The second most famous resident of Norwich (my friend Peter) reminded me that yesterday was the Feast Day of the most famous resident of Norwich, the 14th century saint known as Julian of Norwich. She continues to be an important voice in Christian spirituality and mysticism for many reasons. I'll mention only two of them here, then include an excerpt from the "revelations" or "showings" she received from God on May 8, 1373.
First, Julian was a woman -- in a world dominated by men -- who dared to claim that she had received a vision from God . . . and even more remarkably, dared to write about her vision in a time when women did not make such claims about God nor have the freedom to write about them. From a contemporary perspective, even as women continue to struggle for equality in the world and workplace, it is difficult to overstate how radical was Julian's courage in the 14th century.
Second, as Julian reported the revelation she received, she drew a picture of a God very different from the images of God that dominated her time. Rather than portraying God as a harsh ogre who was intent on punishing people for sin, a God who was angry with humans, full of vindictive spite, Julian reported her encounter with a God who was all love. God is "our clothing, who wraps and enfolds us for love, embraces us and shelters us, surrounds us" with a tender love that will never desert us. (Julian of Norwich: Showings, in the Classics of Western Spirituality, p. 183)
Julian's well-known vision of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of her hand, illustrated her sense of God's always-everywhere love: "What can this be? I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that because of its littleness it would suddenly have fallen 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." (Julian of Norwich: Showings, in the Classics of Western Spirituality, p. 183)
She also noted that God was as much "Mother" as "Father", and that all the attributes of a loving, nurturing mother are found in God . . . again, a brave and radical notion for her time (and still difficult for many modern persons to accept!).
Jesus Christ is our true Mother. We have our being from him, where the foundation of motherhood begins, with all the sweet protection of love which endlessly follows.
As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother, and he revealed that in everything, and especially in these sweet words where he says: I am he; that is to say: I am he, the power and goodness of fatherhood; I am he, the wisdom and the lovingness of motherhood; I am he, the light and the grace which is all blessed love; I am he, the Trinity; I am he, the unity; I am he, the great supreme goodness of every kind of thing; I am he who makes you to love; I am he who makes you to long; I am he, the endless fulfilling of all true desires. For where the soul is highest, noblest, most honourable, still it is lowest, meekest and mildest. . . .
And so Jesus is our true Mother in nature by our first creation, and he is our true Mother in grace by his taking our created nature. All the lovely works and all the sweet loving offices of beloved motherhood are appropriated to the second person, for in him we have this godly will, whole and safe forever, both in nature and in grace, from his own goodness proper to him.
I understand three ways of contemplating motherhood in God. The first is the foundation of our nature’s creation; the second is his taking of our nature, where the motherhood of grace begins; the third is the motherhood at work. And in that, by the same grace, everything is penetrated, in length and in breadth, in height and in depth without end; and it is all one love. . . .
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; and with all the sweet sacraments he sustains us most mercifully and graciously . . . .
(Julian of Norwich: Showings, in Classics of Western Spirituality, pp. 295 – 298)
Finally, Thomas Merton shared his sense of the importance of Julian leaning into her own experience of God, rather than leaning into someone else's God-experience:
Julian of Norwich is without doubt one of the most wonderful of all Christian voices. She gets greater and greater in my eyes as I grow older and whereas in the old days I used to be crazy about St. John of the Cross, I would not exchange him now for Julian if you gave me the world and the Indies and all the Spanish mystics rolled up in one bundle. I think that Julian of Norwich is with Newman the greatest English theologian. She is really that. For she reasons from her experience of the substantial center of the great Christian mystery of Redemption. She gives her experience and her deductions, clearly, separating the two. And the experience is of course nothing merely subjective. It is the objective mystery of Christ as apprehended by her, with the mind and formation of a fourteenth century English woman.
(Thomas Merton, Seeds of Destruction, pp. 274 – 275)
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