Fr. George Piggford, C.S.C. Shares Benediction at Commencement

The fourteenth-century writer Julian of Norwich lived through her own pandemic, the bubonic plague, and she sealed herself away from the world to commune with the Lord. In her simple cell, Julian wrote of sixteen mystical visions in Revelations of Divine Love, a book that distinguishes her as the earliest identified female author writing in English.

For Julian, God is the “Teacher” and the “Teaching”; God is our “End” and our reward. Some see an intimation of the Big Bang in her first revelation, and I’d like to conclude our own proceedings today with her striking vision of a God both intimate and cosmic.

Julian declares, “At this same time our Lord showed me a spiritual sight of his familiar love. I saw that he is to us everything which is good and comforting for our help. He is our clothing, for he is that love which wraps and enfolds us, embraces us and guides us, surrounds us for his love, which is so tender that he may never desert us. And so in this sight I saw truly that he is everything which is good, as I understand.

And in this he showed me something small, no bigger than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, and I perceived that it was as round as any ball. I looked at it and thought: What can this be? And I was given this general answer: It is everything which is made. I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that it was so little that it could suddenly fall into nothing. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and always will, because God loves it; and thus everything has being through the love of God.”

Let us pray. God of the cosmos, divine fire, enlighten our minds. Draw us ever closer to you, most excellent teacher. Bless our graduates, this day and every day. Protect us and show us your way. We ask this of you, Father, Son, and Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen.