psalm 103 - hesed and rahem - loyal love and womb love - Family Day St. Joseph School

Today we reflect on psalm 103 and in this psalm there are two words which describes God's relationship with us. 

First is the Hebrew word hesed. Hesed means loyal love, it is faithfulness, it is unchanging love, it is love which knows no seasons.  Hesed means he is true to one's promises, she is true to her word.  Remember the time we were small when adults would tease us telling us ay hala mo, wala na si mama mo, ginbayaan ka na ni papa mo.  And we would cry or at the very least we would frantically seek them out if only to be reassured that they are still there.  That is why hesed is a word that can be found in psalms that are usually said as morning prayers. Why so?  Because we have survived the night, we have gone through darkness, and at dawn, when light can be seen again, and all can be seen clearly again, hesed is praised, hesed is recognized. We were not abandoned, nobody left anyone, people are loyal, people are faithful. It is steadfast love, a love that does not fail, as sure as the sun shall rise in the morning.

Marriage is not just faithful love for the sake of one's spouse whom we promised to love in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer.  More than anything else it is faithful love for the sake the children, a very assuring love that we know would never give up on each other. 

In our responsorial psalm God's love for us is praised because it is hesed, it is faithful, it is loyal, it is covenant love.

The second word worthy of note in psalm 103 is the word mercy or merciful.  God is merciful, God is compassionate.  Again the original Hebrew word comes from the word rahem which literally means womb.  God is merciful and he is merciful because his love is a love not just from the heart but from the womb. That is why some people translate mercy and compassion as womb love. 

I remember having an argument with my mother because of a brother and it got to a point where I became so emotional and perhaps even angry at her.  And even thought this happened a long long time ago, I can still vividly remember and picture out the look on her face and what she said, gasiling ka lang sina kay utod ka lang, ako iya nanay.  That kind of loving is difficult to translate – it is not I love you with all my mind for many times it is a love that is unreasonable.  It is not I love you with all my heart for it is deeper than mere feelings and emotions.  It is a love formed and started in the womb, a remnant of the umbilical cord that was never really disconnected.

In our responsorial psalm God's love and mercy for us is praised because it is rahem, it is the love of the womb that will always embrace back even the wayward.

And so in psalm 103 we learn two characteristics of God's love – hesed, faithful and steadfast love, it is predictable in the sense that it will always be there no matter what; and secondly we have rahem, translated in English not quite so accurately as abundant compassion, merciful and forgiving.  It is the love of the womb – always loyal, always embracing, and always forgiving. 

In the gospel of Luke if you remember, it is mentioned that the sinner Zacchaeus in order to see Jesus climbed a sycamore tree?  Why not another tree – perhaps an acacia tree, or a star apple tree, a guava tree, whatever.  But why a sycamore tree?  It is said that no matter how short you cut a sycamore tree it will always grow back.  No matter how short, it will always find its way to grow back.  And that is the compassion of God in Jesus, the love of the womb.

Today I was asked to reflect with you on the values rooted in the home and in the family.  The world teaches our children so many kinds of love. And they learn this from programs on television, in the internet, from their barkadas, from their mentors, and even from their experience of loving from their school mates and classmates, as they grow up.  But these two, faithful love and merciful love can only be learned at home. Even the parable of the prodigal son is a story that has its setting in the home, for only the home can teach these two kinds of loving and forgiving and it is the kind of love that God has for all of us.