Walking with ........the role of compassion

What does compassion require of us?  

For many, compassion is a sentiment which pulls at your heart strings, triggered by touching stories, personal injustices and at times, puppies and small children.  The weak or powerless move us to a compassionate response so we paste a link on Facebook,  write a check, or volunteer some hours to a cause. 

Taking the time to reflect on those people or situations that move us to compassion would be a good spiritual exercise.  Take a couple of days and make a running list of what has moved your heart, what has brought to the fore your 'that's not right' response.  

How many of your items were from your own neighborhood?  Your state?  The nation?  The world?

Who moved you to a compassionate response?  Were they children?  Women?  Teens?  Men?  The Elderly?  Did they all look like you?  Share the same beliefs?  Speak the same language?

What situations prompted your injustice meter?  Hunger?  Addiction?  Abandonment?  Violence?

Were there situations that only led you to argue quietly within?  The homeless person with a sign at the intersection for example.  Did you find yourself saying..."If I give them money, they will only use it for drugs"? "How do I know they are really homeless?"  "Why can't they get a job?"  Not that I am condemning these internal conversations, I am simply asking that we all be truthful with ourselves.

What did it take to move you beyond 'thoughts and prayers' to a concrete action to right the wrong and support the suffering?

At its core, the word compassion means ‘to suffer with or alongside’.  Although we might begin at a distance with a news story or chance encounter, compassion calls us to move closer.  We are to suffer  alongside those whose plight has challenged our sense of justice, to walk with them.  Compassion feels the pain of others, and ultimately, requires action on their behalf.  In the end, a life of compassion is a life of action for others. 

The quintessential example of this in the Bible is Luke's story of the Good Samaritan (chapter 10).  Lots of folks saw the beaten victim of robbery laying on the side of the road.  Priests and officials, plus, I would expect some ordinary citizens trying to get to the market.  They looked, they saw, and yet, 'passed by on the other side' of the road.  The Samaritan (who, BTW, every Israelite thought of as less worthy) stopped, bound up his wounds and provided for his care.  The Samaritan whom no one would have called 'neighbor' acted as neighbor to the anonymous man.

None of us can act every time, in every situation, with equal amounts of commitment and support.  From a spiritual perspective, the problem is not the demands of acting every time, but rather, the emptiness of never acting at all.

When Jesus walked the via dolorosa he provided us with the divine example of what it means to have compassion - to walk alongside those who are suffering, taking their suffering on your shoulders.  

Compassion is not about the weeping that accompanies a poignant TV commercial; it is about taking up your cross with your neighbor.