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Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life
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About the Author
Donald McNeill is a priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross. Don taught theology and developed service learning programs at the University of Notre Dame for three decades where he helped found the Center for Social Concerns. He is currently a Senior Fellow living and ministering in Chicago with the Metropolitan Chicago initiative of Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies.Douglas A. Morrison is a priest of the Archdiocese of Hatford whose background includes parish, hospital and pastoral conseling ministries as well as college and university teaching and administration. He is presently Deputy Director and CEO of Unity Health Care, Inc., whose mission is to provide health and human services to the homeless and underserved in Washington D.C.Henri Nouwen was a priest of the Archdiocese of Utrecht, the Netherlands. Since his death in 1996, ever-increasing numbers of readers, writers, teachers, and seekers have been guided by his literary legacy. Henri taught at the University of Notre Dame, and the Divinity Schools of Yale and Harvard. In 1986 Nouwen came to make his home at L'Arche Daybreak near Toronto, Canada. He died suddenly on September 21, 1996. in Holland and is buried in King City, Ontario.Joel Filartiga, a medical doctor in Paraguay, drew the illustrations for this book in memory of his seventeen-year-old son, Joelito, who was tortured to death by a police squad in 1976.
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Chapter 1God With Us in SolidarityGod is a compassionate God. This means, first of all, that our God has chosen to be God-with-us. To be able to know and feel better this divine solidarity, let us explore the experience of someone being truly with us.When do we receive real comfort and consolation? Is it when someone teaches us how to think or act? Is it when we receive advice about where to go or what to do? Is it when we hear words of reassurance and hope? Sometimes, perhaps. But what really counts is that in moments of pain and suffering someone stays with us. More important than any particular action or word of advice is the simple presence of someone who cares. When someone says to us in the midst of a crisis, "I do not know what to say or what to do, but I want you to realize that I am with you, that I will not leave you alone," we have a friend through whom we can find consolation and comfort. In a time so filled with methods and techniques designed to change people, to influence their behavior, and to make them do new things and think new thoughts, we have lost the simple but difficult gift of being present to each other. We have lost this gift because we have been led to believe that presence must be useful. We say, "Why should I visit this person? I can't do anything anyway. I don't even have anything to say. Of what use can I be?" Meanwhile, we have forgotten that it is often in "useless," unpretentious, humble presence to each other that we feel consolation and comfort. Simply being with someone is difficult because it asks of us that we share in the other's vulnerability, enter with him or her into the experience of weakness and powerlessness, become part of uncertainty, and give up control and self-determination. And still, whenever this happens, new strength and new hope is being born. Those who offer us comfort and consolation by being and staying with us in moments of illness, mental anguish, or spiritual darkness often grow as close to us as those with whom we have biological ties. They show their solidarity with us by willingly entering the dark, uncharted spaces of our lives. For this reason, they are the ones who bring new hope and help us discover new directions.These reflections offer only a glimpse of what we mean when we say that God is a God-with-us, a God who came to share our lives in solidarity. It does not mean that God solves our problems, shows us the way out of our confusion, or offers answers for our many questions. God might do all of that, but the solidarity of God consists in the fact that God is willing to enter with us into our problems, confusions, and questions.That is the good news of God's taking on human flesh. The Evangelist Matthew, after describing the birth of Jesus, writes: "Now all this took place to fulfil the words spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 'The Virgin shall conceive and give birth to a son and they will call him Immanuel,' a name which means'God-is-with-us' " (Mt 1:22-23).As soon as we call God, "God-with-us," we enter into a new relationship of intimacy. By calling God Immanuel, we recognize God's commitment to live in solidarity with us, to share our joys and pains, to defend and protect us, and to suffer all of life with us. The God-with-us is a close God, a God whom we call our refuge, our stronghold, our wisdom, and even, more intimately, our helper, our shepherd, our love. We will never really know God as a compassionate God if we do not understand with our heart and mind that "the Word became flesh and lived among us" (Jn 1:14) NRSV.Often we say to each other in a bitter tone: "You do not know what you are talking about because you did not march in protest, participate in the strike, or experience the hatred of the bystanders, because you were never hungry, never knew cold, or never felt real isolation." When we say such things, we express the deep conviction that we are willing to listen to consoling words only when they are born out of solidarity with the condition that was or is ours. God wants to know our condition fully and does not want to take away any pain which God has not fully tasted. God's compassion is anchored in the most intimate solidarity, a solidarity that allows us to say with the psalmist, "This is our God, and we are the people he pastures, the flock that he guides" (Ps 95:7).With Gut FeelingsHow do we know this is anything more than a beautiful idea? How do we know that God is our God and not a stranger, an outsider, a passerby?We know this because in Jesus, God's compassion became visible to us. Jesus not only said, "Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate," but Jesus also was the concrete embodiment of this divine compassion in our world. Jesus' response to the ignorant, the hungry, the blind, the lepers, the widows, and all those who came to him with their suffering, flowed from the divine compassion which led God to become one of us. We need to pay close attention to Jesus' words and actions if we are to gain insight into the mystery of this divine compassion. We would misunderstand the many miraculous stories in the Gospels if we were to be impressed simply by the fact that sick and tormented people were suddenly liberated from their pains. If this were indeed the central event of these stories, a cynic might rightly remark that most people during Jesus' day were not cured and that those who were cured only made it worse for those who were not. What is important here is not the cure of the sick, but the deep compassion that moved Jesus to these cures.There is a beautiful expression in the Gospels that appears only twelve times and is used exclusively in reference to Jesus or the Father. That expression is "to be moved with compassion." The Greek verb splangchnizomai reveals to us the deep and powerful meaning of this expression. The splangchna are the entrails of the body, or as we might say today, the guts. They are the place where our most intimate and intense emotions are located. They are the center from which both passionate love and passionate hate grow. When the Gospels speak about Jesus' compassion as his being moved in the entrails, they are expressing something very deep and mysterious. The compassion that Jesus felt was obviously quite different from superficial or passing feelings of sorrow or sympathy. Rather, it extended to the most vulnerable part of Jesus' being. It is related to the Hebrew word for compassion, rachamim, which refers to the womb of Yahweh. Indeed, compassion is such a deep, central, and powerful emotion in Jesus that it can only be described as a movement of the womb of God. There, all the divine tenderness and gentleness lies hidden. There, God is father and mother, brother and sister, son and daughter. There, all feelings, emotions, and passions are one in divine love. When Jesus was moved to compassion, the source of all life trembled, the ground of all love burst open, and the abyss of God's immense, inexhaustible, and unfathomable tenderness revealed itself.This is the mystery of God's compassion as it becomes visible in the healing stories of the New Testament. When Jesus saw the crowd harassed and dejected like sheep without a shepherd, he felt with them in the center of his being (Mt 9:36). When Jesus saw the blind, the paralyzed, and the deaf being brought to him from all directions, he trembled from within and experienced their pains in his own heart (Mt 14:14). When he noticed that the thousands who had followed him for days were tired and hungry, Jesus said, I am moved with compassion (Mk 8:2). And so it was with the two blind men who called after him (Mt 9:27), the leper who fell to his knees in front of him (Mk 1:41), and the widow of Nain who was burying her only son (Lk 7:13). They moved Jesus, they made him feel with all his intimate sensibilities the depth of their sorrow. He became lost with the lost, hungry with the hungry, and sick with the sick. In Jesus, all suffering was sensed with a perfect sensitivity. The great mystery revealed to us in this is that Jesus, who is the sinless son of God, chose in total freedom to suffer fully our pains and thus to let us discover the true nature of our own passions. In him, we see and experience the persons we truly are. Jesus who is divine lives our broken humanity not as a curse (Gn 3:14-19), but as a blessing. His divine compassion makes it possible for us to face our sinful selves, because it transforms our broken human condition from a cause of despair into a source of hope.This is what we mean when we say that Jesus Christ reveals God's solidarity with us. In and through Jesus Christ we know that God is our God, a God who has experienced our brokenness, who has become sin for us (2 Co 5:21). God has embraced everything human with infinite tenderness and compassion.Toward New LifeBut what about the cures? Did not the blind see, the lepers become pure, the paralyzed walk again, and the widow see her son come back to life? Is that not what counts? Is that not what proves that God is God and he really loves us? Let us be very careful with our pragmatism. It was out of his compassion that Jesus' healing emerged. He did not cure to prove, to impress, or to convince. His cures were the natural expression of his being our God. The mystery of God's love is not that our pain is taken away, but that God first wants to share that pain with us. Out of this divine solidarity comes new life. Jesus' being moved in the center of his being by human pain is indeed a movement toward new life. God is our God, the God of the living. In the divine womb of God, life is always born again. The great mystery is not the cures, but the infinite compassion which is their source.We know too well what it means when cures are performed without compassion. We have seen men and women who can walk again, see again, speak again, but whose hearts remain dark and bitter. We know too well that cures not born out of care are false cures leading not to light but to darkness. Let us not fool ourselves with a shortcut to new life. The many cures by Jesus recorded in the Gospels can never be separated from his being with us. They witness to the infinite fecundity of Jesus' divine compassion, and show us the beautiful fruits of his solidarity with our condition. The truly good news is that God is not a distant God, a God to be feared and avoided, a God of revenge, but a God who is moved by our pains and participates in the fullness of the human struggle. The miraculous cures in the Gospels are hopeful and joyful reminders of this good news, which is our true consolation and comfort.Our Competitive SelvesWhen we take a critical look at ourselves, we have to recognize that competition, not compassion, is our main motivation in life. We find ourselves deeply immersed in all sorts of competition. Our whole sense of self is dependent upon the way we compare ourselves with others and upon the differences we can identify. When the question "Who am I?" is put to the powers of this world--school officials, church representatives, placement officers, athletic directors, factory managers, television and radio announcers--the answer is simply, "You are the difference you make." It is by our differences, distinctions, that we are recognized, honored, rejected, or despised. Whether we are more or less intelligent, practical, strong, fast, handy, or handsome depends upon those with whom we are compared or those with whom we compete. It is upon these positive or negative distinctions that much of our self-esteem depends. It does not take much reflection to realize that in all family problems, race conflicts, class confrontations, and national or international disputes, these real or imaginary distinctions play a central role. Indeed, we invest much of our energy in defending the differences between people and groups of people. Thus, we define ourselves in ways that require us to maintain distance from one another. We are very protective of our "trophies." After all, who are we if we cannot proudly point to something special that sets us apart from others?This all-pervasive competition, which reaches into the smallest corners of our relationships, prevents us from entering into full solidarity with each other, and stands in the way of our being compassionate. We prefer to keep compassion on the periphery of our competitive lives. Being compassionate would require giving up dividing lines and relinquishing differences and distinctions. And that would mean losing our identities! This makes it clear why the call to be compassionate is so frightening and evokes such deep resistance.This fear, which is very real and influences much of our behavior, betrays our deepest illusions: that we can forge our own identities; that we are the collective impressions of our surroundings; that we are the trophies and distinctions we have won. This, indeed, is our greatest illusion. It makes us into competitive people who compulsively cling to our differences and defend them at all cost, even to the point of violence.A New SelfThe compassion Jesus offers challenges us to give up our fearful clinging and to enter with him into God's fearless life. In saying be compassionate as your loving God is compassionate, Jesus invites us to be as close to each other as God is to us. He even asks us to love one another with God's own compassion. A divine compassion is a compassion without the slightest tinge of competition. Therefore, only God can be wholly compassionate because only God is not in competition with us. The paradox of God's compassion is that God can be compassionate because God is wholly other than we are. Because God is wholly other, God can become wholly as we are. God can become so deeply human because God is so fully divine. In short, God can be fully compassionate because there can be no comparison with us and thus God is in no way in competition with us.Jesus' command be compassionate as your loving God is compassionate is a command to participate in the compassion of our Creator God. Jesus requires us to unmask the illusion of our competitive selfhood, to give up clinging to our imaginary distinctions as sources of identity, and to be taken up completely into intimacy with God. This is the mystery of the Christian life: to receive a new self, a new identity, which depends not on what we can achieve, but on what we are willing to receive. This new self is our participation in the divine life in and through Christ. Jesus wants us to belong to God as he belongs to God; he wants us to be children of God as he is a child of God; he wants us to let go of the old life, which is so full of fears and doubts, and to receive the new life, the life of God. In and through Christ we receive a new identity that enables us to say, "I am not the esteem I can collect through competition, but the love I have freely received from God." It allows us to say with Paul, "I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me" (Ga 2:20).
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Product details
Paperback: 160 pages
Publisher: Image; Revised ed. edition (January 17, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9780385517522
ISBN-13: 978-0385517522
ASIN: 0385517521
Product Dimensions:
5.5 x 0.4 x 8.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.4 out of 5 stars
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#330,079 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
This was my textbook during my junior year "service" class at Notre Dame. The co-author, Father Don (McNeill) was my instructor. The course was great, but I had forgotten about the book. More than a decade later, as I re-engaged myself with social justice and welfare, and international orphanage work, I re-discovered this book while reading through all of Henri Nouwen's books. I found this book incredibly insightful for a more matured person in search for purposeful social action in the world.Key points I take away from this book - 1) We are overwhelmed by the world's problems and crisis if we do not have a center in our hearts and a community to which we belong; 2) We allow ourselves to be dominated by "clock" time, rather than trusting in the eternal; 3) If we think the world depended on our wits and efforts to "save", we are more doomed than those we are trying to serve; 4) Moving from seeking power (in social action) to seeking community; 5) Find how goodness (Christ) is already working even in places of despair. The last point has guided my work and restored my hope as I sat in desolate orphanages overseas -- and it is true! There are so many more insights, and every time I re-read it, I get something more from it. I've made a habit to take the book with me whenever I am off to a distant land working on child welfare issues.The reader will undoubtedly get her own take from it. I see this book as this deep reflecting pool. As a person grows in social action, a person may come to see and learn different things from this book. It's a companion book to be read at different stages of life.For those who may consider the book a little too "conceptual" and feel they need more "practical" guidance, I'd recommendWhen Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor... and Yourself by Brian Fikkert, Steve Corbett and Danny Campbell (Feb 1, 2010)
Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian LifeInitial Question:How does Nouwen's gentle tone connect to the strong language of compassion-infused discipleship?---Nouwen (& et. al)'s Compassion will be a book I return to to fuel my soul in times of doubt or cloudy direction. I've highlighted and underlined and highlighted again so many of the simple, eloquently phrased sentences, that I might need to start committing the book to memory.The most profound result from the book is how Nouwen's pastoral tone guides the reader toward seeing the necessity of Jesus' call to the compassionate life as a disciple.My largest "take away?" --Compassion is the direct opposite of competition. Compassion cultivates love and a loss of self; competition is the preservation of self (or the self's tribe) through the weaponry of anger, slander, etc. In order to cultivate a life (and people) of compassion, we're going to have to face our inner (and cultural) tendencies toward competition.
The not too well known poet Yosano Akiko wrote, "This one thing will I ask you: Are you with the people or apart from them? Depending on your answer, you and I will be forever divided between heaven and earth." This is the heart of Compassion. Nouwen and his co-authors argue that it is only genuine compassion, the ability to go outside of one's self in love for the other, that we find the meaning of God's love in Christ. It speaks directly to the heart of the Gospel, an incarnate faith in a life of compassion. Christ is known in "the least of these," in the person who is next to you now, on the bus, in the office, at your home. This is one of the books that I would really like to recommend to any Christian, regardless of their interests in theology or spirituality.Centered around the self-emptying, kenotic love of God in Christ, the book reminds us that Christianity is not a dogma, or a rule, or some system, but rather a Person. The authors use St. Paul's letter to the Philippians, 2:6-11, as the scriptural touchstone of the book. "In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus..." Dogmas and theologies are footnotes, Nouwen suggests, to the reality of the crucified and risen Christ as experienced by the disciples and his followers. They are essential, but they are not the "thing" in itself. To come to know the meaning of our lives, our creation, we must enter into the love of God directly through compassion.Anyone in the field of social services would benefit from this book immensely. Sometimes we loose sight of the value and meaning of our lives. This book is an antidote.This insightful work is divided into three parts. 1) The Compassionate God- examining the nature and mission of Christ and what he tells us about the Father. 2) The Compassionate Life- the roles and meaning behind community, displacement and togetherness. 3) The Compassionate Way- Patience, Prayer and Action.Each chapter stands alone and can be profitably used in group studies or for personal reflection.One of my favorite books! I wish I could give it to you! Enjoy!
Another excellent book by Henri Nouwen, co-written with Donald P. McNeill and Douglas A Morrison. This book delves into the heart of the difficulty in expressing true compassion. I never thought of compassion as the antithesis of competition, but the more I ponder it, the more I am forced to re-evaluate why I do the things that I do. I borrowed this book from a friend, only to realize after the first chapter that it belonged permanently on my bedside shelf. It will take me awhile to absorb and act on the truths presented humbly and sincerely in this great little title. If your heart yearns to help those in need, but you find yourself disenchanted or stymied, unable to cross the invisible boundry between your desire and the need before you - I recommend that you read this book and find out how you can follow the One who already went before us to became God With Us, the essence of compassion.
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