Womb of Mercy

I come across masters of expression every once in a while and to paraphrase them does injustice. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis is one of these people. In his book, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew: Vol. 1, he comments on the fifth beatitude. Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy.

"Having mercy at bottom means bestowing life. God is merciful by nature because he is the Creator by nature. This essential aspect of mercy has solid philological roots. Recall the particular way the Benedictus refers to God's mercy: per viscera misericordiae Dei nostri (Lk 2:78), which the older translations rendered literally as "by the bowels of the compassion of our God". One word for mercy in Hebrew is rachamim, which literally means the "viscera" occupying the abdominal region and , specifically the womb. Probably one reason for this is the feeling of compassion manifested physically in that area of the body. We say that our "heart skipped a beat" or our "insides turned over". In Spanish, something held to be very dear is said to be entranable, from entranas (one's "insides" or "entrails"). More profoundly this expression is metaphorically referring to God as a mother who has compassion on her children and feels it in that part of her body because it is there that she conceived them, bore them, and gave them birth. The act of having mercy may thus also be called the act of giving birth in the spirit...

God calls us to be in the world and extension of his paternal and maternal activity, whereby he is ever bearing and giving birth. Ex utero matutini velut rorem genui te [From the womb of the morning like the dew have I begotten you] (Ps 109:4), says the Father to the Son and to all those who are born in the Son"(Merikakis, pp 197-8).

God also says, "Can a woman forget her sucking child,that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget,yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have carved you on the palms of my hands;your walls are continually before me" (Is 49:15-16). We have a God who is merciful to us and knows us from before our conception in the womb. We have a God who Himself became Mercy Incarnate in the Womb of the Virgin. John the Baptist "leapt for joy" in the womb of Elizabeth with the joy of receiving the Good News of the Mercy of God from Mary. God was so faithful to us that He wrote the law of love in our hearts of flesh even as He allowed us to write our names in the palms of His hands and soles of His feet with our sins and the nails of the Cross--the spear of Longinus writing our names in His most Sacred Heart in return for the law of love he writes in our hearts. The Anima Christi says, "Within your wounds hide me." I say, "Within your womb hide me."