Julian of Norwich and the Motherhood of God

Julian of Norwich, 14^th century anchoress, visionary, and spiritual director is the most well-known figure of the “Golden Age of English Mysticism.” Scholars and theologians debate this notion of a golden age.

They also debate the merits of the mystics associated with it: Julian, Richard Rolle, the anonymous author of the Cloud of Unknowing, Walter Hilton, and sometimes Margery Kempe. In recent years Julian’s popularity has soared.

Sometimes this is attributed to her use of feminine imagery for God. While this has contributed to her fame and been helpful for many, Julian’s gifts to us extend beyond this imagery.

She offers to readers a thoroughly theological, honest, and encouraging picture of God and the spiritual life. Her feast day in the Church of England is May 8.

Julian of Norwich: Life and Writings

Julian was born around 1342 and died around 1429. We know little about her life prior to the record of her visions. Some have speculated that prior to becoming an anchoress, she had been a nun or possibly a married woman.

What we do know is that on May 13, 1373, when she was around 30 years of age, she lay dying. During the course of two days received a series of showings or visions about the crucified Christ.

She recovered and wrote her visions down in a text. This text, titled in an early manuscript, “A vision showed by the goodness of God to a devout woman” has become known as the short text. Over the next twenty years Julian reflected on the meaning of the visions she had seen.

The result was a mature reflection upon them, which is known as the long text. Julian is often credited as being the first woman to write a book in the English language.  Translations of the texts (from Medieval Middle English) are often titled, “The Showings of Julian of Norwich” or “The Revelation of Divine Love.”

Julian was an anchoress, meaning she remained “anchored” in one location. Hermits in medieval England, like Richard Rolle, were permitted to travel.

Whether anchorite or hermit the individual’s purpose was the pursuit of the spiritual life and ultimately union with God. In a move starting to modern sensibilities, anchoresses like Julian, symbolically and physically “died” to the ways of the world by being sealed into a set of rooms attached to a church.

Julian’s cell attached to St. Julian’s Church, Norwich, England, has a window on one side to the world. There she offered spiritual counsel to all sorts and conditions of people. There was also an opening on the opposite side to the church.

This enabled her to receive Holy Communion. Anchoresses were permitted to have cats. In iconography, Julian is often pictured with one.  

Spiritual Practices and Teaching

Julian’s visions are an extended theological reflection on the Passion, the death and sufferings, of Jesus Christ. The medieval  literature scholar Dr. Christiania Whitehead comments:

“Julian’s revelations function as a series of animated snapshots of iconic moments: blood trickling down from the crown of thorns, blood coagulating from the scourge wounds, the drying and discoloration of the face shortly before death.”

– “The Late Fourteenth Century Mystics” in Christian Mysticism

Julian often addresses her readers as “even Christians.” While she may have anticipated a broad audience, Julian is conscious that as an anchoress she is a contemplative.

She has committed herself to a particular way of seeking the Triune God. A way of seeking God principally in deep prayer and meditation. Rather than in seeking God principally in service to others. Julian writes:

“Every man and woman who wishes to live contemplatively needs to know of this, so that it may be pleasing to them to despise as nothing everything created, so as to have the love of uncreated God. For this is the reason why those who deliberately occupy themselves with earthy business, constantly seeking worldly well-being, have not God’s rest in their hearts and souls; for they love and seek their rest in this thing which is so little and in which there is no rest, and do not know God who is almighty, all wise and all good, for he is true rest”

– Short Text, Chapter 4

Finding Our Rest in God

Julian encourages us to find our ultimate rest in God. Whether contemplative or active, we all should heed her warning. Her words echoes these words of Scripture from our Lord Jesus:

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” 

– John 14:27 (NRSV)

While well known for using feminine language for the divine, Julian was not the first to do so. Earlier spiritual writers such as Anselm of Canterbury, as well as Julian’s near contemporary, the Dominican Meister Eckhart, also made use of this kind of language for God.

However, she explores this understanding of God with greater depth and insight than those before her. She writes:

 “Our great God, the supreme wisdom of all things, arrayed and prepared himself to do the service and the office of motherhood in everything. The mother’s service is nearest, readiest, because it is most loving and surest because it is truest.”

– Chapter 60, Long Text

She compares the passion of our Lord with giving birth. For where there is blood in birthing, there is then new life. Julian tells us, with the rest of the Christian Tradition, that from the blood of Jesus came new life for all (Ephesians 1:7).

Julian of Norwich and Christians Today

Evelyn Underhill, a spiritual writer from the last century, says of Julian:

“As the first real English woman of letters, she has a special interest for us; the more so when we consider the beauty of character, depth of thought, and poetic feeling which her one book displays. In her mingled homeliness and philosophical instinct, her passion for Nature, her profound devotion to the Holy Name, she presents the best elements of English mysticism.”

– The Mystics of the Church

Julian offers Christians today language for God and the spiritual life that is maternal and distinctively feminine.

This gives us permission to approach God as Mother and Father. This will be liberating for some, complimentary for others, and difficult for some. This language can open new doors for our intimacy with God.

Julian’s relationship with God is personal, intimate, and conversational. She does not hesitate to voice her struggles. Her struggles with sin or with making sense of her experience of God and the teachings of the Church.

Throughout the showings she experiences a tension between her experience of the love of God and the Church’s teachings on hell and judgment. She does not choose one or the other but holds to her experience and to the Church’s teachings.

She tells us:

“But Jesus who in this vision informed me of all that is needed by me, answered with these words and said: ‘It was necessary that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

– Long Text, Chapter 27

Neither God nor Julian resolves the tensions between the realities of sin and judgment and those of grace and love.

What Julian does is hold to both. Wise counsel for all of us, whatever our struggles or doubts, while trusting in God “that all shall be well.”

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