The crown of thorns
Julian says that an ironic symbol was her first revelation of Jesus's love. She finds comfort knowing that Jesus was not the kind of king who accepted honor from men. Instead of being divinized like an Egyptian king, he takes a coronation of thorns, covering himself in a veil of blood as the thorns puncture him head. This ironic humility of the hero shows a different kind of honor than the honor of winning and getting what one wants.
The irony of sin and evil
Sin and evil seem on one hand to stand against everything Jesus stood for, so if God created the universe, then as a Jesus-follower, Julian understands she bears the burden to talk about God's goodness in light of sin and evil. When she attains visions of an immortal, transcendental love, she realizes that the problems of sin and evil are not as ultimate as they seem. By attaining union with God, she finds a new, higher, more hopeful and peaceful point of view from which to view those issues.
The irony of Jesus's motherhood
There's this Bible verse that goes unnoticed in many ways: "In Christ there is no longer male nor female." That harmony of opposites seems paradoxical, and it is, but that is very similar to the quality of Julian's point of view about Jesus. To her, Jesus is a mother, and not only that, in her psychology, she reports that the kingship of Jesus Christ's Spirit is a source of nutrition, like a mother's umbilical relationship to its child.
The irony of resurrection
Another ironic aspect of Julian's point of view is her sureness in the resurrection of the body. Because she perceives the literal heart of Jesus Christ, the embodied creator still manifesting in human flesh, she is challenged to believe in a real, literal resurrection from the dead. The irony of this is quite obvious, given that resurrection of the dead is medically unwarranted. Instead of avoiding death, she ironically meditates on death and tries to respond in her faith.
The irony of masochistic mysticism
Julian is an ascetic mystic because she admits to intentionally inviting near death experiences in sickness, physical anguish, and emotional turmoil. She cries out to God in her suffering, and therefore, to attain a more visceral emotional connection to her need for truth and divine insight, she utilizes pain and suffering to attain higher states of enlightenment. This is ironic, but in 1343, the times were very different.
