"We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures; we are the sum of the Father's love for us and our real capacity to become the image of His Son."
- Blessed John Paul II
While preaching my homily at the 8:00 AM Mass last Sunday, a distressed and trouble 35-year-old woman entered the side door and stood in the front aisle near the pulpit while I was preaching. Aware that Ginny Ambrose was taping my homily for our web site, I nodded with my head for her to take a seat in the front pew. A parishioner sitting nearby was watching and cautious of the situation. I am sure that many other parishioners likewise were watching how this would play out. As she walked, she bobbed and weaved. When she approached for Holy Communion, I noticed that her hands were very black and dirty. She seemed uncomfortable in the setting but, she remained for the duration of worship with us.
At the end of Mass, she made a bee-line to tell me her plight and predicament. She told me that her car was broken down and that she needed gas to get to Breezewood to help her son. After she was given some financial assistance, she got in her truck and sped off.
Situations like these make you wonder where the truth lies. You wonder if the person is in need or are they conning you. My rector at the seminary, Msgr. Richard M. McGinnis, a priest of the Archdiocese of Newark, used to say in pastoral practice class, "It's always best to err on the side of compassion." And, "When in doubt, give it out." Whenever I meet distressed, confused or agonizing people, I feel compelled to help them. As a priest, I am driven to respond to human hurts and dilemmas with pastoral instinct.
I bring this story to your attention to make us ever mindful and sensitive to those around us, to be acutely aware of our surroundings. Whether we meet a person with an unkempt appearnace, physical disability, mental challenge, or spiritual difficulty, we must be compassionate.
St. Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, encourages us through these words: "So be imitators of God, as beloved children and live in love as Christ loved us and handed Himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma" (5: 1-2). St. Paul reminds us that if the Holy Spirit truly fills us, we will reflect holiness to each and to all. St. Paul wants us to avoid feeding on anger, hatred, self-centeredness, control, judgment and unruly passions. But rather, we must feed on jesus, the Living Bread -- the Bread of compassion, of reconciliation, of justice, of peace -- that not only nourishes us but inspires us to be bread for others. We must be strengthened through the divine encouragement the Lord gives us in His Holy Word, the Eucharist, and the life of the Holy Spirit within us. We are challenged to follow Christ in love and to love as Christ loves.
There are many hungers of the human heart. We hunger for a feeling of importance. We want to feel we are special, that we matter. Nobody wants to be a nobody. And we all want to tell our story and we all have the right to be heard and respected. We have a hunger for acceptance, understanding, and compassion -- with warts and all, with our proficiencies and deficiencies, with our assets and liabilities. We hunger of faith, to have a compass that sets us on a course of positive beliefs and values leading us to a destination. We hunger for hope. In a world that oftentimes puts a pall on promise, hope and truth, there is no spiritual hunger strike of hope in Jesus' vocabulary.
We hunger for love. St. Paul reminds us that love never fails. Life can fail us, people can fail us, health can fail us, work can fail us, our family and friends can fail us. But God remains. I have found that the common denominator in all my counseling situations is whether a person has been loved or whether there is a deficiency in love. We hunger for relationships. not co-dependent or addictive ones that are death-dealing rather than life-giving, but relationships that are healthy, holy, happy, that helps one to ward off the coldness of anguish and loneliness.
As I am at the middle stage of my life, I realize that the key to life is life-giving relationships. We must nourish relationships, encourage them and strengthen them. For example, one of the ways I have found I can stay in touch with those I have met through the years is through e-mail companions. I now have over 600 e-mail companiions that I reach out to each week. You need to have relationships that are "nutrient rich" and not "nutrient deficient" through exploitation and manipulation.
Ultimately, we hunger for eternal life. And only God can satisfy the deepest hunger that earth can't fill, that time can't fill, that people can't fill, that our profession can't fill and that our children can't fill. In other words, we hunger fo God.
The following is from a book I will be teaching in an 8-week course beginning August 27. May this be a blessing for you.
My cup of compassion holds tears of the world;
It overflows with sorrow, struggles and sadness.
My cup of compassion holds the cries of childrens,
unfed, unloved, unsheltered, uneducated, unwanted.
My cup of compassion holds the screams of war,
the tortured, slain, imprisoned, the raped, the disabled.
My cup of compassion holds the bruised and battered,
victims of incest and abuse, gang wars, violent crimes.
My cup of compassion holds the voice of silent ones,
the mentally ill, illegal immigrants, the unborn, the homeless.
My cup of compassion holds the emptiness of the poor,
the searing pain of racism, the impotency of injustice.
My cup of compassion holds the heartache of loss,
the sigh of the dying, the sting of the divorced.
My cup of compassion holds the agony of the earth,
species terminated, air polluted, land destroyed, rivers with refuse.
My cup of compassion, I hold it to my heart where the Divine dwells
Where love in strong than death and disaster.
- Joyce Rupp, "The Cup of Our Life"
