Julian of Norwich

JULIAN OF NORWICH

'You wait until your father comes home'. How often have you heard those words spoken when a child has done something wrong. Maybe, you have said them yourself to your children.

With such an attitude to fatherhood, little wonder that when children come to apply the image of father to God, they should sometimes perceive him as someone who is distant, remote, aloof, and of whom one ought to be afraid when they have done something naughty.

Sadly, such an image of God is sometimes carried through into adulthood.

We therefore need to be reminded of St Julian of Norwich, whose feast day we celebrate on the 8th May. Who was Julian? Why do we remember her, and what is her relevance to us today?

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First of all, Julian was not her name. She was an anonymous Benedictine nun, who lived at the end of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth century, as a hermit at the church of St Julian in Norwich, from which she has taken her name. In her autobiography she describes how, at the age of thirty, she experienced a serious illness and was very close to death. Her mother and a friend watched over her bedside, and the parish priest was sent for, who held a crucifix before her.

On the 8th May 1373, she saw the image of Christ bleeding on the crucifix and heard him speak to her. She claims to have had fifteen separate revelations of God between 4am and 9am on that day. These she called 'showings'. She had a further 'showing' the following night.

Upon recovery, she committed these 'showings' to writing in a book now called, The Revelations of Julian of Norwich. In doing so, she made history, in so far as this is the very first book ever to be written by a woman. From that day, it rapidly became a classic in western spirituality.

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Of her first revelation, she writes, 'In this he showed me something small, no bigger that a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand ... I looked at it with my eye of understanding and thought, what can it be? I was amazed that it could last, for I thought because of its littleness it would suddenly fall to nothing.

'And I answered in my understanding, it lasts because God loves it; and thus everything has been through God'. She goes on to explain, 'that God made it because he is the creator; that he protects it out of his love, and that he preserves it because he is the lover.'

That hazel nut, for Julian, represented the Christian soul in the loving hand of God. No matter how insignificant; no matter how fragile; no matter how worthless we may feel at times, God is always holding us in his loving hand, protecting and preserving us.

Julian goes on to describe his loving care for us with the following words, 'He is our clothing, who wraps and enfolds us for love, embraces and shelters us, surrounds us with his love, which is so tender that he may never desert us.'

ln other words, God looks after us as a mother would look after her child. We should therefore not be surprised that she goes on to describe God as our "Mother', to express his homeliness, his tenderness and his intimacy of love.

Julian goes on to talk about the Christian as being carried in the womb of Jesus, 'He alone bears us for joy and for endless life...He carries us within him and in love and travail.' Jesus feeds us, 'as 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.'

Continuing with this mother image for Jesus, she says, 'The mother can lay her child tenderly to her breast, but our tender Mother Jesus can lead us easily into his blessed breast through his sweet open side...'

Just as a mother watches over her child as it begins to explore its parameters, so Mother Jesus watches over us. Julian writes, 'The mother may sometimes suffer the child to fall, and to be distressed in various ways, for its own benefit, but she can never suffer any kind of peril to come to the child, because of her love. And though our earthly mother may suffer her child to perish, our heavenly Mother Jesus, may never suffer us who are his children to perish.'

Sometimes children, do something naughty letting their parents down, and they are afraid of what their parents might say. However, Julian assures us that, 'Our courteous mother does not flee away, for nothing would be less pleasing to him, but he wants us to behave like a child. For when it is distressed and frightened, it runs quickly to its mother; and it can do no more than call to the mother for help with all its might. So he wants us to act as a meek child saying; My kind mother, my gracious mother, my beloved mother, have mercy on me. I have made myself filthy and unlike you, and may not and cannot make it right except with your help and grace.'

To sum up Julian's image of God as Mother, the writer, Jennifer Heimmel has observed, 'Julian's majestic vision proceeds though all the various stages of enclosure and growth within the womb; the trauma of labour and birth; the sucking of the infant and the feeding of the child; the care and education of the older child; the setting of examples and disciplining of the child as it matures.'

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I would suggest that Julian’s image of God, as expressed in her 'showings', helps to correct the stern, aloof, terrifying image which we sometimes have of God when we use the image of father. We tend to think he is distant and not interested in little me.

Julian reminds us of the feminine side of God's character, and helps to express the warmth, tenderness, intimacy and homeliness of the love of God, which envelopes us, as the palm of one’s hand envelopes a hazel nut.