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Compassion
“...you became a model for all the believers”
The word compassion means, literally, to “suffer with” someone else. As we hear today the greatest commandment, to love God and to love our neighbor, is preceded by God’s compassion towards us. God, the creator of everything, the Lord of heaven and earth, loves you and me enough to act with compassion towards us. He has decided to enter into our suffering--even though much of our suffering is the result of our own sinfulness or that of our first parents--to bring us healing and peace. If you want to know God’s response to your pain, your heartache, loss, loneliness and shame, then take a good long contemplative look at our Crucifix here at St. Dominic Parish. God’s response to our suffering is to suffer with us. Because we are worth it. That is the source of our worth and value, that Jesus Christ is the one, in the words of St. Paul, who “delivers us from the coming wrath.”
Recognizing that God is the source and the model of how we are to live, it makes sense that the “greatest commandment” that Jesus shares is for us to love God with everything we have: all our heart, soul and mind. Rooted in this relationship of love is the way we are called to love our neighbor as ourselves. So this week we are challenged to take a good look at how we are honoring this greatest and second greatest commandment. Loving God and loving your neighbor are not commands fulfilled by thinking generally pleasant (or at least not outright hateful) thoughts about God and our neighbor. They are fulfilled in concrete actions. So our mission is to take the sheet with the corporal works of mercy that will be handed out (along with contact people who are doing this within our parish and community) and taking the step of doing at least one of them. Find a corporal work of mercy, and make a plan to do it. Simple. Not easy, but simple. But that is Christianity. Not mere sentiments, but concrete actions that embody and enact the compassion that has been shown to us. God bless!