by Father Robert Lauder

Recently, I gave a talk on compassion. In preparing the talk, the first thing I did was to look up a definition of compassion in a dictionary. I read the following: “sorrow for the sufferings or trouble of another or others, accompanied by an urge to help; deep sympathy; pity.”

The definition started me thinking about God’s compassion and our call to imitate God by being compassionate. The more I thought about the compassion of God, the more aware I became of the mystery of God; the more I thought about our call to be compassionate, the more aware I became of what it means to be a follower of Christ.

There is a philosophy called “deism,” which holds that God created the world, but that after creating it, God is not involved with it at all. Of course, the view that deists have of the created world is almost the exact opposite of what Christians believe.

Perhaps I should not be surprised by the view of God that deists have. Some great thinkers, indeed some of the greatest in the history of philosophy, struggled with questions about God’s existence and God’s relation to the world. Scholars tell us that Plato, perhaps the greatest philosopher ever, did not have in his philosophy any doctrine  of a personal God. Aristotle, another one of the greats, believed that he could prove God’s existence, but the God he proved not only did not love human persons but also did not even know that human beings existed. Apparently, the great Greek philosopher thought that for God to know finite beings such as we would be beneath God’s dignity. Even knowing us would detract from God’s greatness.

I have never embraced the philosophy of deism, but I have caught myself imagining God’s involvement with us as similar to the way a mere bystander would be involved. This is not the God Whom Jesus has revealed to us. The Father whom Jesus has revealed puts Plato’s and Aristotle’s insights to shame.

Our God is compassionate. God cares about so much that we can not adequately imagine God’s relationship to us. In relation to us God is all gift and love. God cares about us and our loved ones more than we do. Through Jesus’ suffering and death God has entered into our suffering and embraced it. That God suffers with us is a great mystery, but the great sign of God’s involvement in our suffering is Jesus on the cross. When we say that God cares about us and is compassionate toward us, it might help to remind ourselves that we are saying that Infinite Love cares about us and is compassionate toward us. To remind ourselves that God is Love and that this Love is totally involved in our lives might help us to retain the awe and gratitude that we should have when we reflect on God’s compassion.

We are called to be compassionate, called to suffer with others. When we are compassionate, we are imitating God. Being compassionate does not necessarily mean having a strong emotional reaction when we encounter someone suffering. We might have an emotional reaction. For example, we might cry or feel anxious or even depressed when we hear of someone’s misfortune, but I don’t believe that such emotional reactions are necessarily part of being compassionate. They are not essential to compassion. For example, a physician or a counselor might be very compassionate, really care and want to help someone but not be emotionally involved. A teacher might genuinely care for his or her students but not become emotionally involved with them.

We know that some people are more emotional than others. A surgeon might care deeply about helping someone, but the surgeon must keep his or her emotions under control. What is essential to compassion is genuinely and wanting to help. This is what it means to enter into the suffering of another.

To be a Christian means to be called to be a compassionate person. At times, this can be very difficult. It is easy for us to become enclosed in our own little world, perhaps not even realizing that we are closing ourselves off from other people and their problems and suffering. One of the great blessings of being in a service profession is that the needs of others should be evident. To choose a vocation to help others will mean constantly being reminded of the needs of others and of the possibility of serving others.

Being compassionate can be exhausting, but it can help us live more deeply because it means that we are imitating God, it also helps us to enter more deeply into the life of Christ. Can a person be a Christian without being compassionate?

[hr]Father Robert Lauder, a priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn and philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica, writes a weekly column for the Catholic Press.[hr]