I found the texts about understanding Christ through his wounds to be quite difficult to wrap my mind around. Until I read the texts by Julian of Norwich, I thought I might not fully be able to grasp this bodily entrance to mystical understanding.
However, as I read of her fall to illness and how it seems she wanted to use this illness as a way to really understand how Christ felt, I began to see that it’s a kind of full bodied empathy of a particular Person, an aspect of christendom that does seem to make it stand out somewhat from many other religions who might tend towards more philosophical aims, and yet in modern times has been downplayed quite a bit, at least in the christianities i’ve had experience with.
This level of bodily empathy goes beyond the kinds of ascetism found in a number of religions, whereby fasting and other forms of denial or learnt acceptance of suffering in order to surpass it isn’t uncommon. Instead, it is attempts to experience the pain of Christ in a bodily way for one’s self.
“Then it suddenly occurred to me that I should entreat our Lord
graciously to give me the second wound], so that my whole body should be filled with remembrance and feeling of his blessed passion; for I wanted his pains to be my pains, with compassion, and then longing for God.” (McGinn, 2006, p. 240)
She provided for me the connection I couldn’t see; whole physical bodily empathy as a potential pathway to experiencing a mystical union with Christ; empathy as a demonstration of love of Christ and by empathizing with Christ, understanding better the love it took to sacrifice one’s entire self for humanity from a source of love.
From this, she progresses more and more until she ends up into an area I am more familiar with: a vision.
“In this vision he also showed a little thing, the size of a hazel-nut in the palm of my hand, and it was as round as a ball. I looked at it with my mind’s eye and thought, “What can this be?” And the answer came to me, “It is all that is made.”
I wondered how it could last, for it was so small I thought it might suddenly disappear. And the answer in my mind was, “It lasts and will last for ever because God loves it; and everything exists in the same way by the love of God.”” (McGinn, 2006, p. 240)
Here, love wraps around all even more than her palm wraps around the hazel-nut-of-everything. So for her, bodily pain with empathy of Christ’s wounds re-oriented her in such a way that she could be granted understanding both visceral and theological – and even towards visions that are supremely clear and accessible.
(A side note on accessibility: I have little doubt that The Aleph, a favorite fictional object of my childhood Spanish IV class through which everything can be seen simultaneously must have undoubtedly been inspired by Julian of Norwich’s hazel-nut-like nugget of everything from 500 years prior to Borges)
With a bodily-to-cerebral connection established for me, now I see better how Christ’s wounds demonstrate the “God-made Flesh”. (“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14 NIV)) and provides a pathway, through pain and blood, towards theosis where even one’s own very flesh itself can transform to be “like God”, a union that connects God’s energies to even our most animal parts of self for transformation.
McGinn, B. (2006). The essential writings of Christian mysticism. Modern Library.
[responsivevoice_button voice="US English Male"]