Friday 23 March 2012

The Anawim

MERCY AND THE ULTIMATE  ANAWIM


By Anne R. Lastman BA, Dip Ed. MRel Ed., MTS.

MACA FVC



We live in a time of Divine Mercy and extreme Mercy. A time between kairos moments and a time in which we need to gather rather than sow.  Indeed we live in a time of gathering the harvest.  This time of Mercy is Harvest time. It is a time when all past labours are coming to an end and rest is possible because the work is done.  Today we live in a time of both sin and Mercy. Wheat and darnel.  Sin abounds and Grace and Mercy abound all the more.  Sin against life (abortion) abounds, yet in His infinite Mercy God grants time to return.  His Mercy is from age to age and yet remains mysterious.  

 Mercy does not only consist of empathy, sympathy, compassion and forgiveness,  but in its totality is a mysterious response that clearly shows the intrinsic worth and high estimation of the value of the human person. This, most especially, to those who through the fault of others have been stripped of their inherent dignity. 

It is the dignity inherent in the human that requires and indeed demands that Mercy be shown. It is in the essence of its humanity where the restoration of worth through Mercy is most evident. The restoration of an aborted infant to the human family is not only an act of Mercy, which can heal the parents and those who aborted the infant, but can also heal society whose ethos embraced abortion.  This, because the child is part of that family and that society.  By this option to restore the aborted child to the human family through recognition that its passing was a mistake and an enormous sin, it is shown an act of Mercy and a preference for the primacy given to love.

The anawim embraces many categories, the hungry, the weak, the marginalised, abandoned, homeless, cold, aged, indeed the true “anawim” but also in charity it must gather into its embrace the “aborted,” these are truly the poorest of the poor.   These little ones who live in their short lives, all the categories that characterise the “anawim.”  All the categories of anawim can rightly be seen to converge into one in the “aborted” child.  These are the most defenceless, rejected, despised, marginalised; unwanted, needy group in human society, and these, because of their very alone ness manifest a true reflection of their own poverty, and the poverty of a society whose ethos is one of abject failure.   It is in the treatment of the “anawim” and especially these “anawim” that the character of a society is remembered and honoured or not honoured.  It is in the treatment, rememberance and rescue of these “anawim” that the merciful will receive mercy. Thier lives are anawim.