December 22 -- LOVE

http://aclerkofoxford.blogspot.com/2011/04/stained-glass-of-norwich.html

I believe that it was through reading The Revelation of Love by Dame Julian almost 20 years ago that I really came to understand the depth of God’s love for us. Julian had a series of 16 visions after she became seriously ill and thought she was dying. Later, she recorded her visions and then spent the next 20 years pondering the meaning of them. She wrote: “I saw that he [Christ] is the ground of all that is good and supporting for us. He is our clothing that lovingly wraps and folds us about; it embraces us and closes us all around as it hangs upon us with such tender love; for truly he can never leave us. This made me see that he is for us everything that is good.”

Sometime after I read Julian’s book, I had a kind of mystical experience myself. I was walking as part of my morning meditation time, and suddenly into my mind came the words: “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” It’s hard to explain the impact of these words at that moment. [I later discovered that the words came from Jer 31:3.] I believe it was the first time

I had really felt deeply loved by God, that God knew everything there was to know about me, and yet God still loved me, in spite of all my faults and failings. To me that is the meaning of the Incarnation. Through the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God was showing us the depth and breadth of God’s unconditional love for each one of us

– Sr. Elizabeth, SSJD