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| Compassion: Small Acts with Great Love | |
What is compassion? Compassion is caring about others around you enough to give all you have for their good. It is loving others enough to want to help them --whatever their need.
Looking around in today's world it seems like the old cliché' is becoming more and more a reality. "Everybody is out for number one." The concept of caring about people just because they're people seems to be more and more an ideology. Nowadays, in most cases, it depends on who you are for someone to care about you.
Consider the lack of compassion evident when you hear a news report of an incident of road rage, when people call a baby "a fetus" so they can abort it without guilt, when people are so careless with their words as to hurt others so deeply they never forget the pain, when someone makes a remark like "that's their problem not mine," or when someone is so caught up in what he wants that his family falls apart. There is a huge difference between caring about yourself and selfishness. Caring about yourself means you take time for yourself so you can better care for others. Selfishness is being self-centered, never thinking about the other person — or thinking about others only as tool you can use.
Yet our faith and simple observation teach us that fulfillment comes from giving. This is how God made us.
As Catholics, we should never forget simple acts of kindness: holding open a door for someone, letting someone go ahead of you at the store when they have only one item, calling or visiting someone who is sick, defending someone who is being abused. We may get so caught up in doing extravagant things for the Lord — preaching, teaching, reaching out to the whole world — that we overlook the small things we can do for the Lord. Yet they are not small when done with love:
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
Christ makes it quite clear that He this is not about huge acts that make us look holy so that the world can see we are his people. It is love (compassion) that shows we are truly his disciples. Trying to look holy will have the opposite effect:
And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
This does not apply merely to fasting, but includes our love of neighbor in small, seemingly-unnoticed, acts of compassion.
The Catechism (2844) also teaches us that one of the fundamentals of compassion is forgiveness:
"Christian prayer extends to the forgiveness of enemies, transfiguring the disciple by configuring him to his Master. Forgiveness is a high-point of Christian prayer; only hearts attuned to God's compassion can receive the gift of prayer. Forgiveness also bears witness that, in our world, love is stronger than sin. The martyrs of yesterday and today bear this witness to Jesus. Forgiveness is the fundamental condition of the reconciliation of the children of God with their Father and of men with one another."
Because of God's compassion we are forgiven of our sins and we are now able to be compassionate towards others in forgiving them. People make mistakes; people change; don't let your heart become hardened or your eyes blind to the importance of being compassionate. It is by compassion that we are able to help and forgive each other and truly be a Family of God.
I received an email with a story that perfectly exemplifies the caring and sympathy shown by someone who has true compassion for another:
Come with me to a third grade classroom..... There is a nine-year-old kid sitting at his desk and all of a sudden, there is a puddle between his feet and the front of his pants are wet. He thinks his heart is going to stop because he cannot possibly imagine how this has happened. It's never happened before, and he knows that when the boys find out he will never hear the end of it. When the girls find out, they'll never speak to him again as long as he lives. The boy believes his heart is going to stop; he puts his head down and prays this prayer, "Dear God, this is an emergency! I need help now! Five minutes from now I'm dead meat.."
He looks up from his prayer and here comes the teacher with a look in her eyes that says he has been discovered. .As the teacher is walking toward him, a classmate named Susie is carrying a goldfish bowl that is filled with water. Susie trips in front of the teacher and inexplicably dumps the bowl of water in the boy's lap.
The boy pretends to be angry, but all the while is saying to himself, "Thank you, Lord! Thank you, Lord!"
Now all of a sudden, instead of being the object of ridicule, the boy is the object of sympathy. The teacher rushes him downstairs and gives him gym shorts to put on while his pants dry out. All the other children are on their hands and knees cleaning up around his desk. The sympathy is wonderful. But as life would have it, the ridicule that should have been his has been transferred to someone else — Susie.
She tries to help, but they tell her to get out. You've done enough, you klutz!"
Finally, at the end of the day, as they are waiting for the bus, the boy walks over to Susie and whispers, "You did that on purpose, didn't you?" Susie whispers back, "I wet my pants once, too."
May God help us see that all around us are opportunities to act with compassion.