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Life Ways Motherhood If Christian women are not fully women, something fundamental will be lacking to the whole of humanity and hence also to the Church as well. We are a credible sign in the world today if we experience and embrace the gentle unfolding of our womanhood to the fullest of the feminine potential, integrating our femininity with our Christian vocation. Humanity can only be enriched by our recognition of and dialogue with the deeply feminine within us. Diving deep into the somewhat frightening and unexplored waters of our deepest feminine identity, we resurface, gulping in the oxygen that our lungs crave, our minds reeling from the staggering revelation of what we have discovered. A creative and courageous reflection on our personal experience of motherhood makes us humbly acknowledge that our feminine identity is the translation into human words and images of our very "mothering" by God. This use of the image of "mothering" that brings us to life and new life is, in this article, not intended to be part of the fray of patriarchal or feminist claims on the use and abuse of words. Instead it is a reflection on God as revealed in the writings of a fourteenth century English woman, Julian of Norwich. This recluse and mystic is, in the words of Thomas Merton, "without doubt, one of the most wonderful of Christian voices." In discovering God we discover our deepest identity and can claim our glory as women and mothers. In reflecting on our feminine identity we can humbly acknowledge the One whom we reveal. In 86 chapters, Julian records the revelations she received from God (in sixteen "showings"), as well as her twenty-years reflection on the meanings of these visions for herself and for all who would read her record of them. We have little or no biographical data about Juliana, if that is even her real name. (She could have acquired the name by which we call her from the fact that she lived as an anchorite attached to the Church of St. Julian in Norwich.) She was a responsible, serious, religious woman living as a recluse in her anchorhold attached to the church. She is another witness to the long line of those who have brought renewal to the Church and to society through personal conversion and through speaking out of a response made to the presence and power of God. Her Showings give us an assurance of being loved, of being held securely in the unseverable bond between Christ and the souls of all who shall be saved. Chapters 59 through 61 speak of this bond as one of "mothering." "Our high Father, Almighty God, who is Being, knew us and loved us from before any time. From this knowing, in His most marvelous deep charity, He willed that the Second Person should become our Mother, our Brother and our Savior." (page 166) Motherhood has been dealt a bad hand by some of today's proponents of woman's advancement and liberation. For instance, Hester Einstein in her book Contemporary Feminist Thought, summarizes Shulamith Firestone's new materialist theory of history found in her book The Dialectic of Sex. Einstein's survey of this theory is frighteningly prophetic of present legislative and scientific trends: "The feminist revolution would come about, therefore, only by means of the final dissolution of the `biological' family, through the creation of conditions whereby `genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally.' That is, the physical realities of reproduction and childcare [responsibilities which burdened the mother] would be overcome, through establishing the option of `artificial reproduction,' and the socialization of childcare (that is, sharing the work among all members of society). Only with the abolition of women's physical and psychological responsibility for the reproduction of the species could women's liberation be accomplished." (Contemporary Feminist Thought, 1983 G. K. Hall & Co., pages 16-17) But the Scriptures themselves lay tremendous weight on motherhood, even using it as an image of love in the divinity--from "should a mother forget her child," to Wisdom dancing before the Lord in joy, to Christ's lament: "as a hen gathers her chicks beneath her wings so I have longed to gather you." St. Paul speaks of being "in labor" for the members of the faithful. The feminine reality of "mothering" is revelatory of a divine attitude of which we are both recipient and imitator. Dame Juliana reflects on the natural motherhood through which we all are born into this world: "A mother's service is nearest, readiest and surest. It is nearest because it is most natural. It is readiest because it is most loving. And it is surest because it is most true.... The natural loving mother, who recognizes and knows the need of her child, takes care of it most tenderly, as the nature and condition of motherhood will do. And continually, as the child grows in age and size, she changes what she does but not her love. When the child has grown older, she allows it to be punished, breaking down vices to enable the child to receive virtues and grace." Juliana ends her portrait of a mother, however, with a surprising twist in her reflection: "This work, with all that is fair and good, our Lord does through those by whom it is done." (page 168-169) The home becomes a sanctuary, the cradle an altar, a mother's body the womb of Christ. Christ is the "ground of our natural making." (page 167) With even more tenderness, Juliana claims that Christ "mothers" us in the life of grace. Her words remind us of a mother patiently and firmly forming the dispositions of her child. "He kindles our understanding, He prepares our ways, He eases our conscience, He comforts our soul, He lightens our heart.... And when we fall, He raises us hastily, by His lovely calling and His gracious touching. When we are strengthened by His sweet working, then we deliberately choose Him, by His grace, and choose to be His servants and His lovers forever, without end.... "A mother may allow her child to fall sometimes, and be made uncomfortable in various ways for his own profit, but because of her love she can never allow any kind of peril to come to her child. And though our earthly mother can allow her child to perish, our heavenly Mother, Jesus, can never allow us who are His children to perish." (page 170) Christ has worked our salvation, and bears us, so to speak, in his "womb" until the moment we are "delivered" into eternal bliss. When he asked Juliana if she were pleased that he had suffered the passion for her, he replied, "If you are satisfied, I am satisfied. It is a joy, a bliss, an endless delight to Me that ever I suffered the passion for you, and if I could suffer more, I would." Juliana reflects on this Showing: "We are His bliss, we are His reward; we are His glory, we are His crown. It was a singular marvel and a thing most delightful to behold, that we are His crown. All of this is so great a joy to Jesus that for it He counts all His painful labor, His difficult passion, His cruel and shameful death as nothing." (page 95) Just as a mother's happiness lies in saving her child from peril, "Jesus wills that we pay heed to the bliss that is in the blessed Trinity on account of our salvation." (page 97) What an earthshattering revelation: God's bliss lies in our salvation! We, stumbling, sinning, stuttering children are God's--GOD'S!--cause for joy. It made Him happy to save us, and He would die over and over again if it were necessary, not minding the pain, if only we would rejoice that we are His joy. With utter shamelessness we can delight in Him, and not be afraid of blame. "I ask nothing else of you for my bitter labor," Jesus seems to say, "but that I might really please you.... My delight is your holiness, and your endless joy and bliss with me.... See what delight and endless bliss I have in your salvation. For My love, enjoy it now with Me.... For My love, rejoice in Me, for of all the things you could do, this would please Me most." (pages 98, 99, and 115) As mothers have a love for their children, even erring children, that others sometimes find hard to understand, God also has an incomprehensible love that stretches the concept of justice to the breaking point and shatters it. Juliana writes: "God also shows that sin will be no shame but an honor to man, for just as for every sin there is an answering pain in reality, so for every sin a bliss is given to the same soul. Just as different sins are punished by different pains according to their seriousness, so shall they be rewarded by different joys in heaven according to the pain and sorrow they have caused the soul on earth. For the soul that shall come to heaven is so precious to God, and the place itself is so glorious, that the goodness of God never allows the soul which will come there to sin without giving it a reward for suffering that sin. The sin suffered is made known without end, and the soul is blissfully restored by exceeding glories.... Though the sinner be healed, his wounds are seen before God--not as wounds but as honors. And likewise, as we are punished here with sorrow and penance, we shall be rewarded in heaven by the courteous love of our Lord God Almighty, Who wills that no one who comes there shall suffer any loss at all for his bitter labor. For He sees sin as sorrow and pain to His lovers, to whom, for love, He assigns no blame.... Our failures do not prevent Him from loving us." (pages 117, 119) Despite the sometimes second-class importance given to mothers today, motherhood is a sign that God makes us a gift of his own way of loving. Motherhood is a woman's glory. By living out her physical, emotional and spiritual bond with her children, she makes visible--incarnates and translates--God's love-presence on this earth. Woman is a stabilizing force and irreplaceable promise of God's faithfulness to his covenant written in the blood of Christ on the passionate Friday that witnessed his death on the cross. In a time when prophetic accounts of vengeful punishment abound within and outside the Christian traditions, a time when people are deeply afraid, women acquire in the world "an influence, an effect and a power never hitherto achieved." (Vatican Council II's message to women on December 8, 1965) Their fullest potential as women, their deepest feminine identity assures the world of the faithfulness of Christ who says, "I may make all things well, I can make all things well, I will to make all things well, and I shall make all things well. And you yourself shall see that all manner of things shall be well." (page 106) Excerpts from The Revelation of Divine Love in Sixteen Showings Made to Dame Julian of Norwich, copyright © 1977, 1994 by M. L. del Mastro, published by Triumph Books/Liguori Publications. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Copyright © 1999-2003, Daughters of St. Paul. All Rights Reserved.
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