The Beauty of Compassion
Seventh Sunday of the Year. Fr Albert Robertson ponders the dangers of fighting evil with evil.
It might strike us as slightly curious that the Lord, who came into this world to vanquish evil, is suggesting that we should cultivate a kind of surrender to it. It seems slightly passive, perhaps even a kind of cooperation with evil. After all, aren’t we told that all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing? Shouldn’t we be fighting? Shouldn’t we be bashing evil squarely in the face? The difficulty is, that when we engage in this brute human craving to right a wrong as soon as we see it, no matter what the cost, we capitulate to our desire to seem great, to gain some notoriety for ourselves in our battle against the forces of evil. Our nature being what it is, we can then get locked into a futile cycle of evil, sometimes even surrendering ourselves to evil by trying to fight evil with evil.
St Paul reminds us in our Second Reading that the wisdom of this world is folly with God. What seems wise to us based on our all-too-often utilitarian calculations is not wise at all, and the Lord’s words in the Gospel show us why. In our Gospel reading the Lord’s Sacred Heart is opened to us to display the greater possibility of compassion – the truth that we can surprise our adversary with our compassion, if only we dare to offer it. Offering compassion to those who offend us, extending a hand of forgiveness, is the greatest act of generosity precisely because it can open an avenue not just to reconciliation, but perhaps more importantly to repentance. If you offer your adversary both of your cheeks for him to strike, he only has two before he runs out of targets. perhaps then he will stop, perhaps he will even feel remorse and penitence.
More fundamentally of course, this shows the basic difference between the evils of vengeance, and the beauty of compassion. The fury and rage of evil and sin may burn white hot, but like all fires, it will eventually diminish and die out. It will exhaust itself. That compassion which is the love of the Lord’s own Sacred Heart, and is now ours by grace, is limitless. In the first reading from Leviticus, the Lord instructs the people to love their neighbours as themselves, and this is now no longer just a commandment, but a commandment made wonderfully possible through grace. The beauty of charity is that we can love as the Lord loves, and our human capacity for love finds a new impetus and a proper direction.
This perhaps suggests to us the kind of interior change that is required in our lives. It’s not that we are to love everyone thinking that they’re really marvellous and free from evil and sin, nor are we to think of ourselves in those terms either. As St John reminds us in his First Epistle, If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But just as we cannot have that overly optimistic vision, we must equally refuse our tendency towards seeing everyone we disagree with as the personification of all evil. Our task is to love and to actively perform works of love towards others without applying some kind of criteria, good or bad, that is foreign to the love of the Lord’s own Heart. If we try and love in that way, it’s safe to say that this action isn’t animated by charity.
What’s required of us is a fundamental change, a kind of internal revolution in the soul, which gives us a clarity of vision. In a few short days we will begin our Lenten journey towards the celebration of the Lord’s Paschal Mystery, and there are few better words to hold in our minds during these days than the Lord’s words in this Gospel Reading, ..I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. There is no better sign of the power of the Lord’s love, graciousness, and compassion than His Cross which transfigures the rage and fury born of sin into a great act of thanksgiving. The Lord’s own Heart, which can become our heart through grace, is able to absorb all of the hatred and fury of the world, and open up, for all of us, the way of compassion and repentance.
Readings: Leviticus 19:1-2,17-18 | 1 Corinthians 3:16-23 | Matthew 5:38-48
Image: stained glass from Grace Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco, photographed by Fr Lawrence Lew OP
Catherine
Thank you Father Albert. Love can be hard when you try to be compassionate and kind and then get slapped in the face for your efforts; or accused of the opposite of your intentions or something of that sort. It does require maturity and prayer too. Sometimes a person one tries to help is upset or angry about something and then doesn’t maybe realise they are taking out their frustration on you; or they are grieving and aren’t fully aware of their behaviour; or maybe they didn’t want that particular approach. It can be hard to get it right. I used to think love was easy but it can be really difficult at times.
Edwardus
Very well said, Catherine.
Tricia Murphy-Black
Thank you for this reflection, greatly appreciated
Alejandro Clausse
“Love your enemies”. Too many times we Christians have swept this fundamental principle under the rug. The main problem, I think, is this sort of «natural» tendency one has to rationalize our attitude, which Robert puts it wisely as “our tendency towards seeing everyone we disagree with as the personification of all evil”. Well, one rationalizes, maybe not all evil, but it is evil nonetheless, right? Moreover, what about the compassion with those that are victims of the mentioned evil? And so on and so forth …
It looks like a conundrum. Maybe Aquinas’s thoughts about the nature of evil can help to unravel this issue. Pope Francis explained it quite clearly pointing out that we should not presume to decide “where God is not, because God is mysteriously present in the life of every person, in a way that he himself chooses, and we cannot exclude this by our presumed certainties. Even when someone’s life appears completely wrecked, even when we see it devastated by vices or addictions, God is present there” (Gaudete et Exsultate, 42).
Every evil must have a small nonessential good that attracts the human will. There is no abstract evil, all human actions occur in concrete circumstances, which most of the time are hidden even from the wrong doer. Only by grace can we love our enemies. And I think that prayer is the natural way to begin.
Catherine
Yes, I agree. Once when I went to confession a few years ago, the priest replied to my confusion about what constitues a sin by saying that if we are in union with God then we will find it easier. Union with God, I discovered, is through prayer. It all seems so obvious but somehow it wasn’t to me then. I found some wonderful books about prayer and it has helped me, as I was very stuck in that way. I found prayer so hard, but now I know that prayer can be hard but continuing anyway tells God that we are willing to do this out of love and then it doesn’t matter if it is hard or easy.