Compassion
By: Clement Fadoul
The perspective presented here are based on the words of Jesus: ‘’Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate ‘’ (Lk 6:36)
We must look in a radically different direction to understand the place of compassion in our lives and through compassion our humanity grows into its fullness.
The word compassion, generally evokes positive feelings. We like to think of ourselves as compassionate people who are gentle, good and understanding. So why then, are millions of human beings suffering from separation, loneliness, torture and kill each other?
What does it mean the word compassion? It is derived rom the Latin words pati and cum, which together mean ‘’to suffer with’’. Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. It requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. To be also kind and gentle to those who get hurt by competition.
We do not aspire to suffer with others. On the contrary we develop methods and techniques that allow us to stay away from pain.
Must we simply recognize that we are more competitive than compassionate, and try to make the best of it with a ‘’healthy dose of skepticism’’? Is our greatest ideal a maximum of satisfaction with a minimum of pain?
This topic says NO to these questions and proposes that in order to understand the place of compassion in our lives , we must look radically to different directions. And the perspective here is based on the words of Jesus: ’’Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate ‘’( Luke 6:36), and is offered in the deep conviction that through compassion our humanity grows into its fullness.
We shall speak about: The compassionate God who is revealed to us in Jesus Christ, because God’s own compassion constitutes the basis and source of our compassion.
The compassionate God: God is a compassion God, He has chosen to be God-with-us .But what counts is that moments of pain and suffering someone stays with us, it is just the simple presence of someone who cares .When someone says to you , to us in the midst of a crisis ,’’ I do not know what to say or what to do, but I want you to realize that I am with you, that I will not leave you alone .’’
We have lost the gift of being present to each other .We say why should I visit this person? I can’t do anything anyway. Or what use can I be? Because being simply with someone is difficult and it asks of us that we share in other’s vulnerability.
When we say God is a God- with- us, means he came to share our lives in solidarity .He is willing to enter with us with our problems, confusions and questions.
We also call him our refuge, our stronghold, our wisdom, our helper, our shepherd, our love. And we will never really know God as a compassionate God if we do not understand with our heart and mind that ‘’he lived among us’’ (Jn 1:14).
When we look at ourselves, we have to recognize that competition, not compassion is our main motivation in life. Being compassionate would require giving up differences and distinctions. Jesus invites us to be as close to each other as God is to us. And it allows us to say with Paul, ‘’ I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me ‘’ (Ga 2:20)
This new identity, free from greed and desire of power, allows us to enter so fully and unconditionally into the sufferings of others that it becomes for us to heal the sick and call the dead to life. Paul gives us a beautiful example in his letter to the Philippians, he writes : GOD IS MY WITNESS HOW MUCH I MISS YOU ALL WITH THE TENDER COMPASSION OF CHRIST JESUS . (Ph 1:8)
