Suffering With The Compassionate

Compassion is "to suffer with".  How many people do we know who claim they are compassionate are really suffering with someone?  How often does it appear that someone claiming compassion is not suffering in the least with another?

I heard an ad on the radio where the voice over claimed that compassion was giving someone a glass of water.  I, to this day, cannot fathom how giving someone a glass of water entailed suffering of any kind on the part of the giver.  But it apparently made the giver feel better about herself.  The voice was also mentioning this as encouragement to the listener to be equally compassionate.  Well, I've given out more than my share of beverages and I can't recall ever feeling a sense of suffering with the recipient of said beverage.  I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of these recipients were far from suffering before I gave them their beverage.  Although they may have suffered afterward if they didn't like the beverage I gave them. 

The people behind this radio ad was a missionary organization.  Now, depending on where this glass of water was given and to whom it was given it might have been an incredibly charitable gesture.  But a compassionate one?  No where in the radio spot was there any indication of how the giver may have been suffering with the receiver. 

And there's nothing wrong with charity.  Faith Hope and Charity?  It's one of the Big Three.  But compassion is more glamorous.  It implies empathy and empathy is the new sympathy.  Everybody wants to be empathetic.  And when understood as "to suffer with", when used in a sentence compassion often doesn't even make any sense.  But it sounds good.  It makes the giver sound and seem important and special. Even if it's nonsense. 

Why be accurately charitable when we can be arrogantly compassionate?  Because we can get away with it.

When someone tells me that they are compassionate, or has compassion, I wonder if they really know what they are saying.  Do they really suffer with others?  Now, lending an ear is not suffering with another.  Saying "I understand" over and over again is not suffering with another.  Repeating "I'm here for you" is not suffering with another.

Mother Teresa had compassion.  Maximilian Kolbe  had compassion.  Father Damian had compassion.  They did a bit more than go around handing out glasses of water.  They gave more than their ears.  They did more than understand.  When they said "I'm here for you" they were also "there with", "suffering with" and verily truly really meant it.

Do we?

A Prayer Against Despair

O Lord, please protect me
From my own stupidity.

The Disease Of Sin Exists

Long before the symptoms of sin appear.