Julian of Norwich and Other Tibetan Lamas

And in the same shewing, sodeinly the trinity fulfilled my hert most with joy. And so I undertode it shall be in heaven without end, to all that shall come ther. For the trinity is God, God is the trinity. The trinity is our maker, the trinity is our keper, the trinity is our everlasting lover, the trinity is our endlesse joy and our blisse, by our lord Jesu Christ and in our lord Jesu Christ. And this was shewed in the first sight and in all. For wher Jhesu appireth the blessed trinity is understand, as to my sight. ₁

This passage of Julian’s text follows her description of the blood of Jesus trickling down from under the garland or crown of thorns. This bleeding is a physical expression of the kenosis which is the source of the Incarnation, since it is at the very heart of the Triune God.

In his description of “The Fourth Degree of Love,” in his brief treatise, On Loving God, Bernard of Clairvaux includes a description of such ultimate love, and his description draws upon the Paul’s hymn to kenosis in the Letter to the Philippians:

For to lose [perdere] yourself in a certain way, as if you were not [tanquam qui non sis], and not to feel yourself at all [et omnino non sentire teipsum], and to be emptied of yourself [et a teipso exinaniri], and almost to be annulled [et pene annullari], is a divine experience, not a human sentiment. ₂

For human beings to love in this way is to love in the manner of Christ:

Whoever loves in this way, loves the way he is loved, seeking in turn not what is his [non quae sua sunt], but what belongs to Jesus Christ, the same way Christ sought not what was his, but what was ours, or rather, ourselves. ₃

Pure love is for Bernard is love that bears the quality of which Paul sings in his First Letter to the Corinthians, namely, it “does not seek its own advantage” [non quaerit quae sua sunt]. ₄ The Wycliffe Bible translates this phrase as: “it sekith not tho thingis that ben hise owne.” ₅ Toward the end of the same treatise, the great Cistercian writer includes a “Letter on Charity to the Holy Brethren of Chartruse,” in which he continues to explore and celebrate such love:

Then I have said charity is unspotted, it keeps nothing of its own for itself. For him who holds nothing as its own, assuredly all he has belongs to God; and whatever belongs to God must be clean. Therefore, the unspotted law of the Lord is the love which does not seek what is useful to itself [quae non quod sibi utile est, quaerit], but what is good for the many. ₆ 

Bernard then states that this love is at the heart of the life of the Triune God:

It does not seem absurd for me to say God lives by a law, because it is nothing else than charity. What else maintains that supreme and unutterable unity in the highest and most blessed Trinity, if not charity. Hence it is a law, the law of the Lord, that charity which somehow holds and brings together the Trinity in the bond of peace. All the same, let nobody think I hold charity to be a quality or a kind of accident of God. Otherwise, I would be saying, and be it far from me, that there is something in God which is not God. Charity is the divine substance [sed substantiam illam divinam]. I am saying nothing new or unusual, just what St John says: ‘God is love’ [Deus charitas est]. ₇

It is according to this law of charity, Bernard teaches, that all things are created: “Such is the eternal law which creates and governs the universe. All things were made according to this law in weight, measure, and number.” ₈

For the fullness of our happiness, beyond which there is none else, is this: to enjoy God the three in whose image we are made. ₉

Endnotes

1. Julian of Norwich, The Writings of Julian of Norwich, Eds, Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins. University Park, The Pennsylvania State University Press, Chapter 4, lines 1-4, page 135
2. Latin: “Te enim quodammodo perdere, tanquam qui non sis, et omnino non sentire teipsum, et a teipso exinaniri, et pene annullari, coelestis est conversationis, non humanae affectionis.” Retrieved from Paths of Love: https://www.pathsoflove.com/bernard/on-loving-god.html The English translation is from Google Translate and from the translation found in Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God: An Analytical Commentary by Emero Stiegman. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, 1995, page 29: “To lose yourself, as if you no longer existed, to cease completely to experience yourself, to reduce yourself to nothing is not a human sentiment but a divine experience.” Philippians 2.7 according to the Vulgate: “sed semet ipsum exinanivit [emptied himself] formam servi accipiens in similitudinem hominum factus et habitu inventus ut homo”
3. Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God: An Analytical Commentary by Emero Stiegman. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, 1995, page 28. Latin: “Qui enim sic amat, haud secus profecto, quam amatus est, amat; quaerens et ipse vicissim, non quae sua sunt, sed quae Jesu Christi, quemadmodum ille nostra, vel potius nos, et non sua quaesivit.” Retrieved from Paths of Love: https://www.pathsoflove.com/bernard/on-loving-god.html
4. 1 Corinthians 13:5. Vulgate: “[Caritas] non est ambitiosa non quaerit quae sua sunt non inritatur non cogitat malum.” Douay Rheims: “Is not ambitious, seeketh not her own, is not provoked to anger, thinketh no evil.”
5. 1 Corinthians 13.5. Textus Receptus Bibles – John Wycliffe Bible 1382: John Wycliffe Bible 1382 Textus Receptus Bibles
6. Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God: An Analytical Commentary by Emero Stiegman. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, 1995, pages 36-37. Latin: “Porro in eo eam dixerim immaculatam, quod nil sibi de suo retinere consuevit. Cui nempe de proprio nihil est, totum profecto quod habet, Dei est: quod autem Dei est, immundum esse non potest. Lex ergo Domini immaculata, charitas est: quae non quod sibi utile est, quaerit, sed quod multis.” Retrieved from Paths of Love: https://www.pathsoflove.com/bernard/on-loving-god.html
7. Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God: An Analytical Commentary by Emero Stiegman. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, 1995, page 37. Latin: Quid vero in summa et beata illa Trinitate summam et ineffabilem illam conservat unitatem, nisi charitas? Lex est ergo, et lex Domini, charitas, quae Trinitatem in unitate quodammodo cohibet, et colligat in vinculo pacis. Nemo tamen me aestimet charitatem hic accipere qualitatem, vel aliquod accidens (alioquin in Deo dicerem, quod absit, esse aliquid quod Deus non est), sed substantiam illam divinam: quod utique nec novum, nec insolitum est, dicente Joanne, Deus charitas est. Retrieved from Paths of Love: https://www.pathsoflove.com/bernard/on-loving-god.html
8. Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God: An Analytical Commentary by Emero Stiegman. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, 1995, page 37. Latin: “Haec est lex aeterna, creatrix et gubernatrix universitatis. Siquidem in pondere, et mensura, et numero per eam facta sunt universa …” Retrieved from Paths of Love: https://www.pathsoflove.com/bernard/on-loving-god.html See Book of Wisdom (11.21). Vulgate: “sed omnia mensura et numero et pondere disposuisti” Douay Rheims: “but thou hast ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight.” Augustine of Hippo references this passage in his The Trinity, Chapter 11, section 18: “There, inside [the human person], we hope we shall be able to find the image of God in a trinity, provided our efforts are assisted by him who according to the testimony of scripture and the very evidence of things themselves has arranged all things in measure and number and weight.” (Augustine of Hippo, The Trinity. Introduction, translation, and notes by Edmund Hill, O.P Edited by John E. Rotelle, O.S.A. Brooklyn, New York: New City Press, 1991, page 318.) Latin: “Vbi speramus inuenire nos posse secundum trinitatem imaginem dei, conatus nostros illo ipso adiuuante quem omnia sicut res ipsae indicant, ita etiam sancta scriptura in mensura et numero et pondere disposuisse testatur.” Retrieved from The Latin Library: Augustinus: de Trinitate Liber XI (thelatinlibrary.com)
9. Augustine of Hippo, The Trinity. Introduction, translation, and notes by Edmund Hill, O.P Edited by John E. Rotelle, O.S.A. Brooklyn, New York: New City Press, 1991, Book 1, section 18, page 318. Latin: “Hoc est enim plenum gaudium nostrum quo amplius non est, frui trinitate deo ad cuius imaginem facti sumus.” Retrieved from The Latin Library: Augustinus: de Trinitate Liber I (thelatinlibrary.com)