for something, with anger about something? These are lenses that can distort both what we actually perceive, and also what we become. God wants us to instead put energy into the two lenses of our sinfulness and of our salvation, both at the same time. Whatever we then must pay attention to, we can remain open to receiving and giving Christ’s presence.

Attention, in fact, is a form of self-giving, and God is always attentive to us in love. At the end of the Revelations, Christ directs Julian to study the revelations she has received and derive strength from them, focusing on God’s goodness, as she is also told: “Attend to me—I am enough for you—and rejoice in your Saviour and in your salvation.”