23. Compassionate and effective love

As they left Jericho, a large crowd followed Jesus. Now there were two blind men sitting at the side of the road. When they heard that it was Jesus who was passing by, they shouted, ‘Lord! have pity on us, Son of David!’ Jesus stopped, called them over and said, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, let us have our sight back.’ Jesus had compassion on them and touched their eyes, and immediately their sight returned and they followed him.
Matthew 20:29-34

The spirit of our Congregation comprises those intimate personal attitudes of Christ which our Founder recommended to the members from the beginning: love and reverence towards the Father, compassionate and effective love for the poor, and docility to divine providence.
Constitutions, 6

The Gospel abounds with scenes in which Jesus’ compassion appears as the sentiment which moved him to perform some miracle. Saint Vincent was moved by the compassionate Jesus who took upon himself the suffering of others. The founder of the Company wishes all his missionaries to be filled with compassion and mercy.

1. He Became Human to Identify with Our Suffering

Since the Son of God was unable to show his sentiments of compassion in the state of glory, which he enjoys from all eternity in heaven, he willed to become human and to be our High Priest to identify with our suffering. If we are to live with him in heaven, we should, like him, identify with the sufferings of our brothers and sisters. We, as missionaries, are obligated to be filled with this spirit of compassion, since our state and vocation bind us to serve the most miserable, the most abandoned, and those burdened with spiritual and corporal oppression. In the first place, we should be touched and moved by the pain of our brothers and sisters. Secondly, just as Jesus wept over the city of Jerusalem because of the calamities with which it was threatened, so too, our reactions ought to be tangible expressions of our identification with and compassion toward our brothers and sisters. Thirdly, we should speak compassionately, and in this way express our profound sharing in the interests and sufferings of our neighbor. Finally, people should be comforted and helped in their want and misery and we should strive to deliver them from their pain; for heart and hand should go together¹.

2. To Be Unfeeling Toward Those Who Suffer Is to Be a Christian in Name Only… It Is to Be Worse than Animals

During a discourse on charity, Saint Vincent spoke of its effects. The fourth effect is compassion:

Compassion means to suffer with our brothers and sisters, to weep when they weep. Quite different from those who feel no sorrow for the afflicted or grief for the sufferings of the poor, compassion is that manifestation of love which enables us to enter into another’s heart and feelings. Ah, how loving was the Son of God! He is asked to see Lazarus … he goes. Magdalen rises up and goes to meet him, weeping; the Jews follow her, weeping also; all begin to weep. Jesus weeps with them. He is so loving and compassionate. His tender love was the reason he came down from heaven … We, too, should be compassionate towards our afflicted brothers and sisters and share their grief. And Saint Paul! How sensitive you are in this respect. O Savior! You filled the apostle Paul with your spirit of tenderness; help us to say with him: Is there anyone sick among you? So am I².

3. Here Is a Person Full of Mercy

“Think”, said Saint Vincent, “of the burden that will be ours at the time of our death, if we are not merciful.” Saint Vincent exhorted his missionaries to be merciful:

When we go to visit the poor we should share their feelings so as to suffer with them and adopt the dispositions of that great Apostle who said: ‘I became all things to all people.’ If we identify in this way with the pain of our brothers and sisters we shall never hear spoken to us the terrible words of the prophet: ‘I wanted to see if there would be anyone to grieve with me in my sufferings and there was no one.’ We should, then, soften our hearts and make them aware of the sufferings and miseries of our neighbor. We should beg God to give us that spirit of mercy which is the very Spirit of God himself; because as the Church says, it is the characteristic mark of God to be merciful and to bestow his Spirit of mercy on his people. Let us then be merciful, my brothers and sisters, and let us show mercy to all so that we shall never meet poor people again without consoling them, nor an ignorant one without teaching him in a few words all that he is bound to believe and all that he should do for his salvation. Finally, let us reflect for a moment on how much we are in need of mercy ourselves we who should show it to others must bring it with us into all sorts of places, and suffer all things for its sake³.

• It has been said that the very least a Vincentian ought to feel within himself is the pain, the poverty, the sadness, etc., of the poor. Can I say this about myself?
• Knowing what I really can do, do I translate my compassion into effective action?

Prayer:

O Savior, do not allow us to make bad use of our vocation. Do not take away your Spirit of mercy from the Company. For what would become of us, O Lord, if you withdrew your mercy from us? Grant us your mercy. Grant it together with the spirit of meekness and humility. Yes, let us ask God to pour out his spirit of mercy and compassion, to fill us with it, to preserve it in us so that whoever sees a Vincentian missionary may be able to say: ‘There goes a person who is full of mercy’. We pray in your name Lord Jesus, who live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.⁴

1. “On the Spirit of Compassion,” undated, O.C., xi, 771.
2. “On Charity,” May 30, 1659, O.C., xi, 560.
3. “On the Spirit of Mercy and Compassion,” August 6, 1656, O.C., xi, 233-234.
4. Ibid., 234.