We live in a culture that often struggles with suffering. Of course, we struggle with our own suffering. But we also struggle to formulate a faithful response to the suffering of those around us. We may feel bereft of the right words to say when someone receives bad news, has fallen on hard times or loses a loved one. Maybe hearing about their misfortune makes us fearful or forces us to confront our own human vulnerability. Sometimes we even pull away from a friend who is suffering because we feel we are in over our heads and don’t know where to begin. 

But Christian faith does not call us to sympathy or platitudes. It calls us to deep, abiding compassion. This is made clear by New Testament Scripture scholar, Barbara Reid, O.P., on this week’s episode of “The Spiritual Life with Fr. James Martin, S.J.”  

“One thing that bothers me is sometimes the word for compassion in the biblical text, they’ll translate it as pity. And that’s not the right word,” Sister Barbara explains. “Pity, to me, conveys that you stand apart from the other person, and…you feel bad for another person. Compassion means literally suffering with another person.”

So how do we know when we are pitying another versus exercising real compassion? The litmus test for compassion can be found in the Gospels, where we read that Jesus feels compassion for someone. While the word “pity” is used in some biblical translations, Sister Barbara says the original Greek word invoked here is splagchnizomai (σπλαγχνίζομαι), meaning your “guts.”  

Sister Barbara says she especially likes that this is the word used in a story found in all four Gospels: the feeding of the 5,000. “So, people were suffering in their guts, rumbling stomachs from hunger, and Jesus, his splanchna [guts] are rumbling, too,” she says. “And so he’s literally experiencing the same thing that they are, and then he alleviates it with the feeding of the multitude.”

Instead of searching for the right words to console a friend, maybe we should start by asking ourselves, where in my body do I feel a response to their suffering? Do I feel sick to my stomach when I consider what my friend is going through? Does my heart ache for them? 

Let prayer come out of that shared pain. If we can first connect to the pain another is experiencing, we will pray differently, and hopefully, we will show up differently by their side. In this practice, we can genuinely attune to their reality, and out of that connection, see where we can be of service.

Knowing how to care for our friends who are enduring great suffering requires careful discernment. It may still be true that a baked casserole or DoorDash gift card could help a friend in their recovery. But it may also be true that a weekly phone call, where a friend is free to cry or complain or lament, can provide more of a reprieve, a relief from the feeling that they are suffering alone. This takes proximity; it is not something that is usually done well at a distance. We must allow ourselves to be moved interiorly for compassion to emerge.

Maggi Van Dorn is the Senior Audio Producer for America Media.