Light, Life, and Love: Selections from the German Mystics of the Middle Ages · Chapter 22On Compassion
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FROM kindness is born compassion, by which we sympathise with every one, for no one can suffer with all men, except he who has kindness. Compassion is an inward movement of the heart, aroused by pity for the bodily or spiritual distress of all men. This compassion makes a man partaker in Christ's sufferings, when he considers the reason of these sufferings, the resignation and love of Christ, His wounds, His tortures, His shame, His nobleness, His misery, the shame which He endured, the crown, the nails, and the death in patience. These unheard of and manifold pains of Christ, our Redeemer and Bridegroom, move to pity anyone who is capable of feeling pity. Compassion makes a man observe and note his faults, his want of power to do any good thing, and weakness in all that pertains to the glory of God; his lukewarmness and slowness, the multitude of his faults, the waste of his time, and his positive shortcomings in virtue and good conduct. All this makes a man truly sorry for himself. Then his compassion for himself makes him consider his errors and wanderings, the small care which he has of God and of his eternal salvation, his ingratitude for all the good that God has done him, and for all that He has suffered for man. And he considers also that he is a stranger to the virtues, that he neither knows them nor practises them, while he is clever and crafty in all that is bad and unjust; he sees how attentive he is to the loss or gain of worldly goods, how inattentive and indifferent towards God, the things of eternity, and his own salvation. This consideration makes the just man feel a great compassion towards the salvation of all men. The man will also observe with pity the bodily needs of his neighbour and the manifold pains of nature, when he sees the hunger which men suffer, the thirst, cold, nakedness, poverty, contempt, and oppression; the sadness which they feel at the loss of relations, friends, goods, honour, and repose; and the innumerable afflictions to which flesh is heir. All this rouses the just man to compassion, and he suffers with all men; but his greatest suffering arises when he sees the impatience of others under their own sufferings, by which they lose their reward and often deserve hell. This is the work of compassion and pity.
This work of compassion and love for all men overcomes and removes the third mortal sin—namely, hatred and envy; for compassion is a wound of the heart, which makes us love all men, and can only work healing in so far as some suffering lives in men; for God has ordained that mourning and pain must precede all the other virtues. This is why Christ said, "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted"—that is to say, when they shall reap in joy what they now sow in compassion and sorrow.