Al Shall Be Wele: Chapter 16, "Blodeleshede and peyne dryden within and blowyng of wynde and cold"

"Blodeleshede and peyne dryden within and blowyng of wynde and cold"

In Chapter 16 Julian reaches her eighth showing, her vision of the death of Jesus on the cross. Julian will dwell upon this showing through Chapter 21. So buckle up!

In Chapter 16 Julian describes Jesus' body bleeding out, thereby discoloring the body. The almost total loss of blood causes the body of Christ to dry up and shrivel. Externally, this process of drying out is also caused by a chill and blowing wind:

Blodeleshede and peyne dryden within and blowyng of wynde and cold commyng fro withouten metten togeder in the swete body of Criste. And these four, tweyn withouten and tweyn within, dryden the fleshe of Criste be process of tyme. And thow this peyne was bitter and sharpe, it was full longe lestyng as to my sighte and peynfully dreyden up all the lively spirits of Crists fleshe. Thus I saw the swete fleshe dey, in semyng be party after party, dryande with mervelous peynys. 

Translation: 

Bloodlessness and pain drying from within, and the blowing of wind and cold coming from without, met together in the sweet body of Christ. And these four, two from without and two from within, dried the flesh of Christ by the process of time. And though this pain was bitter and sharp, it lasted very long, as it seemed to me, and painfully dried up all the living spirits of Christ's flesh. Thus I saw the sweet flesh die, as it seemed, piece by piece, drying up with marvelous pains.

So, dear friends, what to think of this?

I ask because we are thrown, here with the eighth showing, back again into Julian's medieval preoccupation with a close and devout meditation upon the sufferings of Jesus, in this showing his very dying and succumbing to death. I've made this point repeatedly in this series, how modern and progressive readers of Julian tend to ignore or skip over the more macabre aspects of her Revelations. But this is the very side of Julian I'd like for us to be interrupted by. 

Why? Why the necessity of the bloody spectacle of Calvary?

Here's how I put it in The Book of Love: 

Beyond a demonstration of God’s love for us, the agony of Golgotha also brings the severity of grace into view, a price that draws sorrowful attention to all the pain we have caused. This was the logic behind the sacrificial system in Leviticus in anticipation of Golgotha: the necessity to make sin visible. The visible horror of Jesus’s death brings the damage we have caused into clear, undeniable focus, prompting confession, repentance, and making amends. Without this costly display, grace would be reduced, as it often is, to a get-out-of-jail-free card. Evil would be trivialized. Our pardon would become a ready and easy excuse to move past everything we break in the world.

How you treat others, and yourself, is a grave and serious business. The severity of grace, its visible cost, makes this truth unavoidable. The bloody spectacle of Calvary is supposed to shock, disturb, and interrupt you. The tortured body of Jesus exposes our sin. The harm we have caused comes into view. In this bloody mirror we behold the horror of human evil and depravity. And standing at the foot of the cross, we confess how we have contributed our share. We recognize that we are complicit. We arrive at the moral pivot of our lives. Our stories turning at this precise moment.