Homily

So, I had a fine time in Greece, thank you. We spent several days each in Athens which has about 660,000 people, and Thessaloniki which has about 350,000 people. And as in all big cities the downtown streets are often very crowded especially during the day and you’re constantly surrounded by other people walking with you, passing by you, standing beside you on street corners waiting for the traffic lights to change and praying you won’t be killed when you cross the street. And then when you get to the other side, even though you’re on the sidewalk you still pray you won’t be killed because in Greece people who ride motor scooters and motorcycles consider the sidewalks to be secondary roads for smaller vehicles, and you never know when one might whiz by you from behind. There are no bicycle lanes in Greece. It’s considered a form of suicide.

As in all big cities on the sidewalks there is a kind of urban attitude in walking. You mostly move quickly, dodging people left and right, once and a while getting a bit of a bump perhaps, on the lookout for potential dangers or problems, looking ahead but also looking down to avoid little piles of dog danger left behind by city canines. Generally speaking your job is to get where you want to go, negotiating your way by particularly not paying attention to other people any more than is absolutely necessary, staring at hundreds, even thousands of faces without really noticing anybody as if they are all just items on the landscape, things to be negotiated through, around or behind unless they look dangerous, in which case pay extra attention and move away.

Thousands of momentary glances at thousands of strangers, people unknown to you, people you’ll never see again, lots and lots and lots of people moving upstream and downstream and you’re just trying to make your way somewhere and so are they. So which of them is my neighbor? How should I think of all these thousands of people I’m sharing the city streets with? Is this urban anonymity a necessary posture you have to take up especially in big cities? Is it me versus them? Are they competitors with me on the city streets, or are they my neighbors? Or are they my neighbors who are competitors with me? I think of the recent murders in Paris. Some people ran toward those who were shot or injured from bombs, while others ran away for fear of their own lives or for the lives of the loved ones they were with. Certainly we praise those who rushed in to help; should we criticize those who ran away? Who is my neighbor? It’s easy for us to answer in the abstract, in theory; “My neighbor is everyone.” But it’s not always so easy to act on that truth, to respond as a neighbor to a neighbor.

Compassion, according to the dictionary is a sympathetic awareness of someone else’s distress, along with a desire to alleviate that distress. I certainly think there are a lot of people who, when they see others in distress, they have that desire to want to try and help if they can do so. We saw examples of that in the Roseburg tragedy and in the Paris violence. Of course these are emergency, life and death situations which bring out strong responses on the part of caring people. And let us remember those who suffered, or were killed in those places along with all those who tried to help them. Let us pray for them today.

But there are many more situations for people all around us, situations in life where people are suffering from difficulties in their lives, suffering from temptations, disease, addiction, loneliness, loss of purpose in life, lack of guidance or of grace—people who are suffering or facing hardships of many kinds. And some of the hardships tempt people to go against their God-given human dignity, to act in ways that are unhealthy in physical and spiritual ways, temptations that lead people into sinful acts and sinful philosophies that can never help them, but only harm them. How shall we be their neighbors?

Today, more and more, it seems our society has come to a place where compassion has lost its true meaning. People are still willing to be aware of the distress other people are in, they are aware of the problems that others may have, but instead of trying to alleviate, to help them in their distress they simply tell people, “Don’t worry. You have nothing to be distressed about. You’re just fine. Go on your way and be happy. No problems here for you. All is well!” Ah! Now I don’t need to worry about your troubles any more. I’ve declared you to be problem-free! And I don’t have to do anything to help you, which is even better. My friends, telling someone who is in trouble, who is acting contrary to human dignity and the life of grace God has called us all to live in, telling someone who is tempted to cause harm to themselves or to others, and even to the taking of another life, that they shouldn’t worry, that they should not hear their consciences, that their desires are all that matter and the road to peace and happiness can be found in self-centered fulfillment—this is not compassion, it is the opposite of compassion. All it does is to alleviate my feeling badly for you, while at the same time it releases me from any responsibility to actually help you. I simply declare you don’t need any help and my job is done.

It’s tempting, even to good people who try to do what’s right. It’s tempting to tell people what they want to hear, to go along with whatever other people want to do, to keep quiet and mind your own business. It’s tempting. But it’s like coming upon the beaten man lying at the side of the road, giving him two Advils and telling him to have a nice day. “I’ll hold a good thought for you.”

Being compassionate is about having empathy for the distress of another person, and in the Christian sense it’s not only having a desire to help them, but also actually helping them if we can in any way. What Christian compassion is not about is the acceptance of lies, deception, bad thinking, temptation, ignorance, or helping other people to feel good rather than helping them to actually be good, to help them in their struggles, such as we can, to live a good life.

It’s very easy to tell someone the truth when we are angry with them (or at least what we think the truth is), but it can be very hard sometimes to speak the truth to people who are in pain out of compassion for them because we’re tempted to think we’re only adding to their suffering. But it is not so! We should never, ever fear the good, the beautiful, and the truth neither for ourselves nor for others. And, sadly, there are many situations where perhaps the only thing we can do for someone else is to pray for them. But in that case, let us not neglect to pray for them.

As Jesus tried to show the Pharisees that their love for their neighbor was faulty because they did not even know who their neighbor was, let us not have false compassion for our own neighbors by disregarding what is good and true in favor of some kind of emotional acceptance of things and behaviors that can never be life-building. And may we ask for the grace to be genuinely loving toward our neighbor with first and always counting the cost. If we’re willing to lift other people up, surely Jesus will lift us up as well.