22. "The Love that made Him to suffer far surpasses all His Pains" (The Ninth Revelation - Of the pleasing which is in the Blissful Trinity by...) (Revelations of Divine Love) (Julian of Norwich)

THEN said our good Lord Jesus Christ: Are you well pleased that I suffered for you? I said: Yea, good Lord, I thank You; Yea, good Lord, blessed mayst You be.

Then said Jesus, our kind Lord: If you are pleased, I am pleased: it is a joy, a bliss, an endless satisfying to me that ever suffered I Passion for you; and if I might suffer more, I would suffer more.

In this feeling my understanding was lifted up into Heaven, and there I saw three heavens: of which sight I marvelled greatly. And though I see three heavens and all in the blessed manhood of Christ none is more, none is less, none is higher, none is lower, but [they are] fellow-like in bliss.

For the First Heaven, Christ showed me His Father; in no bodily likeness, but in His property and in His working. That is to say, I saw in Christ that the Father is. The working of the Father is this, that He gives meed to His Son Jesus Christ. This gift and this meed is so blissful to Jesus that His Father might have given Him no meed that might have pleased Him better. The first heaven, that is the pleasing of the Father, showed to me as one heaven; and it was full blissful: for He is full pleased with all the deeds that Jesus has done about our salvation. Wherefore we be not only His by His buying, but also by the courteous gift of His Father we be His bliss, we be His meed, we be His worship, we be His crown. (And this was a singular marvel and a full delectable beholding, that we be His crown!) This that I say is so great bliss to Jesus that He setts at nought all His travail, and His hard Passion, and His cruel and shameful death.

And in these words: If that I might suffer more, I would suffer more, I saw in truth that as often as He might die, so often He would, and love should never let Him have rest till He had done it. And I beheld with great diligence for to learn how often He would die if He might. And truly the number passed my understanding and my wits so far that my reason might not, nor could, comprehend it. And when He had thus oft died, or should, yet He would set it at nought, for love: for all seems Him but little in regard of His love.

For though the sweet manhood of Christ might suffer but once, the goodness in Him may never cease of proffer: every day He is ready to the same, if it might be. For if He said He would for my love make new Heavens and new Earth, it were but little in comparison; for this might be done every day if He would, without any travail. But to die for my love so often that the number passes creature's reason, it is the highest proffer that our Lord God might make to man's soul, as to my sight. Then means He thus: How should it not be that I should not do for your love all that I might of deeds which grieve me not, sith I would, for your love, die so often, having no regard to my hard pains?

And here saw I, for the Second Beholding in this blessed Passion the love that made Him to suffer passes as far all His pains as Heaven is above Earth. For the pains was a noble, worshipful deed done in a time by the working of love: but Love was without beginning, is, and shall be without ending. For which love He said full sweetly these words: If I might suffer more, I would suffer more. He said not, If it were needful

to suffer more: for though it were not needful, if He might suffer more, He would.

This deed, and this work about our salvation, was ordained as well as God might ordain it. And here I saw a Full Bliss in Christ: for His bliss should not have been full, if it might any better have been done.