{"id":23065,"date":"2023-10-26T10:45:09","date_gmt":"2023-10-26T14:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=23065"},"modified":"2023-10-26T10:45:09","modified_gmt":"2023-10-26T14:45:09","slug":"mechthilds-call-to-compassion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=23065","title":{"rendered":"Mechthild\u2019s Call to Compassion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Love Is The Answer by England Dan and John Ford Coley\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pdxpxX4mjfI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The beguines\u2019 choice to live in cities among poor and working-class people showed their dedication to serve God by serving the \u201cleast of these.\u201d Theologian Wendy Farley presents Mechthild\u2019s teaching on contemplation and compassionate action:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mechthild\u2019s theology is driven by Lady Love, who plants a seed of compassionate action superior to the marvels of contemplation. <strong>Lofty words without compassion are useless; love of God that rages against human beings is without value. <\/strong>[1] We get some clues about how contemplation of Love translates into practical compassion in her advice to leaders of religious communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mechthild begins with this somewhat formidable advice: compassionately and cheerfully \u201cyou should so transform your heart in God\u2019s holy love that you love \u2026 each and every brother or sister entrusted to you in all [their] needs.\u201d This care should be quite concrete. <strong>Community leaders should arrange for basic comforts of others. They should console the sick every day while being generous with material gifts. They should clean them, make them laugh, and carry away their waste. \u201cThen God\u2019s sweetness shall flow wonderfully into you.\u201d [2]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em><strong>Mechthild insists that the intimate love she and God share is made manifest in a desire to serve others: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The <strong>radical compassion she envisions as the heart of practical action cannot be generated out of a sense of obligation or duty. It is a heart-sense that makes it unbearable to be indifferent to another\u2019s needs or to think of anyone as \u201cbelow\u201d oneself. <\/strong>In an echo of her trinitarian understanding of the soul, she suggests a threefold practice to support this radical compassion: detachment, which participates in the transcendent mystery of the godhead; compassion, which participates in the humanity of Christ; and desire to care for human need, which participates in the Holy Spirit. [3] In addition, she recommends that <strong>one dedicate an hour or so to undisturbed prayer.<\/strong> Though she is writing to people who live in religious community, <strong>the insistence that the wells of mercy and compassion are fed by prayer is pertinent to modern people as well. <\/strong>As many an overworked pastor or mother knows, this hour (or even twenty minutes!) is difficult to find. <strong>Yet without it, compassionate care can become exhausting rather than grace-filled and sweet. We are better able to convey love and compassion when we are grounded in the experience of being loved ourselves.\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Love of God and of humanity are not two separate things, as if one could love God but shun humanity. Compassionate action reflects and mirrors the divine image. Love is not an emotion or obligation but is God present in the soul. <\/strong>When we love others with warmth, affection, and care for their needs, it is God loving them through us. Mechthild hears Christ himself insist that those who know and love the preciousness of [Christ\u2019s] freedom \u201c<strong>cannot bear to love me only for my own sake. They must also love me in creatures. [Then] I remain what is most close to them in their souls.\u201d [4]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>______________________________________________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joy Fueled<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>J<strong>oy flows from giving and receiving love\u2014the life of God. God is love, and where love is being expressed and received, the joy of God is also flowing.<\/strong> Nothing brings us closer to the center of all creative power than the joy of God. Sure enough, as scripture says, \u201c<strong>The joy of the Lord is your strength\u201d (Nehemiah 8:10 NIV). In a simple way, we experience this joy whenever we find ourselves in the presence of someone who makes it clear they are glad to be with us no matter what. <\/strong>Maybe it is the sparkle in their eyes when they look at us or a gentle touch when we are sad. The gift of their expressed love draws out our joy. <strong>We now know through studies in neuro-science that this pattern of love-sparking-joy forms the basis from earliest infancy for all healthy human development.<\/strong> When we witness a baby light up in the presence of her smiling mother, we\u2019re witnessing the genesis of joy-fuel being formed in another life. This is love embodied\u2014God\u2019s life. The Greek language of the New Testament offers intriguing insight. The words for joy, gift and gratitude are closely related. All share the same root, char\u2014pronounced \u201ccar.\u201d Here\u2019s the connection: Joy \u2014Chara (delight) Gift or Grace\u2014Charis (that which brings joy or delight) Gratitude\u2014Eucharistia (joy or delight returned) These three ideas together, in any language, give us a way to describe what love-in-action looks like. Lovers give a gift to show their delight in the one they love. On receiving the gift, joy wells up in the beloved. Naturally, they say \u201cthank you!\u201d and deeper joy flows back to the lover. <strong>We sometimes say, \u201cLove grows in the dance of joy between gift and gratitude.\u201d More love, more joy. When you stop to think about it, this is astounding. What other process do we know that, all by itself, produces more than it starts with?<\/strong> Love-ignited joy is the one perpetual-motion fuel. Nothing else compares. This feeling of joy that flows from giving and receiving delight taps into God\u2019s own life\u2014the most enduring, powerful and motivational fuel of all (ref. John 15:11). <strong>Instead of living out of fear of shame, guilt or duty, when we receive from one another and God at the heart level, we experience a deep sense of joy that makes the relationship greater than any problems we face.<\/strong> No doubt, this is what Jesus had in mind when he said, \u201cI have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete\u201d (John 15:11 NIV). Two stunning truths to notice here. First, Jesus desires that the very joy and delight in his heart would be in our hearts, that we would feel what he feels. But he doesn\u2019t stop there. The second stunning truth is that he wants the joy in our hearts to be full to overflowing. (A better translation than \u201ccomplete.\u201d) <strong>If joy is a fuel source, Jesus is saying that he wants our \u201ctank\u201d to be filled beyond full. What a picture of abundance! When we share this LK10 Core Value, almost everyone says, \u201cWell, of course! Who wouldn\u2019t want joy to be their primary motivation for life and ministry?\u201d What is easily missed, however, is how revolutionary this value actually is within the current Christian culture.<\/strong> We will say more about how we see joy as our primary fuel in later chapters. For now, let\u2019s turn to the limited and ultimately harmful fuel source that many of us have used at some point in our lives: the gospel of knowledge and duty. <strong>This motivating source competes with joy, eventually smothering it out altogether. While appearing very spiritual, over time it will not only thwart intended character development but will erode the very lives it flows through.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>White, John C.; Daniels, Toni M.; Smith, Dr Kent. Joy Fueled: Catalyzing a Revolution of Joyful Communities (LK10 Core Values) (pp. 8-10). LK10. Kindle Edition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The beguines\u2019 choice to live in cities among poor and working-class people showed their dedication to serve God by serving the \u201cleast of these.\u201d Theologian Wendy Farley presents Mechthild\u2019s teaching on contemplation and compassionate action: Mechthild\u2019s theology is driven by Lady Love, who plants a seed of compassionate action superior to the marvels of contemplation. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23065"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23065"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23066,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23065\/revisions\/23066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}