Luke 13:34
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those
who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children
together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not
willing!
Anselm of Canterbury
Jesus, as a mother you gather your people to you:
You are gentle with us as a mother with her children;
Often you weep over our sins and our pride:
tenderly you draw us from hatred and judgment.
You comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds:
in sickness you nurse us,
and with pure milk you feed us.
Jesus, by your dying we are born to new life:
by your anguish and labor we come forth in joy.
Despair turns to hope through your sweet goodness:
through your gentleness we find comfort in fear.
Your warmth gives life to the dead:
your touch makes sinners righteous.
Lord Jesus, in your mercy heal us:
in your love and tenderness remake us.
In your compassion bring grace and forgiveness:
for the beauty of heaven may your love prepare us.
Julian of Norwich
God is our Mother
It is a characteristic of God to overcome evil with good.
Jesus Christ therefore, who himself overcame evil with good, is our true Mother.
We received our ‘Being’ from Him and this is where His Maternity starts
And with it comes the gentle Protection and Guard of Love which will never
cease to surround us.
Just as God is our Father, so God is also our Mother.
And He showed me this truth in all things, but especially in those sweet words
when He says: “It is I”.
As if to say, I am the power and the Goodness of the Father, I am the
Wisdom of the Mother, I am the Light and the Grace which is blessed love, I am
the Trinity, I am the Unity, I am the supreme Goodness of all kind of things, I
am the One who makes you love, I am the One who makes you desire, I am the
never-ending fulfilment of all true desires. (...)
Our highest Father, God Almighty, who is ‘Being’, has always known us and
loved us: because of this knowledge, through his marvellous and deep charity and
with the unanimous consent of the Blessed Trinity, He wanted the Second Person
to become our Mother, our Brother, our Saviour.
It is thus logical that God, being our Father, be also our Mother. Our Father
desires, our Mother operates and our good Lord the Holy Ghost confirms; we are
thus well advised to love our God through whom we have our being, to thank him
reverently and to praise him for having created us and to pray fervently to our
Mother, so as to obtain mercy and compassion, and to pray to our Lord, the Holy
Ghost, to obtain help and grace.
I then saw with complete certainty that God, before creating us, loved us, and
His love never lessened and never will. In this love he accomplished all his
works, and in this love he oriented all things to our good and in this love our
life is eternal.
With creation we started but the love with which he created us was in Him from
the very beginning and in this love is our beginning.
And all this we shall see it in God eternally.
(Revelations of Divine Love)
