81. "God sees all our living a penance" (The Sixteenth Revelation - That the Blissful Trinity, our Maker, in Christ ...) (Revelations of Divine Love) (Julian of Norwich)

OUR Good Lord showed Himself in diverse manners both in heaven and in earth, but I saw Him take no place save in man's soul.

He showed Himself in earth in the sweet Incarnation and in His blessed Passion. And in other manner He showed Himself in earth [as in the Revelation] where I say: I saw God in a Point. And in another manner He showed Himself in earth thus as it were in pilgrimage: that is to say, He is here with us, leading us, and shall be till when He has brought us all to His bliss in heaven. He showed Himself diverse times reigning, as it is beforesaid; but principally in man's soul. He has taken there His resting-place and His worshipful City: out of which worshipful See He shall never rise nor remove without end.

Marvellous and stately is the place where the Lord dwells, and therefore He wills that we readily answer to His gracious touching, more rejoicing in His whole love than sorrowing in our often fallings. For it is the most worship to Him of anything that we may do, that we live gladly and merrily, for His love, in our penance. For He beholds us so tenderly that He sees all our living [here] a penance: for nature's longing in us is to Him aye-lasting penance in us : which penance He works in us and mercifully He helps us to bear it. For His love makes Him to long [for us]; His wisdom and His truth with His rightfulness makes Him to suffer us [to be] here: and in this same manner [of longing and abiding] He wills to see it in us. For this is our natural penance, and the highest, as to my sight. For this penance goes never from us till what time that we be fulfilled, when we shall have Him to our meed. And therefore He wills that we set our hearts in the Overpassing : that is to say, from the pain that we feel into the bliss that we trust.