The womb
Womb is home, and, at the right time, door. The womb is the home where we get undressed of one dimension to wear another one. In the womb man get undressed of his angelic aspect and wears flesh and skin to come out under the sun naked and barefoot.
The womb is the divine, the natural way, it’s home, door, it contains and offers, but, most of all, it clothes us with skin.
Even the extraordinary event of the Embodiment of the Son of God follows the natural way of the human transmission of life, the womb, Mary’s womb, the womb of the Great Mother, but nevertheless a womb, a womb that undresses, that bares and clothes.
Not even the Son of God could come through the womb without being bared of his divine clothes to appear under the sunlight barefoot, naked, covered in skin. The womb bares and clothes. The womb is the place where even God got undressed and remained naked and barefoot.
The womb is the place when man meet God naked, and the nudity of God is His mercy, His endless mercy. The nudity of God is His unpronounceable, sovereign, sweetest, omnipresent, almighty, warmest, visceral mercy. It is not by chance that in the entire bible the mercy without measures and limits of God is always represented as the most visceral part of Him. The womb of God is the source of His almighty mercy, chesèd in Hebrew.
Mary’s womb is the place where God and man meet each other naked and barefoot. Man is undressed of his pride by the sweetest mercy of God, God is undressed of His divine glory for the love of the mercy for His creature. In Mary’s womb man can get undressed of fear and pride, of competition and vanity, and get dressed with the Lord’s mercy.
In the bible, to indicate the most peculiar closeness and intimacy of God with man, a very, very particular image is repeated again and again, an image so daring that it’s almost unacceptable for our theological and mind’s structures. The image used in the texts to indicate and make known to man the total closeness and intimacy of God and His loving presence is the womb, but in a totally unpredictable way, beyond what our mind can imagine. Those are texts of such an unfathomable beauty and magnificence, and they let us know a shocking and sweetest truth.
Shout for joy, O daughter Zion! Sing joyfully, O Israel! Be glad and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! The Lord has removed the judgement against you, he has turned away your enemies; the King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst, you have no further misfortune to fear. (Zephaniah 3: 14-15). And again: Sing and rejoice, O daughter Zion! See, I’m coming to dwell among you […] and you shall know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you (Zechariah 2: 14-15).
God not only holds humanity in His womb, viscerally connected to the source of his mercy, but, because of the law of love’s intimacy, man as well holds Lord God in his womb. God lives in our womb, God inhabits the depth of our womb, so His Word says. What’s more calming and soothing than hearing from God’s Word that God lives in our womb, always and no matter what? When we are in the light God lives in our womb, when we are in the darkness God lives in our womb. Our life would change in a second, if we could live with more awareness this truth. God’s home is His people’s womb, the tent of the Highest is the womb of each one of His children. How could we possibly not love ourselves with clear and faithful love, if we had the knowledge and awareness that God lives in us in this way? How could we possibly not love others with clear and faithful love, if we knew that God lives in them? How could we possibly not love with our entire being our Lord, if we believed that He lives in us in each and every moment?
What’s then more natural and easy, what’s more coherent and harmonious for Jesus than using a womb, the womb of mother Mary, to step into man’s history?
The womb is the natural way for the encounter of intimacy, it’s the natural way of life. We inhabit the womb of God and we wake up every morning in His belly, it’s God who holds us in His mercy, and it couldn’t be different, but at the same time, every moment, the Lord inhabits our womb and our guts in utter and silent intimacy, and He let himself being held by us.
If God lives in our womb, if God lives in our guts, there’s no distance, no journey that can keep us away from Him. There’s no abyss, no darkness that can part us from Him, there’s no sin, no evil, no deception or fear that can make us turn away from Him.
No matter if someone is victim or judge, rich or poor, holy or pervert, he would anyway hold in his womb the loving and silent present of God infinite Creator.
The announcement of the angel Gabriel to Mary that Jesus was growing in her womb was an absolutely new announcement, but, at the same time, the greatest and most ancient truth of life. God has been living forever in man’s womb.
Mary’s womb held God made man, Jesus Highest Son of God, it carried the one who had to bring man back to a freeing and healing awareness that God lives in us when we live in Him. He is the one who will show us the face of the Father, the one who will embrace us with the Holy Paraclete forever, the one who dies and rises again in the earth’s womb.
He is the one who, the moment he came into the womb of Mother Mary, announced solemnly to the world that he’s never had, not even for a second, abandoned the womb of any one of His children. The one who in the womb of the Mother announced the love of the womb of the Father which is His divine mercy.