INTRODUCTION The medieval theologian Julian of Norwich was a mystic, writer, anchoress and spiritual director for her time. She is gaining in popularity for our time as she provides a spiritual template for contemplative prayer and practice in her compilation of writings found in Revelations of Divine Love. The insightful meditations provide the backdrop and basis for her Trinitarian theology’s embrace of God’s Motherhood found in the Trinity. Her representative approach of the all-encompassing unconditional love of a mother who nurtures, depicts Christ as our Mother ascending to the placement of Second hood within the Trinity while giving voice to the duality of God. Her choices of metaphors are simplistic explanations providing the …show more content…
Dissecting Norwich’s use of metaphor descriptors in comparison as “a sublime creativity that likens us to God.” Norwich speaks with gentle authority as she seeks God. Her inner soul reflects the “three-ness found within God’s as all mighty, all wisdom and all love.” God is Father, Son, Holy Ghost, Creator, Lover, Keeper, Mother, Father, and Spouse. Norwichs’ Christian sees a “threefold divineness” occurring. God permeates the universe creating the triangle wherein all find their existence. The use of threes is prominent as a central focus of language while the “tri-unity of God effects the tri-unity of all things.” The depictions include: the properties of God, manners of longing of God, manners of knowing, the gifts of God, degrees of bliss, properties of the hazelnut, three wounds in her life, the virtues of Mary, the means to come to heaven, the aspects of the “fiend.” All of this language is celebratory. George Tavard’s article “The Christology of the Mystics” notes the pattern found within Julian’s visions or “shewings”: “ They follow in the main, the sequence of the Passion: (1) crowning with thorns, (2) the discoloring of Christ’s face, (3) the creation, (4) the flagellation, (5) Christ’s victory over the “Fiend,” (6) the heavenly reward, (7) God’s goodness, (8) the death of Christ, (9) the relation of …show more content…
In her embracement of the principle as Christ as Mother in the Second placement of Trinity she invokes a mothers unconditional love of her children. We are reminded of the passages in Isaiah of the Lord’s feeding his children as a mother feeds her children at her bosom. Providing the manna they need. This invokes New Testament passages as well as Christ teaches we will be provided manna through Him. In her theology of Motherhood we see Christ as our Mother in his birthing of our new creation and rebirth in our acceptance of Him as Savior during the Passion of crucifixion. He is likened to a mother in labor giving birth in the new creation. This is the truest expression of “maternal love” found in the Passion. Julian invokes a Marian theology through her depiction of Christ as mother. Mary is Jesus’ mother yet Christ gives birth to all as he enables the Kingdom of God to give birth in the world through the action of the church. She allows us to understand the duality of God. This concept was not new. The Old Testament prophets portrayed God as a loving mother nurturing, caressing, and comforting her children. Isaiah invokes God in labor giving birth while Psalms compares the femininity of the body and the creator. Jesus himself in the New Testament speaks of drawing us to him as a Mother draws her baby chicks under her
In her autobiography The Book of Margery Kempe, Margery Kempe tells the story of her spiritual journey in Medieval England over a twenty five year period. It recounts her quest to establish spiritual authority as a result in personal visions and conversations with Jesus and God that she has. It begins around 1393, with Margery’s self-acknowledged onset of psychosis that she calls as her spiritual crisis. In the work The Book of Margery Kempe, Margery shows symptoms of postpartum psychosis that causes her to directly communicate with numerous aspects of the divine.
Julian of Norwich praises God because he is good in every way and he loves absolutely everything and she explains how he is everything that we find comforting in our lives. Julian of Norwich states, “At the same time, our Lord showed me a spiritual vision of his familiar love. I saw that for us he is everything that we find good and comforting. He is our clothing, wrapping us for love, embracing and enclosing us for tender love, so that he can never leave us, being himself everything that is good for us, as I understand it” (40). Julian of Norwich describes God as a very loving and generous God. Julian of Norwich idolizes God and tells us that God will never leave us and he will always love us no matter what the circumstances may be. Julian of Norwich explains how there are three properties that she got from her vision. She states, “… the first is that God made it, the second is that God loves it, the third is that God cares for it. But what the maker, the carer and the lover really is to me, I cannot tell; for until I become one substance with him, I an never have complete rest or true happiness; that is to say, until I am so bound to him that there is no created thing between my God and me” (40). Julian of Norwich
...escribes two different aspects of God’s Love. The first is that God’s love can be very commanding, resulting in a sovereign relationship between man and God. The second being that God’s love is everything, all around and forever present. There is nothing that was not made by God, and without his love nothing would continue to exist. Julian implies that it is humanity’s duty to observe these “sixteen showings” and to make it their goal to work towards that oneness with God. Once man is able to obtain this ultimate unity with God, he will be able to understand the true passion of God.
Revelations of Divine Love is a 14th century masterpiece written by Julian of Norwich. This book is an account of St. Julian’s sixteen different mystical revelations in which she had encountered at a time of great suffering and illness. St. Julian focussed on the many “mysteries of Christianity.” Through her many revelations she encountered God’s vast love, the existence of evil, God’s heart for creation, the father and mother-heart of God, and the need to obey her Father in Heaven. Amongst these revelations the most powerful was the revelation of God’s love and character. Revelations of Divine Love is a wonderful source of revelation to connect a reader to the Father.
The depiction of Madonna and Christ is among the most ancient and common in Christian iconography and has an extensive number of variations because apart from its symbolic religious functions, it allows one to interpret the link between mother and child in many aspects. (8)
In chapter two, ‘Francis and His Companions,’ Cunningham exposes the considerable growth in Francis of Assisi’s influence, as he recounts his companions that joined him after deciding to live his life. The chapter is significant because it exposes how Francis of Assisi’s gospel is different from the orthodox Catholic practices, which recognized the pope, as the sole Vicar of Christ. (Cunningham 32). This chapter is important in my life because it reinforces my conviction God is the almighty and all-powerful, and all people regardless of the status of the needed to worship
In I.17.1 of John Calvin’s work, Calvin argues that people do not need to worry about anything they do not understand because God takes care of everything. It is important to understand that this is not the beginning of Calvin’s Institutes of Christian Religion, because his points in chapter sixteen set the basis for his argument in this next section. Chapter sixteen on providence gives the foundation of
Ford, J., John Mirk's Festial: Orthodoxy, Lollardy, and the Common People in Fourteenth-Century England (DS Brewer, 2006).
When speaking of medieval literature, Chaucer, Gower and Langland are quite often the most noted. However, recent studies have provided modern scholars with a wide variety of medieval women writers from all over Europe and a few in England. The most widely anthologized English female writer is Julian of Norwich. Julian was an anchoress, and as Marcelle Thiebaux notes, "The anchorite movement was widespread in England from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries. Both men and women chose this extreme form of asceticism, which was favored and encouraged by the crown, the church, and the laity. Anchorholds were small, narrow cells attached to churches or friaries" (442). 1[1] The process of becoming an anchoress was difficult and complicated, but suffice it to say that after the process was completed "the anchoress was sealed up, never to re-emerge into the world. Penance, meditation, reading, and in some cases writing were the anchorite's sole activities" (Thiebaux 442). This was the case for Julian of Norwich. She was "well read in Scripture, dwelling especially on the Psalms, the gospels, and the epistles of Paul and John, ...and was the first English woman to write a book" (Thiebaux 443-44). Her Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich 2[2] possesses literary and religious value, and the work lends itself quite naturally to a feminist reading. In her clear, lucid, prose style, combined with the images of the medieval mystic, Julian establishes herself as an independent, female religious authority and she gives a staunch affirmation of the divinity of God with this unique view point: the motherhood of God.
...s distributed in Theology 101 at the University of Notre Dame, Fremantle on 22 April 2008.
Emerson, Kathy Lynn. The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in Renaissance England From 1485-1649. Cincinnati: Writer's Digest Books, 1996.
The Late Middle Ages saw great theological discrepancies through the progression of Christian mysticism. The exploration into spiritual practices and the unification of the soul during this period led to great philosophical works. The Cloud of Unknowing and The Imitation of Christ are two noteworthy texts that discuss one’s aspiration to attain union with God. The Cloud of Unknowing is an anonymously authored spiritual exercise that accentuates movement toward the contemplative life by acknowledging what is unknown by man. In contrast, The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis is a spiritual guide which emphasizes that the way to be fully Christian is to live in the imitation of Jesus Christ. While many of the thoughts concerning human reason and withdrawal from the corporal world are similar in the texts, the two are inherently different as the account in The Imitation of Christ is more compelling due to its focus on a humanistic objective while acquiring union and salvation with God.
Kerr, H. (1990). Readings in christian thought (2nd ed.). H. T. Kerr (Ed.). Nashville: Abingdon Press.
...is sweet. But when there is sorrow and bitterness he finds refuge in his motherland. Your mother is there to protect you. And that is why we say that Mother is Supreme"(pg.116).
Westphal, M. (2009). Whose Community? Which Interpretation?: Philosophical Hermeneutics for the Church. Baker Academic. 107