Sunday, May 10, 2026
Father Richard Rohr praises the wisdom of the mystic Julian of Norwich (1342–ca. 1416), who experienced the motherhood of God and Jesus.
Translator and dear friend of mine Mirabai Starr offers these words from the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich: “This beautiful word ‘mother’ is so sweet and kind in itself that it cannot be attributed to anyone but God.” [1] With these words, Julian offers us an amazing and foundational statement. She is not saying that the most beloved attributes of motherhood can analogously be applied to God, although I am sure she would agree they could. She is saying much more—that the very word mother is so definitive and beautiful in most people’s experience (not everybody’s, I must add) that it evokes, at its best, what we mean by God. This perspective is not what most of the world’s religions have taught or believed up to now—except for the mystics. Among these, Julian of Norwich stands as pivotal.
The concept and human experience of mother is so primal, so big, deep, universal, and wide that to apply it only to our own mothers is far too small a container. It can only be applied to God. This is revolutionary! Mother is, for Julian, the best descriptor for God Herself! I use this to illustrate the courageous, original, and yet fully orthodox character of Julian’s teaching.
Father Richard considers the archetypal human need for maternal care:
Julian helps me finally understand one major aspect of my own Catholic culture: why in heaven’s name, for centuries, did both the Eastern and Western Churches attribute so many beautiful and beloved places, shrines, hills, cathedrals, and works of religious art in the Middle East and Europe, not usually to Jesus, or even to God, but to some iteration of Mother Mary? Many people in Julian’s time didn’t have access to scripture—in fact, most couldn’t read at all. They interpreted at the level of archetype and symbol. The “word” or logos was quite good, but a feminine image for God was even better.
The soul needs a Mother Savior and a God Nurturer! God is, in essence, like a good mother—so compassionate that there is no need to compete with a Father God—as we see in Julian’s always balanced teachings. [2]
Mirabai Starr translates one of Julian’s teachings on God as Mother:
Only [God] who is our true Mother and source of all life may rightfully be called by this name. Nature, love, wisdom, and knowledge are all attributes of the Mother, which is God. Even though our earthly birth is low and humble … [God] is the one responsible for the birth of all babies that are born to their physical mothers.
The kind, loving mother, aware of the needs of her child, protects the child with great tenderness. This is the nature of motherhood…. Whenever a human mother nurtures her child with all that is beautiful and good, it is God-the-Mother who is acting through her
An Anchor-Hold of Love
Monday, May 11, 2026
Father Richard recounts the circumstances of Julian’s mystical experience:
Ever since I discovered Julian of Norwich so many decades ago, I have considered her one of my favorite mystics. Each time I return to her writings, I always find something new. Julian experienced her sixteen visions, or “showings” as she called them, all on one May night in 1373 when she was very sick and near death. As a priest held a crucifix in front of her, Julian saw Jesus suffering on the cross and heard him speaking to her for several hours. Like all mystics, she realized that what Jesus was saying about himself, he was simultaneously saying about all of reality. That is what unitive consciousness allows us to see.
Afterwards, Julian felt the need to go apart and reflect on her profound experience. She asked the bishop to enclose her in an anchor-hold, built against the side of St. Julian’s Church in Norwich, England. Julian was later named after that church. We do not know her real name, since she never signed her writing. (Talk about loss of ego!) The anchor-hold had a window into the church that allowed Julian to attend Mass and another window so she could counsel and pray over people who came to visit her. Such anchor-holds were found all over 13th- and 14th-century Europe.
Julian first wrote a short text about the showings, but then she patiently spent twenty years in contemplation and prayer, trusting God to help her discern the deeper meanings to be found in the visions. Finally, she wrote a longer text, titled Revelations of Divine Love. Julian’s interpretation of her God-experience is unlike the religious views common for most of history up to her time. It is not based in sin, shame, guilt, fear of God or hell. Instead, it is full of delight, freedom, intimacy, and cosmic hope. How did she retain such freedom? Maybe because she was not a priest, ordained to speak the party line?
As I read her words lately, what strikes me is the similarity between Julian’s time and our own. Here is how Episcopal priest and scholar Mary Earle describes Julian’s fourteenth-century context:
Julian lived at a time of vast social, [religious,] and political upheaval, incessant wars, and sweeping epidemics. Norwich, with a population of around 25,000 by 1330 … was struck viciously by the plague known as the Black Death. At its peak in the late 1340s in England, it killed approximately three-fourths of the population of Norwich. A young girl at this time, Julian was certainly affected in untold ways by this devastation. When the plague returned, she was about nineteen. [1]
In her anchor-hold, Julian certainly would have recognized the spiritual benefits of contemplation, such as the awakened ability through solitude to be personally present to divine love. Yet we must remember that she also let God’s love flow right through her to those on the street requesting her counsel, and to us through her writings.
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Individual Reflection
Where does the word Mother open something in your experience of God that the word Father does not — or where does it close something?
Group Discussion — choose one:
- What stirs in you when you hear God called Mother?
- Julian sat with one night’s vision for twenty years before she felt she understood it. What in your own life is still asking that kind of patience?
- Julian’s faith was “full of delight, freedom, intimacy, and cosmic hope” rather than sin, shame, and fear. Where have you tasted that kind of faith, and where do you still hunger for it?
