Revelations of Divine Love

In the ninth showing, Jesus speaks directly to Julian of his joy in suffering for her: “It is a joy, a delight and an endless happiness to me that I ever endured suffering for you, and if I could suffer more, I would suffer more” (72).

Julian has a vision of “three heavens.” The first heaven consists of a vision of the joy of the Father in Jesus. The Father is pleased with Jesus’s deeds, showing that we belong to Jesus by the Father's generous gift: “We are his joy, we are his reward, we are his glory, we are his crown” (73). Jesus’s love is much greater than the pain he suffered in that the suffering was transitory and temporal, whereas the love is eternal. 

Julian reviews the five aspects of the Passion revealed to her. The first four are: bleeding of the head; discoloring of the face; bleeding of the body from the scourging; and death. The fifth aspect is the joy and delight of the Passion. The Lord takes delight in suffering for us and wants us to delight in salvation. The only pain he experienced was in his human form.

This joy and delight in the Passion gives rise to the motif of the “three heavens.