She has become ubiquitous on social media platforms: the middle class woman who is nearly spitting with unsuppressed rage and seemingly gleeful that she has the means to showcase it.
The woman is one of an uncountable number who display septum rings and tattoos as they set their camera phones to “record” and then deliver spit-inflected diatribes, or scream in indignation, or simply weep and wail and then cry some more.
We see them every day on social media platforms. I’m not sure why people need to rage-and-emo perform for the camera. Increasingly I suspect that for some, having been raised with an ever-present video recorder in their face, their feelings (and perhaps their very existences), only find a validation of reality once uploaded into the land of screens and clicks.
This woman, though, was haunting. The tension roiling about her was so all-consuming that even her hair seemed to crackle with it. Her blue eyes grew wide enough to highlight the pinprick-sized pupils; the straining tautness of her forehead, mouth and jaw could only be called exquisite. She looked like she meant to hurt someone; she wasn’t just angry but full-to-boiling with rage as she explained her activist mindset in a tremendously clarifying way: “All that rage that I have felt toward men is coming out.”
It was unpleasant to watch but hard to look away from all that naked honesty, which included such a telling admission: that her embedded wrath against men had finally found a satisfying, socially acceptable place to land.
For one moment, to my shame, I admit that I wanted to hate her. The people I love most in this world are good men who deserve no part of the cold, collective back-of-the-hand they are being given by society in this era.
But I could not hate this furious woman, because listening to her rant and threaten — watching her eyes flash and her teeth bare — all I kept thinking was, “someone really hurt her. And that unhealed wound has suppurated into this terrible darkness. It’s like a psychic necrosis eating away at her soul.”
The video literally chased me into my oratory where I prayed for her, and for a whole society (a whole world, really) that seems to be suffering from a festered unhealing, deeply in need of anointing.
What did I pray? Only two words, again and again: “Kyrie eleison. Kyrie eleison.”
As we read in the book “Orthodox Worship,” the plea has some depth: “The word mercy in English is the translation of the Greek word eleos. This word has the same ultimate root as the old Greek word for oil, or more precisely, olive oil; a substance which was used extensively as a soothing agent for bruises and minor wounds. The oil was poured onto the wound and gently massaged in, thus soothing, comforting and making whole the injured part. The Hebrew word which is also translated as eleos and mercy is hesed, and means steadfast love. The Greek words for ‘Lord, have mercy,’ are ‘Kyrie, eleison’ that is to say, ‘Lord, soothe me, comfort me, take away my pain, show me your steadfast love.’ Thus, mercy does not refer so much to justice or acquittal a very Western interpretation but to the infinite loving-kindness of God, and his compassion for his suffering children!”
The idea will not leave my head: how do we anoint a whole world so terribly and self-evidently in need of soothing, healing, consolation and unconditional love?
As I prayed, the lyrics to “Eleanor Rigby” ran through my head: “All the lonely people, where do they all come from…”
They come from bullies; they come from victims who become predators; they come from love withheld; they come from regrets gone unexpressed and offenses against others (and against God) never given apology; they come from an absence of mercy as we batter each other with demands for justice on our own narrow terms. Yet “mercy triumphs over judgment” (Jas 2:13).
“Ah, look at all the lonely people,” showing their wounds before Christ, whether they recognize him or not, and begging to be healed. Kyrie, Lord. Kyrie eleison.
Elizabeth Scalia is editor at large for OSV. Follow her on X @theanchoress.
