Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 34:1 (Winter 2020)
Article: “Precious Food Of True Life”: Christ Our Mother, Female Embodiment, And The Eucharist In Julian Of Norwich’s "Revelations Of Divine Love"
Author: Eliza Stiles

PP 34:1 (Winter 2020) p. 7

“Precious Food Of True Life”: Christ Our Mother, Female Embodiment, And The Eucharist In Julian Of Norwich’s Revelations Of Divine Love

Eliza Stiles

Eliza Stiles is an MA student in systematic theology at Wheaton College Graduate School as well as the director of student ministries at Glen Ellyn Evangelical Covenant Church in the Chicago, Illinois, metropolitan area. Eliza was among the winners of CBE’s 2019–20 Alvera Mickelsen Memorial Scholarship.

The embodiment of Christ is central to the Christian faith as we confess God incarnate. The second person of the Trinity taking on flesh is integral to how we understand the means of our salvation—that Christ, fully God and fully human, died and was resurrected. We remember Christ’s broken body and shed blood for our salvation in the celebration of the Eucharist, a tangible practice that unites and sustains the body of Christ, the church. Julian of Norwich, in her Revelations of Divine Love, recounts and meditates on her revelations of Christ dying and the significance of his body and blood in his work of salvation and continued work of sustaining us. In these revelations, she appropriates this salvific work to Christ, our true mother.1 Using Julian’s imagery of the maternal Christ, I argue that the inclusion of embodied female experiences in how the church understands the Eucharist is necessary for the eucharistic celebration to truly unite the whole body of Christ.

This article first introduces Julian and her Revelations in order to situate her metaphor of God as mother within her theological work. Secondly, I unfold the intricacies of this metaphor as Julian assigns to Christ the “motherly” characteristics of mercy and safety. Thirdly, I explore the deep well of imagery between Christ’s work and the experiences of motherhood, particularly in the eucharistic language of body broken and blood shed. This culminates in an examination of how we participate in the Eucharist and the necessity of knowing and sharing in the experiences of those gathered with us.

Julian And Our True Mother

As an anchoress2 at St. Julian’s Church in Norwich, England, Julian had spent her years quietly praying and meditating on God until she became ill and believed the end of her life was drawing near. In the year 1373, with a crucifix brought close to her bedside, upon which she fixed her attention, she began to see drops of blood flowing from the crown of thorns on Christ’s head (3.42–43). Through these drops of blood, Julian entered into her revelations of Christ’s bloody death and the realization of God’s love being as endless as the flow of blood from Jesus�...