About knowing and finding what we are looking for

There is only one place where we will find everything we are looking for 
and that is in the arms of Jesus.
He is the Man for All Seasons and for all people,
for all the times and tides of our lives.

Young and old, fit and strong, weak and weary - come to him.
He is waiting with outstretched arms. If we run and fall into them, we will be eternally comforted and consoled, held and strengthened to take whatever life may send our way. Why would anyone hold back?

We need look no further. 

About service and worry

Two thoughts came to me recently.

In service, lies happiness.

Turn a worry into a prayer.

Farewell to Julian of Norwich

I had decided to end my extracts from this marvellous treasury of images of our loving God and leave others to explore its delights if they so chose. There was just one more phrase that had stayed with me which I wanted to share and, rather than have to skip through all the chapters to find it, I decided to use google.
I wrote, "I it am", and, lo and behold, someone had been there before me; and how!! Google was full of beautiful extracts, in the same entrancing language. Just three words can lead you into this wonderful world of the love of God.
I now know that the images of "I it am" are from chapter 26 and there they are in Wikiquote for all to delve within and relish and fall under their spell.
I first heard of Julian in my mid-thirties and her visions resonated immediately in my heart. When I found that she was born more or less 600 years before me and that she wrote of the infinite love of God, the utter conviction of which has sustained me throughout my life, I felt an immediate bond with her.
This is the God in whom I believe with all my heart and mind. This is the God of loving truth and truthful love, the only God worth giving one's life for and to. I cannot imagine that a more beautiful picture of the 'homely loving' of Our 'Courteous Lord' could be found anywhere in the written word.

From Julian of Norwich on the immensity God's love of God

Revelations of Divine Love

The Eighth Chapter

........I understood........the blissful Godhead that ever was, is, and ever shall be: Almighty, All-Wisdom, All-Love.........For well I wot that heaven and earth and all that is made is great and large, fair and good; but the cause it shewed so little to my sight was for that I saw it in the presence of him that is the Maker of all things: for to a soul that seeth the Maker of all, all that is made seemeth full little........... he that made all-thing for love, by the same love keepeth (it), and it is kept and shall be without end.............God is all that is good, as to my sight, and the goodness that everything hath, it is he.

In all this I was greatly stirred in charity to mine even-Christians, that they might see and know the same that I saw: for I would it were comfort to them.

And therefore I pray you all for God's sake, and counsel you for your own profit, that ye.........meekly behold God that of his courteous love and endless goodness would shew (this Vision....of our Lord God) generally, in comfort of us all. For it is God's will that ye take it with great joy and liking, as if Jesus had shewed it unto you all.

About Jesus being more than a 'nice guy'

From a Lenten reflection by Archbishop Leo Cushley: Catholic Herald 7.4.17

As the Irish rock star Bono said in 2013: "When people say 'good teacher', 'prophet', 'really nice guy'- this is not really how Jesus thought of himself. So, you're left with a challenge in that, which is either Jesus was who he said he was or a complete and utter nutcase. You have to make a choice on that, and I believe that Jesus was (........) the Son of God."

Me too; that 's the kind of talking I like, down to earth, ordinary.

From Julian of Norwich on the homeliness and courtesy of God

Revelations of Divine Love

The Seventh Chapter

(An image of the drops of blood falling from the crown of thorns on the head of Jesus)
........the plenteousness is like to the drops of water that fall off the eaves after a great shower of rain, that fall so thick that no man may number them with bodily wit;...........

And of all the sight it was most comfort to me that our God and Lord, that is so reverend and dreadful, is so homely and courteous: and this most fulfilled me with comfort and secureness of  soul.

.......Then thinketh this poor creature thus: "And what might this noble Lord do (of) more worship and joy to me than to show me, that am so simple, this marvellous homeliness? Soothly it is more joy and liking to me than (if) he gave me great gifts and were himself strange in manner."
   This bodily example was shewed so highly that man's heart might be ravished and almost forgetting itself for joy of the great homeliness. Thus it fareth with our Lord Jesus and us. For soothly it is the most joy that may be, as to my sight, that he that is highest and mightiest, noblest and worthiest, is lowest and meekest, homeliest and most courteous: and truly and soothly this marvellous joy shall be shown us all when we see him.
   And this willeth our Lord, that we seek for and trust to, joy and delight in him, comforting us and solacing us, as we may, with his grace and with his help, unto the time that we see it verily. For the most fulnes of joy that we shall have, as to my sight, is the marvellous courtesy and homeliness of our Father that is our maker, in our Lord Jesus Christ that is our Brother and our Saviour.  

From Julian of Norwich on the gifts of the Passion and Death of Our Lord

Revelations of Divine Love

The Sixth Chapter

............We pray to God for (the sake of) his holy flesh and for his precious blood, his holy Passion, his dearworthy death and wounds: and all the blessed kindness, the endless life that we have of all this, is (of) his Goodness. And we pray him for his sweet Mother's love that him bare; and all the help we have of her is of his Goodness. And we pray by his holy Cross that he died on, and all the virtue and the help that we have of the Cross, it is of his Goodness. And on the same wise, all the help that we have of special saints and all the blessed Company of Heaven, the dearworthy love and endless friendship that we have of them, it is of his Goodness...................

..........so are we, soul and body, clad in the Goodness of God, and enclosed. Yea, and more homely - for ......the Goodness of God is ever whole - ..............for truly our Lover desireth that our soul cleave to him with all its might.............For of all things that heart may think, this pleaseth most God.........
  For our soull is so specially loved of him that is highest, that it overpasseth the knowing of all creatures: that is to say, there is no creature that is made that may wot how much and how sweetly and how tenderly our Maker loveth us.
  For our kindly Will is to have God, and the Good Will of God is to have us;.........
  For he willeth that we be occupied in knowing and loving till the time that we shall be fulfilled in Heaven; and therefore was this lesson of Love shewed,...........and maketh the soul (to have) true meekness; with plenty of charity to his even (fellow)- Christians.