Our mother Jesus

On May 13 in1373, Julian of Norwich received the sixteen visions that she spent the next twenty years or so contemplating, writing about and living out.With Mother's Day coming on May 13 this year, it seems fitting to include some quotes from the passages where Julian writes of Jesus as Mother. It's hard to pick one succinct quote, so here are several from chapters 58 and 59, interspersed with some spring flowers, in honor of our mother Jesus.

And so in our making, God almighty is our loving Father, and God all wisdom is our loving Mother, with the love and goodness of the Holy Spirit, which is all one God, one Lord.

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 prescient 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.

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.

I understand three ways of contemplating motherhood in God. The first is the foundation of our nature's creation; the second is his taking of our nature, where the motherhood of grace begins; the third is the motherhood at work. And in that, by the same grace, everything is penetrated, in length and in breadth, in height and in depth without end; and it is all one love.