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The Old Testament offers images of God’s constant and tender love for us being like a mother’s love. Even before the time of English theologian Julian of Norwich, a number of male theologians had written of Christ as our mother. But Julian expands greatly on this metaphor of the motherhood of Jesus or of God.

Here’s one: Christ is our mother because he birthed us into endless life. Julian compared his suffering of a mother in childbirth, a suffering that Jesus undertakes willingly in order to bring us to life. She writes at a time when the risk of dying in childbirth was much greater than it is today.

Here’s another: Jesus’ feeding us in the sacrament of communion is like a mother nursing her baby. “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, which is the precious food of true life” (Showings, 298).

This message is excerpted from “The motherhood of God” by Elaine Julian Ramshaw in the May 2021 Gather magazine. Today we commemorate Julian of Norwich, renewer of the church, c. 1416.