How is it possible to love one's enemies; the persons who hurt you and make space for them in your heart? We feel repulsion towards people who are led by their thirst for power, by their jealousy, rage, bitterness... and who end up hurting us and others. And it is so easy to forget that people in Jesus' time felt the same repulsion towards the Man of Sorrows, the Suffering Messiah. Isaiah says:
"so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance... he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by others, a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity diseases... upon him was the punishment that made us whole."
Jesus had to bear the sins of all humanity, and sin disfigures us... Jesus had no form; was disfigured, so we could be made whole. There is nothing in a disfigured person that could draw us to him... except, maybe, the realisation that in the face of every person disfigured by sin, there is the disfigured God. If we look beyond the face of our enemy we can see God's disfigured face... and realise that this God without form or majesty is also present in us. My enemy and I have this presence in common. And maybe I could let compassion rise up in my heart, compassion for this suffering God, rejected by humanity, because there is nothing in his appearance that could draw us to him... except love and compassion. If the only face of God that I seek, is the beautiful face of God in those who love me, in the beauty of nature, in music, art... and abandon Christ broken beneath the cross in me and in my enemy... than I do not love.
Jacob and Esau's story is a story of great compassion. On his way back home Jacob fears his brother Esau, but hopes to be accepted by him: "I may appease him with the present that goes ahead of me, and afterwards I shall see his face, perhaps he will accept me." The face Jacob is hoping to see is the face of the Compassionate God in the face of his brother. He knew that his own face was disfigured by the wrong he had committed towards his own brother, but he hoped to find mercy; to see God's compassionate face. His hope was not in vain:
"But Esau ran to him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept...
Jacob said: 'No, please, if I find favour with you, then accept my present from my hand, for truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God, since you have received me with such favour.'"
The parallelism with the parable of the Prodigal Son, cannot escape us. We can put Jacob's words of hope on the lips of the son on his way to his father, and Jacob's words during the encounter with his brother, on the lips of the son embraced by his compassionate father. Compassion receives the other... it creates a space in the heart of the receiver... compassion is linked with the womb - a space where one is with another and suffers with him. In their disfigurement our brothers and sisters, seek a face... the compassionate face of God... and they seek this face in us. In the same way that we in our disfigurement by our own sin seek the compassionate face of God in others. This is not easy at all especially when the persons do not seem to realise they are wrong and that they are hurting us and others. But in this case, it is all the more important to seek the burdened Jesus in them, the disfigured face of our loving God and love Him and not abandon Him under the weight of the sins of humanity.
Veronica may well be a legendary figure. But she represents true compassion. She realised that the true icon of Christ... the true Face of God, is that of the suffering Christ; the God who in his compassion, chose to suffer with humanity and be disfigured to make us beautiful. And when others, mocked him, spat at him, because all they could see was a criminal walking to his shameful death, she saw the face of God and was moved with compassion... She became the symbol of the true face of God, the face of compassion - the Vera Icona.
May I live up to my name.
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