Homily

Warsaw is a city of about 1.8 million people, which is a lot of people. We spent 6 days there on our recent trip. 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 so you can cross. I was quite surprised there by one thing: when you approached a crosswalk that did not have a traffic light, traffic instantly stopped to let you cross the street. “Drivers here are so kind!” I thought. I found out later by accident that there was a new law that had been passed and not stopping instantly for pedestrians at these crosswalks carried a huge penalty. But it was great for us walkers.

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 in a while getting a bit of a bump perhaps, on the lookout for potential problems. Generally speaking, your job is to get where you want to go, negotiating your way by particularly not paying serious attention to most people any more than is absolutely necessary, staring at hundreds, even thousands of faces without really noticing hardly anybody as if they are all just items on the landscape, objects to be negotiated through, around or behind.

Thousands of momentary glances at the faces of 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 hundreds of people I’m sharing the city streets with? Is this urban anonymity a necessary posture you must 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 of Israeli citizens by Hamas terrorists. Some people ran toward those who were injured to try and help them. Others ran away from the area in fear of their lives or the lives of the people they were with. Certainly, we praise those who rushed in to help; but I wonder, 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 in the way Jesus describes.

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, have that desire to want to try and help if they can do so. We have seen that. Of course, it is the emergency life and death situations which bring out strong responses on the part of caring people

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 lack of grace—people who are suffering or facing hardships of many different kinds. And some of the hardships tempt people to go against their God-given human dignity, to act in ways that are unhealthy physically or spiritually, 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 in a number of cases, instead of trying 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 anymore. 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 for 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 to 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, as we can, as we are able, to live a good life.

It's very easy to tell someone the truth when we are angry with them, but it can be very hard sometimes to speak the truth to people who are in pain or trouble because we're tempted to think we're only adding to their suffering. But it is not so! We should never, ever fear telling the truth to ourselves and we should not fear telling it to others who need to hear it. And, sadly, there are many situations where perhaps the only thing we can do for someone else is to pray for them. But if that is the 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 ideas and behaviors that can never be life-building or helpful to them. And may we ask for the grace to be genuinely loving toward our neighbor without always counting the cost. If we're willing to lift other people up, surely Jesus will lift us up as well.