To the unknowing reader, this extended metaphor might seem somewhat unusual and idiosyncratic. And then he wants us to show a child’s characteristics, which always naturally trusts in its mother’s love in well-being and in woe. For if he sees that it is profitable to us to mourn and to weep, with compassion and pity he suffers that until the right time has come, out of his love. Baker observes, Julian also explains “God’s apparent withdrawal” from the world along maternal lines, “as a pedagogic strategy for teaching the faithful to seek and trust him.” We see this in the following passage:Īnd if we do not then feel ourselves eased, let us at once be sure that is behaving as a wise Mother. “The mother can give her child to suck of her milk,” she writes, “but our precious Mother Jesus can feed us with himself, and does, most courteously and most tenderly, with the blessed sacrament” of the Eucharist. Strikingly, she characterizes Christ as a mother, likening divine love to maternal love. Scholars have long acknowledged the uniqueness and significance of the so-called Short Text and Long Text that make up Julian’s single work, particularly at the theological level.
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