Tuesday
of 22nd Week in Ordinary Time
September 2, 2014 8:30am
One of our Catholic spiritual
writers, Sister Joan Chittister, highlights the importance of the compassion of
God.
She says that sometimes, we lift
up other traits of God – God as the just One, the all-knowing One, the judge,
and things like that.
But we undervalue the trait that
the psalmist lifts up today – compassion.
The psalmist says: “The Lord is good to all and compassionate
toward all his works.”
The idea is that God sees us as we
are – sometimes suffering and stumbling and confused and worrying.
God feels our feelings,
commiserates with them, understands them, knows how they affect us and stands
by as we try to work through them.
All of this stems from the
Incarnation – God taking on our humanity fully in the birth of Jesus.
Sister Joan Chittister describes
compassion in a beautiful way.
Compassionate persons are those
who simply stand by us when we are going through something –
persons who do not try to talk us
our of our feelings of grief or loneliness but are with us in these feelings,
persons who do not try to
convince us that we are wrong but respectfully explore whatever the issue is with
us,
persons who do not demand that we
be someone we are not but assist us in discovering and becoming our true selves
as God made us,
persons who do not lead us to
deny our fear or anxiety but quietly assure us of their presence as we try to
manage life.
If we think about it, it is
compassion that supports us in our darkest times.
It is compassion for which in the
long run and maybe even the short run of life we are most grateful.
That is why we need to remember
compassion as a dominant trait in God.
It is why we are to grow little
by little in becoming persons of compassion – if we are to be God-like and if
we are to be of value and help to others.
