God as Mother
God as Mother
administering abundant virtues and plentiful grace to us by him." Again it is repeated near the beginning of the Sixteenth and final revelation in reference to our creation, for as well as the Father could create a creature and as well as the Son could create a creature, so well did the Holy Spirit want man's spirit to be created, and so it was done.
(Chapter 68) God as Mother What I have suggested implies, among other things, that the image of motherhood, while used at first of Jesus Christ, is in fact a property of God‐as‐Trinity. Julian's reference to God's Motherhood appears only in the Long Text, chapters 52–63. This is because it is part of her reflections that follow on from her coming to understand the parable of a Lord and a Servant which also appears only in the Long Text.9
Julian is not alone among female and male writers in the Middle Ages in using the imagery of motherhood in God.10 She is unique, however, in the sophistication and complexity with which she relates the image both to the reality of God and to God's relationship with human nature.
Julian's thought has been compared with the use of Motherhood imagery in, for example, the Ancrene Wisse (or Ancrene Riwle) written in the thirteenth century for female hermits like Julian.11 The comparison is unhelpful because the hermit rule portrays the tender Mother
Jesus as standing between us and the stern angry Father God who threatened to strike us.
It is interesting to note that Julian does not suggest that God is like a mother but that God is our mother. The choice of metaphor over simile is important because in this way Julian avoids projecting conventional notions of human motherhood onto God. On the contrary, the Motherhood of God is the measure of true human motherhood: "it is not that God is like a mother, but mothers make visible a function and relationship that is first and foremost in God."12 Thus Jesus Christ is "where the foundation of motherhood begins" (chapter 59). Also, This fair lovely word "mother" is so sweet and so kind in itself that it cannot truly be said of anyone or to anyone except of him [Jesus] and to him who is the true Mother of life and of all things.
(Chapter 60)
Love is God's Meaning
In summary, The mother's service is nearest, readiest and surest; nearest because it is most natural, readiest because it is most loving, and surest because it is truest. No one ever might or could perform this office fully, except only him [Mother Jesus].
(Chapter 60) Of course the additional effect of Julian suggesting that true motherhood begins in God is to underline to her contemporaries that the identity and work of women are as much in the image of God as the identity and work of men.
Julian may begin her reflections on motherhood with conventional human images such as nurturing and sustaining but she quickly moves divine motherhood onto another level. Thus, the human mother feeds a child with milk, which in medieval theory derived from her blood. This was seen as the mother's very life force. This belief reflected various biblical texts such as the Book of Leviticus: "You shall not eat the blood of any creature, for the life of every creature is its blood (Leviticus 17, 4)." So,
Jesus as Mother also feeds the Christian with his very life but in the Eucharist: "The mother can give her child to suck of her milk but our precious Mother Jesus can feed us with himself, and does, most courteously and most tenderly with the blessed sacrament, which is the precious food of true life" (chapter 60). Further, the wound in Christ's side is a kind of parallel to the human mother's breast but in this case it nurtures us to the "inner certainty of endless bliss."
Julian's image of mothering is not passive but is seen as a work. Again this echoes medieval theory that the lining of the mother's own uterus provided the material for the fetus. In giving birth, a mother literally gave of herself.13 In reference to God as Mother, Julian highlights the process of giving birth in both our natural creation and in the rebirth of salvation.
"And our saviour is our true Mother, in whom we are endlessly born and out of whom we shall never come" (chapter 57). This is linked by Julian to the motherhood of our Lady. She is not merely the mother of Jesus but also of redeemed humankind. "So our Lady is our mother, in whom we are all enclosed and born of her in Christ, for she who is mother of our saviour is mother of all who are saved in our saviour" (chapter 57).
Julian compares the pain of a human mother giving birth to the suffering and death of our Mother Jesus.
We know that all our mothers bear us for pain and for death.
O, what is that? But our true Mother Jesus, he alone bears us for joy and for endless life, blessed may he be. So he carries us within