God loves us “from the depths of his bowels”
Homily of March 17, 2021
The chapter of the prophet of Isaiah of which we heard an extract at the very beginning of this reading deserves to be read and re-read because it is very beautiful. He is very handsome and he comes to join those who sometimes come to doubt God.
“The Lord has abandoned me. The Lord has forgotten me”.
How many men and women can sometimes be tempted to think that God has forgotten them when they have prayed and asked for the right things? And if their prayers were answered, they were not answered as they would have liked. They may even think that God is deaf to their appeals.
To these, the prophet Isaiah responds what he himself experienced, namely this visceral attachment of God to us men who pray to him. The prophet has this expression, after describing the turmoil of those who believe they have been abandoned:
“Can the woman forget her infant? No longer have any tenderness for the son of his womb? Even if she forgot it, I will not forget it. »
We discover there what we call today empathy, compassion. Feelings that are honored by our generation because they almost invite us to put ourselves in the other's shoes and join them, as if from within. The Hebrew, to speak of this compassion, of this mercy of God, has this term “RaHaMîn” which tells us of a love that comes from the entrails, a love that comes to us from the depths of our being. And when we are touched in the bowels then we understand what love of mercy and compassion can be. Love full of tenderness and fidelity tells us the psalm that follows the first reading, psalm 144.
“The Lord is tender and merciful
Slow to anger and full of love
The goodness of the Lord is for us
His tenderness for all his works…”
When we know that God loves us with a love of the womb, divine if I may say so, in this very logic of the scriptures, this perhaps makes us hear in another way this prayer of the Hail Mary when we evoke “And Jesus, the fruit of your womb is blessed”. Mary loving Christ with her whole being, including her womb.
The great risk would be to believe that there would be only women who would have entrails and who could love in this way. If you are deeply spoiled with this depth of your being, Scripture reminds us that it is "every man, men and women" who have entrails: therefore man is quite capable.
We see it in the very life of Jesus who, quite often, finds himself moved and touched in his entrails.
“Disembarking, he saw a large crowd. He was taken with pity, touched in the entrails by this crowd and by the cripples who were at the heart of this crowd. » (Matthew, 14) We are called, as baptized persons, as Christians, to let ourselves be touched, to be taken in our way of loving even in our entrails.
"You therefore the elect of God, his saints and his beloved, clothe yourselves with bowels of mercy, kindness, humility, meekness, patience. »(Colossians, 3).
Loving like this, with our entrails, what surrounds us. How not to think about it on this day when we are celebrating a wedding anniversary… Loving each other with such love between spouses, in the most intimate part of our being.
Loving one another with family, loving one another with loved ones, showing compassion for those around us, whether at work or in social life. And as by waves of repercussions, to carry this love of entrails in the glance which we carry for such or such country.
It is difficult to vibrate in the same way to all the miseries which, unfortunately, still mark our world through wars, injustices and famines. But how not to take more particular attention and sympathy for a country to which it is given to us to have had an open look and an enlightened conscience?
It could be interesting to ask ourselves at the heart of Lent which country today makes us particularly vibrate, with which we are in communion of entrails. Whether it be Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, a country in Africa or Iraq, to which our pope has brought us so close through his journey.
Let's ask ourselves who we feel close to or close to in the way of following the news and investing in it. Thus we will join this expression that the prophet Isaiah uses of the one who is announced, who opens to us “an alliance of multitudes”.
If we have entrails only for our loved ones, we are not in an alliance of multitudes. If we are close only to our relatives, we are not in this alliance of multitudes.
