Monday of the Second Week in Lent
Be compassionate just as your Father is compassionate. Do not judge, and you will not be judged: do not condemn and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven. Luke 6:36-37
Jesus’ command, “Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate,” is a command to participate in the compassion of God himself. He requires us to unmask the illusion of our competitive selfhood, to give up clinging to our imaginary distinctions as sources of identity, and to be taken up into the same intimacy with God that he himself knows. This is the mystery of the Christian life: to receive a new self, a new identity, that depends not on on what we can achieve, but on what we are willing to receive. This new self is our participation in the divine life in and through Christ. Jesus wants us to belong to God as he belongs to God; he wants us to be children of God as he is a child of God; he wants us to let go of the old life, which is so full of fears and doubts, and to receive the new life, the life of God himself. In and through Christ we receive a new identity that enables us to say, “I am not the esteem I can collect through competition, but the love I have freely received from God.” It allows us to say with Paul, “I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).
This new self, the self of Jesus Christ, makes it possible for us to be compassionate as our Father is compassionate. Through union with him, we are lifted out of our competitiveness with each other into the divine wholeness. By sharing in the wholeness of the one in whom no competition exists, we can enter into new, compassionate relationships with each other. By accepting our identities from the one who is the giver of all life, we can be with each other without distance or fear. This new identity, free from greed and desire for power, allows us to enter so fully and unconditionally into the sufferings of others that it becomes possible for us to heal the sick and call the dead to life. When we share in God’s compassion, a whole new way of living opens itself to us, a way of living we glimpse in the lives of the Apostles and those great Christians who have witnessed for Christ through the centuries. This divine compassion is not, like our self-made compassion, part of the competition. Rather, it is the expression of a new way of living in which interpersonal comparisons, rivalries, and competitions are gradually left behind.
Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human. . . . It is not surprising that compassion, understood as suffering with, often evokes in us a deep resistance and even protest. We are inclined to say, “This is self-flagellation, this is masochism, this is a morbid interest in pain, this is a sick desire.” It is important for us to acknowledge this resistance and to recognize that suffering is not something we desire or to which we are attracted. On the contrary, it is something we want to avoid at all cost. Therefore, compassion is not among our most natural responses. We are pain-avoiders and we consider anyone who feels attracted to suffering abnormal, or at least very unusual.
Our Prayer
O Lord Jesus,
you who came to us
to show the compassionate love of your Father,
make your people know this love
with their hearts, minds, and souls.
And to me, O Lord, your stumbling friend,
show your mercy.
Amen.
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