On Compassion

            Last summer, I spent 2 months at the Institute for Priestly Formation, where I was able to focus on the spiritual life. I am very grateful for this time, and thought I might share with you a couple of my papers that I wrote while there (even though it has been a WHILE since I last posted, I thought you may enjoy this more than you would an update on my life, which is very rich and full of the Lord's infinite love!). I wrote this short reflection on July 10, 2015. May God bless you all abundantly in the risen Christ Jesus our Lord,

Ryan

            While I was reading Father Jean Corbon's work, The Wellspring of Worship, I was struck by Corbon’s discussion of the Incarnation, particularly where he says, “The fountain is there, and it is the heart of the Savior: place of the Passion of God and the passion of man, place of the com-passion” (43). I have in recent months been drawn to the idea of compassion, most precisely because of its Latin roots, meaning “to suffer with.” Once I heard this root of the word, my idea of compassion changed: from having sympathetic, yet somewhat distant, feelings towards another in trial, to the idea of empathy—really entering the suffering of the other.

            So in my reflection on Corbon, I acknowledged that “suffering with” as a definition of compassion still moves me. As I was relating this to the Lord in prayer, I realized that as God enters into humanity, He ‘suffers with’ us simply by entering into the fallen world as a human being—simply by the Incarnation, He suffers with us (to speak nothing of the Cross). But He enters humanity so that we may then suffer with Him by carrying our crosses and being nailed to the cross with Him. I continued relating to the Lord as I got to the notion of ‘thirst.’ [Jesus's thirst for humanity is a common theme in this book.] That God wants to quench His thirst for communion with His creation is incredible. And not just man collectively, but individually: with each man, woman, and child.

At this point in my prayer period, I was finished speaking to the Lord and just received what He had to give me: made in God’s image and likeness, we too have a thirst for communion. Unlike God’s thirst, though, we want communion with Him who is communion, with the Trinity. Going back to compassion, I felt Jesus saying to me that I could understand His Sacred Heart better by calling it His Compassionate Heart: for His heart ‘suffers with’ our hearts whenever they are in pain. As my heart gets pierced (by the lances of Original Sin, the Evil One, others’ sins, and my own sins), my heart suffers. When my heart is pierced, Jesus feels the soldier’s lance piercing His Heart. It bleeds, as my heart bleeds: it ‘suffers with’ my own pierced heart. And we are in a greater communion with each other than we have ever been before.