Jesus is our Mother?

[Victorygirl]

In another Catholic forum on FB, I posted a message about a woman in my RCIA class (I am not yet confirmed), telling us that she saw Jesus as her mother.

I asked if that was a correct idea and I got a torrential outpouring of responses that said this statement is heretical (and many were not that nice about it.)

However, yesterday in class this woman showed me a statement by Juliana of Norwich (1342-1416) where she said:

<<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 ceases 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."

From “Revelations of Divine Love” by Juliana of Norwich (1342-1416), (LIX, LXXXVI).
So, is it heretical to call Jesus “mother” or not? Is the use of the word “Mother” symbolic?>>

Very confused!

Thanks!

 

[Thom18]

Jesus describes Himself in masculine terms, but also conjures up feminine imagery when describing His care for us, such as in Matthew 23:37:

How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!

God has no use for gender, but as He has revealed Himself in masculine terms, I think it’s only appropriate to refer to Him as such. Even though He takes on motherly characteristics as well, He never instructs us to refer to Him as “Mother” or “Sister”.

Besides, Jesus can’t be Mother- where would that leave the Father?

 

[AmericanRose]

Jesus is male, for one. He is God, who calls himself our Father, our brother, and who is referred to as the Prince of Peace. Clearly masculine qualities. God has no gender, as He is spirit and not corporal, but by referring to Himself in masculine terms, I would assume that is what He prefers. Thom18, I just saw your response. Very well put

 

[Victorygirl]

Thanks for your answer. I don’t know where it would leave “The Father.” My catechism book says God is neither male nor female. Maybe it would be more useful to leave gender out altogether? Or is gender meaningful? I wonder why he revealed himself in masculine terms if it doesn’t matter?

 

[Victorygirl]

Thanks American Rose. Then what did St. Juliana mean by calling him mother? I guess what the first person said, he acts like a mother gathering hens?

 

[Tis_Bearself]

The catechism book is correct. God doesn’t have a gender. A gender would be a limitation, and God isn’t limited.

God is generally referred to as “the Father” because that is how Jesus referred to him, as shown in Scripture. Therefore, we understand this to be the preferred or correct way of referring to God.

Juliana of Norwich is ascribing certain characteristics of mothers and fathers to God and pointing out that He has all of these characteristics, which is okay, but is the type of thing that deep spiritual thinkers come up with. (It reminds me a bit of St. Maximilian Kolbe’s deep thoughts on Mary that led to him calling her a “quasi-incarnation of the Holy Spirit”.) This type of thought can be interesting and enlightening for theologians and people with a well-developed faith, but it can be confusing to people at the beginner level in RCIA who are just starting to learn the Catholic concepts of God, and learning how to build a relationship with Him.

It likely does not do any moral harm to think of God as your mother or as your gender-neutral parent, because like I said, he is not limited by a physical gender except when he chooses to be (such a choice occurred when God manifested on earth as a human male named Jesus). But it’s important to understand that the Church sees God primarily as the Father, as a father figure, based on the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels. If you don’t absorb that point, then some of the later lessons on the Church being our Mother or Mary being our Mother or on various Church teachings may not make sense to you.

In addition, as you have now seen, the idea of gender is a huge hot-button topic in the Church today for a lot of reasons, and it’s generally not productive to have these kinds of gender-loaded discussions about God with anybody other than your best friends and your spiritual advisors.

I would suggest you just let this woman go off on her merry mindset of God as Mother and you concentrate on what’s being taught in the RCIA. It may be that this woman has extensively studied Juliana of Norwich, or didn’t have a good relationship with her own father, or just has gone off down a side track by reading things that are beyond the pale of the average RCIA class. But it’s having the bad effect of making you confused. So just smile and nod and let it go.

 

[Thom18]

Thanks for your answer. I don’t know where it would leave “The Father.” My catechism book says God is neither male nor female. Maybe it would be more useful to leave gender out altogether? Or is gender meaningful? I wonder why he revealed himself in masculine terms if it doesn’t matter?

I’m not positive- someone more knowledgeable than me might know. All I can think of is that the Jews lived in a patriarchal society, so it makes sense for God, as the ultimate authority, to be referred to masculinely. As I said, God has no use for a gender, but this is how He chose to reveal Himself.

 

[Victorygirl]

Hi TisBear!

I remember you from before and you always have great advice!

The woman, who is a dear woman and I grew up in Berkeley. We both grew up without any religious background and pretty much were left to our own devices.

When you grow up with 20 different religions thrown at you, and you are used to designing your own belief structure, its VERY HARD to understand ideas and concepts that are unswerving and foreign. I have a lot of compassion for her “confusion” although not sure that is the right word.

We are used to seeing God how we want Him to be, rather than the other way around. I don’t think she is trying to change up the program, rather trying to relate to Him in a way that makes sense to our upbringing. Also, I believe she was brought to the church by her love of the mystics.

Thanks for your wonderful explanation!

 

[Tis_Bearself]

All I can think of is that the Jews lived in a patriarchal society, so it makes sense for God, as the ultimate authority, to be referred to masculinely. As I said, God has no use for a gender, but this is how He chose to reveal Himself.

This is actually my thought on it too. A Father was a concept that the Patriarchs and the subsequent generations of Jewish people could easily understand.

In addition, when we get to Jesus’ time, Mary conceived a child with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is one of the persons of the Trinity and thus is God. In order for Mary, a human woman, to conceive a child with God, then God would have to be masculine for that particular function. Jesus, also a person of the Trinity and also God, was also a male, which again makes sense in view of the patriarchal society and the limited rights of women. Jesus would have had significant difficulty carrying out His mission as a female in those times. So God’s self-revelation as a male makes all kinds of sense.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

We are used to seeing God how we want Him to be, rather than the other way around. I don’t think she is trying to change up the program, rather trying to relate to Him in a

If you find my explanations helpful, then all glory to God for them. I’m not a big scholar on this.
I do tend to kind of dismiss gender in all areas (not just God).
I agree that people try to develop a God-concept that they can relate to and understand. Up to a point, this may work okay, but unfortunately some people eventually run into a conflict between Church teaching and their idea of what God is, and that could cause some of them to leave the Church, which we don’t want, so just be careful until you are a bit more well-grounded. Give it about 10 years I’d say. And be careful of those mystics. Focus on the Gospels.

 

[Victorygirl]

Jesus describes Himself in masculine terms, but also conjures up feminine imagery when describing His care for us, such as in Matthew 23:37:

How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!

God has no use for gender, but as He has revealed Himself in masculine terms, I think it’s only appropriate to refer to Him as such. Even though He takes on motherly characteristics as well, He never instructs us to refer to Him as “Mother” or “Sister”.

Besides, Jesus can’t be Mother- where would that leave the Father?

Thank you Tisbear I am sending you a big cyber hug!

 

[christofirst]

One commentator, Fr. John-Julian, OJN, explains it concisely, “Motherhood, Julian would say, is not a characteristic of womankind that Christ shares, but a characteristic of Christ that women share, and she declares that our natural responsibility to fatherhood and motherhood has its origin in the fatherhood and motherhood of god, and that responsibility is met by loving the Father/Mother God.”

It makes sense to me, but only when I think beyond our finite earthly concepts of male and female, father and mother.

Fr. John-Julian also points out that this understanding of Christ as Mother, not in a physical but in a spiritual sense, is not unique to Julian of Norwich, though she did most plainly express it. “It is a venerable tradition supported by Adam of Persegine, Aelred, Albert the Great, Aquinas, Augustine, Bernard of Cluny, Bonaventure, Brigid of Sweden…” he goes on to list several more theologians and Church teachers, but you can get the idea.

 

[Victorygirl]

Thank you!

 

[guanophore]

God has no gender, as He is spirit and not corporal

In Genesis the discussion goes…

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,a and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them. Gen.1 27

So it would seem that the fullest human expression of God’s own image is both male and female.

 

[guanophore]

Or is gender meaningful?

Gender is especially meaningful for those who need healing that is gender related. Perhaps your classmate finds healing in thinking of Jesus as “mother” because she has experienced more nurturing than she did with a human mother?

I had this situation with my father, who was an alcoholic and I felt never liked me or wanted me. It was very healing for me to experience God as “Father” in a nurturing, accepting, and affirming way.

I wonder why he revealed himself in masculine terms if it doesn’t matter?

It mattered hugely when Jesus came “in the fullness of time”, as Judaism was a strict patriarchal society. Women were considered property, and could not even testify in court as persons. They could not own anything, and always needed to belong to a man. Without question, there were no women Rabbi’s and a prophet who was a woman would have been discounted by most.

 

[guanophore]

If you find my explanations helpful, then all glory to God for them. I’m not a big scholar on this.

You are a glory to God Tis_Bearself. You are the ONLY one on this new board with the 'Admired" badge:

“This badge is granted when you receive at least 5 likes on 300 different posts. Wow! The community admires your frequent, high quality contributions to the conversations here.”

So it appears a LOT of us find your responses helpful.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Eh it just means I am wasting too much time on the board. I learn a lot from many other great posters here.
The forum has its headaches but it has enriched my own spiritual life quite a bit.

 

[guanophore]

Eh it just means I am wasting too much time on the board. I learn a lot from many other great posters here.

The forum has its headaches but it has enriched my own spiritual life quite a bit.

I think that badge is proof that your time here is not a 'waste", but a great benefit to a LOT of people. I have learned more about my faith on CAF than I learned in many decades before coming here.

 

[Victorygirl]

Tis_Bear, to a newbie like me, your thoughts and words are contributing to my spiritual journey. No way do I feel you are wasting too much time on the board. Maybe for your own good but not for mine!

Blessings to you and to all of you!

 

[Victorygirl]

It could be. Funny thing is Guanophore, I had no relationship with my father and my mother’s behavior is so erratic, I don’t trust her either. Its hard for me to bond with Jesus as a man or Mary as mother. I love them, but I still have trust issues. I don’t think Jesus is going to harm me, but maybe I feel that they are not paying me too much attention a lot of the time. But this is a subject for another time and place. My point is that I don’t have a preference for God as a man or a woman.