Compassion is not pity. Compassion is more like empathy sprung from love. When one thinks of compassion for humanity, there is no better example than You. Yet, how does one extrapolate a personal measure of that divine prototypical compassion? Love, pure and simple, is the engine that drives compassion.
In myself, what takes place, more often than not, is a separation of compassion from love. This keeps compassion on the level of pity. Feeling pity for the plight of a particular individual or group, even to the extent where it moves one to action, is not bad, but there is a lot of self in it which is the difference between my compassion and Yours. It makes me feel bad that my wife has such suffering with her health; it makes me feel bad that my brother’s life is a problem for him and has literally gone to his dogs; it makes me feel bad that in such an affluent nation there is so much homelessness and hunger. Life would be so much better for me if these things weren’t so - that’s the difference between You and me - the "me" in it. This is just pity (even self-pity) not compassion. Even if it moves me to action, true compassion may still not exist in me.
It would seem that only when one can truly penetrate the heart and soul of another in an empathy based on really trying to feel like the other - to be that other - as You were us - is the love necessary for compassion generated. Compassion, then, becomes the force which drove You to so love those whom Your Father loved. It should, then, be the force which so drives us to love whom You loved.
A lot of my anxious energy is foolishly spent on expecting compassion from others. And, what is far worse, I often measure my compassion by the amount I receive. The only compassion about which I should truly be concerned is Yours, and it should be the model of what and why I give. Yet, though I desire it, I will never come up to that. There is no self in the compassion of the cross. When someone says, "you are a compassionate person", or, "thank-you for your compassion", they mean they recognize and are grateful for your trying to feel as they do. It’s more than an "outside-looking-in" pity, it’s a real empathetic identification.
Pity is good in that it can move to compassion. Both pity and compassion can be felt without doing anything, but pity blows away while compassion continues to burn.
I hope you don't mind a comment... From my memory of school days, I think compassion means strong feeling (passion) WITH (com) the other person. Which is exactly what you were describing.
I've done nursing home visits with a church group where the prayer beforehand was to be able to help the poor pitiful old people. That's nice, but I think it would have been better to have prayed that we recognize that these people were once as healthy and capable as we are, and give them the respect we would want in their situation.
But anyway... people are imperfect and will disappoint. We really need for God to love us anyway.
