Woman and Mercy
Mercy, piety and visceral love. What moves the Works of Mercy
The word mercy or pity in Arabic, translate the same way: Rahma or Ra7ma and have a deeper “H” sound with the letter 7. It resembles how this sound is spelled in the Arabic letters “ح.” This letter is also used to say 7anan, hanan, tenderness and also to say 7ob, love. The sound makes the effect of warmth, embrace, deep welcome.
The etymology of this word in Arabic comes from the word Ra7em which means “womb,” related to the mother, the woman where she guards, nurtures, carries, protects, makes children.
So I would like to reflect with you on the action “to have mercy and pity” but from the point of view of the etymology of Semitic languages and especially Arabic.
In biblical language, especially Hebrew language, when we talk about mercy, we think of visceral love, mother’s love.
There are many verses in the Bible that symbolize this, but I have chosen two as examples.
Isaiah 66:13
As a mother comforts a child,
so will I comfort you;
in Jerusalem you will be comforted.
1 Thessalonians 2:7
“Though we could assert our authority as apostles of Christ. Instead we have been loving in your midst, like a mother who cares for her children.”
We are all familiar with Rembrandt’s famous painting of the “Return of the Prodigal Son” where we see the father’s hands being represented by a man’s hand and a woman’s hand, precisely to express a mother’s deep acceptance.
This is about God’s look, attitude and relationship for us. But can we have this mercy toward people who are not our children?
Visceral love is felt at two moments more than others: when welcoming a child or during a first meeting and when about to lose or at the moment of the inability to intervene to prevent suffering or harm to this child. Mary in that moment was more mother than all the other moments, she was ra7ma. She lost everything and from that moment she became The Mother.
This love is so great to the point of embracing all humanity. A wound so deep that it opened Mary wide to a great work of love. A work that happens and is not done or planned.
I was in focolare (focolarine community) in Syria, but at one point we had to leave the city and go to Lebanon for a period, leaving the people in the community of youth, families, and kids, and this period was very hard and painful for me.
After a year and a half of communicating from afar (this was in 2013, there were not the many means that there are now, and they often did not have electricity), a group of these people including some young people I was following in Syria came to Lebanon for a meeting.
One of the mothers told me about her difficulties with her teenage daughter, who wanted to get a new cell phone. I was able to stay with these kids for a while and we talked about the sensitive topic of not burdening the parents especially in that difficult situation. The topic of a new cell phone also came up, and to my surprise, the girl in question burst into tears, saying that she had lost so many friends and girlfriends because they had left, and with those who are still there, she cannot make herself attractive without a new cell phone.
I realized how much pain was behind that desire of hers, a teenager devastated by seeing so many friends lost in a cruel and sudden way.
I cried too, we all cried. I felt that I failed in love because before I spoke I should have listened to this young person, and before I chastised I should have known the situation. Ra7ma is the top of this scale of love that starts from a wound. I apologized to her and we talked about it at length. All she had to do was listen and everything would take a new turn.
Mercy and visceral mercy, the prerogative of a woman, of a mother, is embodied in all the Works of Mercy. It is from there that we can feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, console the afflicted, etc.
Then we draw on God’s mercy, His maternal love, and depart to every brother and sister we meet, bringing consolation like a mother.
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- Photo by Giu Vincente on Unsplash