Reflection
When we look at the life of Jesus, we see him involved in a ministry of compassion. We see him relating from the heart to the needs around him. What does this sense of compassion offer? Compassion urges us to reach out in love to those who are in need. The most significant result of compassion is that it alleviates suffering. It makes life more tolerable. Most people have a natural inner compassion. This is evident in times of tragedy or catastrophe. Individually and corporately, we respond with an empowering energy of helpfulness whose intent is entirely beneficial. Our compassion is not so evident In the public arena. Often, fanatically committed to an ideology, insensitive or uninformed about the plight of innocent people caught in the consequences of its decisions, we lose our sense of compassion. We forget the needs of persons and only react to the threats, real or imagined, that unjust systems perpetuate.
Prayer
May we live in the compassion of Jesus.
Action
Reflect on your own spirit of compassion. How does it extend to those with whom you do not come in contact or whose lifestyle, religious or political persuasion is different from yours? Does commitment to one ideology blunt your openness to other information?
Suggested Reading
Be kind to one another, compassionate,
forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ.
Eph 4:3-5,2
Brothers and sisters:
Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God,
with which you were sealed for the day of redemption.
All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling
must be removed from you, along with all malice.
And be kind to one another, compassionate,
forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ.
Ephesians 4:30–5
How much can we ever know about the love and pain in another heart? How much can we hope to understand those who have suffered deeper anguish, greater deprivation, and Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.
Saint Francis of Assisi
The simplest acts of kindness are by far more powerful then a thousand heads bowing in prayer.
Mahatma Gandhi
True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.
Dalai Lama XIV
The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.
Thomas Merton
Make no judgments where you have no compassion.
Anne McCaffrey.
Compassion is not just feeling with someone, but seeking to change the situation. Frequently people think compassion and love are merely sentimental. No! They are very demanding. If you are going to be compassionate, be prepared for action!
Desmond Tutu
Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism.
Hubert H. Humphrey
For there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one’s own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.”
Milan Kundera