Week Thirty-Nine: Compassion
Contemplation Creates Compassion
A practice of contemplation is one of the surest ways to develop the virtue of compassion—for both ourselves and others. Father Richard speaks to how this loving gaze is developed between ourselves and God.
Much of the early work of contemplation is discovering a way to observe ourselves from a compassionate and nonjudgmental distance until we can eventually live more and more of our lives from this calm inner awareness and acceptance. In a contemplative stance, we find ourselves smiling, sighing, and weeping at ourselves, much more than needing either to hate or to congratulate ourselves—because we are finally looking at ourselves with the eyes of God.
Actually, what is happening is we are letting God gaze at us, in the way only God can gaze—with infinite mercy, love, and compassion. God initiates a positive gaze, which now goes in both directions. Unfortunately, we seldom allow that to happen. Decades ago, Matthew Fox identified what it has cost us and the universe to have lost this mutually loving gaze with God. I believe it is even more true of the world today. Fox writes:
Compassion is everywhere. Compassion is the world’s richest energy source. Now that the world is a global village we need compassion more than ever—not for altruism’s sake, nor for philosophy’s sake or theology’s sake, but for survival’s sake.
And yet, in human history of late, compassion remains an energy source that goes largely unexplored, untapped and unwanted. Compassion appears very far away and almost in exile. Whatever propensities the human cave dweller once had for violence instead of compassion seem to have increased geometrically with the onslaught of industrial society. The exile of compassion is evident everywhere. . . .
In acquiescing in compassion’s exile, we are surrendering the fullness of nature and of human nature, for we, like all creatures in the cosmos, are compassionate creatures. All persons are compassionate at least potentially. What we all share today is that we are victims of compassion’s exile. The difference between persons and groups of persons is not that some are victims and some are not: we are all victims and all dying from lack of compassion; we are all surrendering our humanity together. [1]
As we receive God’s compassionate gaze in contemplation, all negative energy and motivation is slowly exposed and will eventually fall away as counter-productive and useless. There will be no mistrust, fear, or negativity in either direction! If we resort to any form of shaming ourselves, we will slip back into defense, denial, and overcompensation. We will not be able to “know as fully as we are known” (see 1 Corinthians 13:12).
But if we can connect with the Indwelling Presence, where the “Spirit bears common witness with our spirit” (see Romans 8:16), it can and will change our lives! This mutually loving gaze is always initiated by God and grace. Once you learn to rest there, nothing less will ever satisfy you. This is foundational.
Compassion as Steadfast Love
Quaker author Richard Foster has long written on themes of prayer and spiritual practice. Focusing on the Hebrew word hesed, Foster explores the many ways that compassion shows up in the Hebrew Bible, both in God and in how people relate to one another:
[The Hebrew word] hesed holds before us the great theme of compassion. It is a word so laden with meaning that translators struggle to find an English equivalent, often rendering it “loving kindness” or “steadfast love.” It is a word most frequently used in reference to God’s unwavering compassion for [God’s] people. God’s wonderful hesed love is “from everlasting to everlasting,” declared the Psalmist (Psalm 103:17). It is a “steadfast love” that “endures forever” (Psalm 106:1).
But the great challenge for us is that this covenant love, this durable mercy that is so central to the character of God, is to be reflected in us as well. Through Hosea the prophet, God declares, “I desire steadfast love [hesed] and not sacrifice, / the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6).
Sprinkled throughout the Hebrew Scriptures are grace-filled laws of compassion, of hesed. The law of gleaning . . . is a prime example. Farmers were to leave some of the crop along the borders and the grain that fell on the ground during harvest so that the poor could gather it (Leviticus 19:9–10). Likewise the vineyards and the olive groves were not to be stripped bare, in order to make provision for the needy. . . . The simple fact of need was sufficient reason to provide for them.
Think of the tender compassion in the old Hebrew laws of giving and taking a pledge. If someone borrowed your oxcart and left his coat in pledge, you had to be sure to give the coat back before sunset even if he hadn’t finished with the oxcart. Why? Because the night air was cold, and he would need his coat for warmth. The rule was doubly binding if the person who made the pledge was poor, for in all likelihood he had no other coat with which to keep warm (Deuteronomy 24:12). . . . Graciousness, courtesy, compassion—this is hesed. [1]
Theologian Elizabeth Johnson understands acting with compassion to others in need as participating in the flow of God’s compassion:
If the heart of divine mystery is turned in compassion toward the world, then devotion to this God draws persons into the shape of divine communion with all others: “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). To deny one’s connection with the suffering needs of others is to detach oneself from divine communion.
The praxis of mercy is propelled by this dynamic. So too is committed work on behalf of peace, human rights, economic justice, and the transformation of social structures. . . . Solidarity with those who suffer, being there with commitment to their flourishing, is the locus of encounter with the living God. [2]
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