Guide for the Journey

Julian of Norwich was a 14th century English mystic who, at the age of 30, lay dying in May of 1373. It was then that she had 16 remarkable visions or "showings" (revelations) of God’s love. She recovered and spent more than 20 years pondering the meaning of the visions, eventually recording them in her Book of Showings of Divine Love.

As in Isaiah 49:15; 66;13, and Matthew 23:37, and like Saints Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Ephrem the Syrian, Julian found the image of “motherhood” to be a wonderful way to understand and explain God’s love, especially as it is expressed in Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity.

In these excerpts from chapters 58-60 of her “Showings,” Julian reminds us that the experience of a mother’s love can give us a glimpse of the love that Jesus has for us.

I saw and understood that the high might of the Trinity is our Father, and the deep wisdom of the Trinity is our Mother, and the great love of the Trinity is our Lord the Holy Spirit....

Our great Father, almighty God, who is being, knows us and loved us before time began. Out of this knowledge, in his most wonderful deep love, by the foreseeing eternal counsel of all the blessed Trinity, he wanted the second Person to become our Mother, our Brother, and our Savior. From this it follows that as truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother. Our Father wills, our Mother works, our good Lord the Holy Spirit confirms.

And therefore it is our part to love our God in whom we have our being, reverently thanking and praising him for our creation, mightily praying to Christ our Mother for mercy and pity, and to our Lord the Holy Spirit for help and grace.

Jesus, our loving “mother”
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 fair working and all the sweet kindly offices of dear motherhood are appropriated to the second Person, for in him we have this godly will, whole and secure forever, both in nature and in grace, from his own proper goodness....

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 he alone. We know that all our mothers bear us to pain and to death—strange as that is! But our true Mother Jesus, he alone bears us to joy and to endless living—blessed may he be! So he carries us within him in love and travail, until the full time when he willed to suffer the sharpest throes and cruel pains that ever were or will be, and at the last he died....

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....

This fair lovely word Mother is so sweet and so kind in itself that it cannot truly be said to anyone nor of anyone, but to him and of him who is the true Mother of life and of all.