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Aug 12, 20227 min read

I chose Jesus as my heaven: the Cross and "Cheap Grace"

Christianity without Christ Crucified is nothing but Cheap Grace! Reflections on the Crucifixion with Julian of Norwich.


"I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified" (1 Corinthians) 2:2)

It's often a noticable difference between Catholic and protestant churches that in a protestant church (if there's any images at all) you'll very often find an empty "cross" whereas in a Catholic church you'll more-than-likely find a "crucifix" - a cross with the body of Christ still hanging on it, usually crowned with thorns and bleeding from His hands, feet, and side. The Catholic tradition leaves Christ on the cross, the eternal victim offered eternally to the Father for the sake of our sins.


A priest told me he was once confronted about this by a Jehovah's Witness, and asked why he was carrying around a crucifix on the end of his rosary. The JW asked whether he would carry around a miniature gallows or electric chair. This priest's somewhat terse answer was "if my Lord and Saviour died on it then I definitely would!" I was reminded about this priest when, on my pre-ordination retreat at Buckfast Abbey, I began to read Julian of Norwich's "Revelations of Divine Love” and delve into her particular vision of the Cross.


Julian of Norwich

I. Revelations of Divine Love


Julian of Norwich was a hermit and mystic who lived in East Anglia from 1343 to at least 1416. In her thirtieth year she suffered an illness from which she and her companions truly believed she would die. She was in pain, and eventually she could feel nothing below her waist, then even the feeling around her chest began to numb. The parish priest was summoned to give her the Last Rites and as he showed her the cross her pain began to recede and she experienced visions of Christ, the Trinity, and the Blessed Virgin Mary. A particular incident, described in the short text, almost as a throwaway line, piqued my interest. Julian experienced a vision of Christ, in all His sufferings, and then experienced a temptation;

"at this point I wanted to look away from the cross, but I dared not, for I well knew that while I contemplated the cross I was safe and sound... for beside the cross there was no safety but the ugliness of Fiends"

Revelations of Divine Love, p.17


Julian's vision of the Passion is full of this awareness, that swirling around her, even as she experienced a vision of the cross, was the host of demons willing her to be damned; to look away from the suffering Christ on the Cross and at them instead. How many times at Mass have you been tempted by distraction? As a seminarian it was one of my greatest weaknesses; allowing the mind to wander away from what was being re-enacted before me (the sacrifice of Calvary made truly present) and onto literally anything else. This Legion of distraction swirling around the cross as seen by Julian is no different, except that she perceived them and chose the cross instead.


However, it doesn't stop there, because the devil is cunning, she was faced with a second temptation;

"Then a suggestion came from my reason, as though a friendly voice had spoken, 'Look up to his Father in heaven.'"

Revelations of Divine Love, p.17


This temptation is subtler than the first. The first simply tells her to look away from the Cross because she cannot bear to see the suffering, because it is hard to look at, but it proposes nothing else to her other than the "ugliness of fiends" to take its place. This temptation, the voice of the enemy whispering inside our head, proposes instead the thing we truly desire, the beatific vision of the Father. The voice says "don't look at the Cross, the Cross is hard, look instead at the Father, and the glory of God." It proposes something which is not only objectively good but which is the sum total of all our desires, indeed Julian herself says;

"I saw clearly with the faith that I felt, that there was nothing between the cross and heaven which could have distressed me, and either I must look up or I must answer"

Revelations of Divine Love, p.17


There is nothing wrong with desiring to see the Father, but Julian could not bring herself to look up beyond the cross, recognising it for the temptation that it was;

"I answered and said, 'No, I cannot, for you are my heaven.' I said this because I did not wish to look up, for I would rather have suffered until Judgement Day than have come to heaven otherwise than by Him, for I well know that He who redeemed me so dearly would unbind me when He wished"

Revelations of Divine Love, p.17


The devils could not tempt Julian to look away from the cross by distraction or revulsion, nor then could they distract her to look away even to look upon the glory of God the Father; she knew that it was through the cross that she would see the glory of God, in God's own time. Though she doesn't reference it, her words speak to a soul deeply marked by Jesus' words

"Whoever has seen me has seen the Father"

John 14:9

II. Cheap Grace


Julian of Norwich's revelations, more importantly her responses to temptation, tell us something important about our own approach to the Cross. Our culture in the West is now rooted in a desire for comfort above everything else, it tells us that the highest evil is suffering (eclipsed only by death). We are hard-wired to try to live lives of comfort and resent the intrusion of any difficulty as a severe infringement on our right to be comfortable and to be happy. Even in the Church, we have a tendency to look away from the Cross in embarassment, and focus on other things. We speak about the glory of God, the love of God, the mercy of God. We are beginning to look away from the Cross, not just outwards to the vanities and pleasures of the world, but upwards to the merciful Father. The Cross is reduced to an event, "something that happened" as a means to our achieving happiness but is stripped of its real meaning. It is an empty, Christ-less, cross.


The Cross is not just an event, it is a reality, it is not just something to be remembered but is something to be lived and re-lived over and over again. Christ's death on the Cross, the supreme act of suffering, the singular moment of salvation for the whole human race, is a historical moment because it happened to a real man at a fixed point in history. But because that man was also the eternal Word of God who exists outside of time and space, His cross is a reality that exists in eternity, reaching back to the beginning of time and forward to the end of time in God's eternal "Now." The eternity of the Cross imbues it with meaning for our lives;

"If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it."

Matthew 16:24-25


The life we hope for, in eternity, is eternal bliss with the Father in heaven, but the lived reality of our lives is one of difficulty and suffering. It is a normal human response to desire to relieve this suffering and alleviate this difficulty but when this desire infects our Christian faith, making us seek out comfort and the easy road to heaven, looking up to the Father and away from the Cross, it cheapens our Faith, which is supposed to be challenging and costly, it becomes what Dietrich Bonhoeffer would call the pursuit of "Cheap Grace" - the blessings of God without the sufferings of Christ;

"Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship


Many of the ills afflicting the Church today are the result of a "Cheap Grace" theology; we want the blessings without the challenge, salvation without having to follow the Cross. We want Communion without having to obey the radical demand that receiving communion be a reflection of unity with the Church and freedom from grave Sin. We want to be members of Christ’s body without having to be conformed to Christ. We want to be accepted as we are without the need to repent, or to be forgiven, or to cut ourselves off from those parts of ourselves which cause us to sin. We want cheap grace, grace which comes at no cost.


Julian of Norwich shows us another way, in unity with Christ. At His own agony Jesus said;

"Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done"

Luke 22:42

Julian echoes this, when asked to look away from the Cross and up to the glory;

"I chose Jesus as my heaven, though at that time I saw him only in pain."

Revelations of Divine Love, p.17


When we suffer, we can choose to look away at fleeting pleasures. We can try to exclude suffering or discomfort from our Faith. These are paths to perdition, wide roads which lead to hell. Instead we can take the narrow path, embrace the sufferings, discomforts, humiliations, and pain of our earthly life as a Cross, and with eyes fixed on Jesus ascend Calvary to die with Him. We can trust that the Cross will be our salvation and rejoice in it.


This is not easy, it requires a great deal of fortitude and perseverance, but with the Grace of the God who became man and died for us it is possible. The next time you go to Mass and stand at the foot of Calvary, pray;


Lord, I choose you in your sufferings as my heaven, I choose your Cross. Grant me the grace of perseverance in my own daily sufferings. Teach me to choose you always, forgive me when I fall, and lead me on the road to salvation.


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