Virtue Description:
Compassion, a sub-virtue of charity, is the deep empathetic concern for the suffering of others that moves one to act to relieve that suffering.
Thomas Aquinas says that to love is to will the good of the other. Compassion is the dimension of that Love that prompts us to move to affect the one we love. We share in their burdens while preserving moral discernment and prudence in offering assistance.
Compassion integrates intellect, will, and emotion, ensuring that our actions are effective, proportionate, and truly beneficial.
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Vice of Deficiency:
Indifference – A lack of concern for the suffering or the needs of others.
Vice of Excess:
Enmeshment — to lose proper personal boundaries in responding to others’ suffering, allowing it to dominate one’s life or impair judgment. This can affect the appropriateness of the response.
My Life:
* In politics, we can apply objective truth in a way that lacks what the Church calls pastoral care. A clinical application of the truth without compassion can cause the truth to not be understood or believed.
* Perceptions of the homeless, treating them as a group suffering from vice and addictions rather than individuals deserving of human dignity.
The Secular Perspective:
Compassion without an ultimate source of moral authority provides “help” that advances vice in the lives of those who suffer. Drug needle exchanges, free prophylactics, abortion on demand, and gender dysphoria treatments are examples of this misguided “help”.
Even money given to those with signs on the corner could be enabling extremely detrimental behaviors toward the well-being of those who suffer. It may give us a temporary feeling of satisfaction that we have made a difference, but this kind of help often serves to dig those in need even deeper into the root causes of their suffering.
Explore Example Saint:
Saint Theresa of Calcutta is the exemplar of compassion. She wandered the streets of Calcutta, picked up, and cared for people who society had left to die. She bathed them and gave them a place to sleep and food. Mother Theresa provided the basic necessities of life for these human beings, whom society had labeled “untouchable.” She saw the human dignity in each of them and cared for them with more ardor than she cared for herself.
All of this without validating their vices, but without judging them either. The Sisters of Charity show Christ to the downtrodden through their actions.
Tell us what you think:
Keep the conversation about compassion going. Share your thoughts in the comments and continue the conversation. Your comments will be used in future episodes, especially when we invite guests to speak about this virtue.
Act of Compassion:
O my God, I am moved by the plight of my fellow man. I seek to truly aid those in difficult situations with care for their human dignity, despite whatever circumstances brought them to their current tribulation. I will good for them, and not evil, and am willing to take action to bring about that good. I repent of my past faults when I have failed to render aid to those in need, and I forgive all who have failed to treat me with compassion in my own times of distress.
Prayer
Lord, bless us with faith, hope, love, prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice that we may live as you intended man to live, in all virtue and righteousness. Help us to flee from sin and avoid all temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Protect us with a spiritual hedge in front of us, behind us, above us, below us, to our right, and to our left, within us, and all around us, and seal it with the blood of your precious Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Help us to keep you in everything that we think, say, and do. Amen.
Go out and fill the world with virtue, deus vult!
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