In a general audience in 2016 dedicated mostly to the mystery of the Passion and Resurrection, Pope Francis also reflected briefly on a saint who is celebrated on May 13 and known especially for one phrase, which she reports that Jesus said to her: "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."
This is St. Julian of Norwich, an early 15th-century anchoress, that is, a person who lived a secluded life in a small enclosure, often attached to a church building.
St. Julian wrote of her visions and mystical experiences in what became known as Revelations of Divine Love, which are the earliest surviving English-language works attributed to a woman and the only surviving English-language works by an anchoress.
Side note: Like St. Gertrude, St. Julian is also known as a patroness of cats, because apparently in her cell, she lived with a cat.
Here is what Pope Francis said about her in 2016:
[The Paschal mystery] is all a great mystery of love and mercy. Our words are poor and insufficient to express it fully. We may find helpful the experience of a young woman, not very well known, who wrote sublime pages about the love of Christ. Her name was Julian of Norwich.
She was illiterate, this girl who had visions of the passion of Jesus and who then, after becoming a recluse, described, with simple but deep and intense language, the meaning of merciful love.
She said: “Then our good Lord asked me: ‘Are you glad that I suffered for you?’ I answered him: ‘Yes, good Lord, and I am most grateful to you; yes, good Lord, may You be blessed.' Then Jesus, our good Lord, said: ‘If you are glad, so too am I. Having suffered the passion for you is for me joy, happiness, eternal bliss; and if I could suffer more I would.’” This is our Jesus, who says to each of us: “If I could suffer more for you, I would.”
How beautiful these words are! They allow us to truly understand the immense and boundless love that the Lord has for each one of us. Let us allow ourselves to be wrapped in this mercy which comes to meet us; and in these days, as we keep our gaze fixed on the passion and death of the Lord, let us receive in our heart his boundless love and, like Our Lady on Saturday, in silence, await the Resurrection.
