The Primacy of Compassion

All three of the readings this Sunday coalesce around a common theme, the invitation to partake in a special relationship with God. In the Exodus narrative, when in the wilderness Israel promised to obey God’s voice and keep the covenant, the people were summoned to be God’s special possession, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation (Ex 19:6). Similarly, Paul’s letter to the Romans invites sinners to be among those reconciled by the death of Jesus and, thus, justified and saved. Finally, in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus, aware of the scope of his mission and the need for healing and teaching the crowds, summons the disciples to join in his work. In the Gospel passages this Sunday and the two Sundays that follow, he will deliver his missionary discourse, inviting his disciples to drive out unclean spirits, heal every disease, care for the stranger, and, ultimately, to manifest Christ-like love.    

We, too, are invited to become followers of Jesus by imitating all his works on behalf of others. Yet it is not enough to go through the motions of doing these works of justice and restoring the lives of those in need. When saying “yes” to this divine call to be disciples of Christ, we must first share the disposition of Christ. This Sunday, the Gospel begins with a description of just that, of the place where we need to start. “At the sight of the crowds,” Matthew writes, Jesus’ “heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned” (Mt 9: 36). The Greek word (splagchnizomai), rendered here as “pity,” risks connoting a difference in social status, suggesting that the one suffering is inferior to the one expressing this sentiment. In the context of Jesus’ ministry, this Greek word is more often compatible with the term “compassion,” itself from com (cum in Latin), “together with,” and passion, “to feel or endure or suffer.” 

Perhaps not surprisingly, the notion of compassion, which often characterizes Jesus’ connection with others in need, occurs five times in Matthew’s Gospel, this being the first. It narrates Jesus’ experience when he encounters those who are troubled or abandoned, harassed or helpless, ostracized or excluded due to some depravity or simply those in some form of human need. In Mt 14:14, Jesus feels compassion for a crowd that has gathered with their sick, hoping that he might heal them. Moved with compassion, Jesus healed two blind men, who had cried out to him on the road out of Jericho (Mt 20:34). In another setting, he instructs his disciples to provide food for the crowd that has been with him for three days. He feels compassion for those gathered because they have no food to eat (Mt 15:32). Finally, in his parable of the unforgiving servant, Jesus identifies compassion as the disposition of the king (representing God), who forgives the servant for an unpayable debt. Here Jesus reveals for us, not only by his action but by his teaching, that compassion is God’s virtue even for those who cannot make appropriate recompense for sinfulness. 

Compassion is more than a feeling. It manifests as an embodied experience. The word refers to a deep, visceral, sometimes “gut wrenching” empathy that moves one to act on behalf of another.  It requires our vulnerability before another so that we can be gifted with what psychologist and theologian Jean Houston once called “leaky margins,” points of interpersonal overlap that allow us to connect with someone in need, just as Jesus did. With this capacity to share in ourselves what is experienced by another, we become radically present to others. That connectedness prompts courage to well up in us, inspiring us to act.   

Jesus seems to be moved with this kind of deep human compassion when he comes upon the crowd in this Sunday’s Gospel. Vulnerable to their neediness, he describes them as sheep without a shepherd.  His apt metaphor of sheep captures well the helplessness and forsaken nature of this crowd. They are “troubled and abandoned.” Sheep also manifest lots of anxiety because without protection, they are defenseless. Without the care of a shepherd, they are subject to attacks by packs of dogs, coyotes, mountain lions and even eagles who prey on young lambs. Jesus responds to this gathering as they manifest great need. Sensing the scope and gravity of their lack, he does not pretend to be able to address everyone’s needs by himself. Instead, he invites his disciples to participate in his mission as he has modeled it. 

Exactly what does that participation require? Partaking in Jesus’ ministry involves action, motivated by compassion, that engages a deep connectedness with another, the kind of kinship that discloses another’s real need. Moved by compassion, Jesus heals, offers teaching, restores integrity, receives the excluded, and grants forgiveness. He invites the disciples and us to do likewise. In fact, ministerial action not founded upon compassion often leads to burnout. Actions, however, that grow out of a profound connectedness with another’s experience authenticate and testify to our compassion. Thus, that which motivated Jesus to act on behalf of those requiring his care now instructs and motivates us. Yet it does even more. Compassion not only connects us with the one in need but ultimately creates in us a oneness with Jesus and what motivated his ministry.