Читать книгу God's Guide for Grandparents - Susan M. Erschen - Страница 11

Chapter 3

Compassion

We were laying on our bellies under the Christmas tree. Our heads brushed the lower branches of the tree and our faces were close together as we inspected the manger scene. We were discussing each figure. Mary, the mother. The shepherd, who brought a baby lamb. The angel who came to adore the new baby. Then my two-year-old grandson touched the tiny figure of Jesus with his tiny, bare arms and legs stretching out from the straw-filled crib. My grandson said, “He cold.”

I wasn’t sure I understood him, so I asked him to tell me again. Grabbing the soft polka-dot blanket he always had beside him, my grandson said: “He cold. Need blanket.”

I clarified: “You think baby Jesus is cold and needs a blanket?”

My grandson nodded enthusiastically, popping his thumb in his mouth and rubbing his own blanket against his face.

I was amazed. This little boy, who was just learning to talk, felt compassion for a ceramic figure of Jesus. I could have told him that the real Jesus was fine. Jesus was warm in heaven with his daddy. Yet, I knew all across our city on this cold December day Jesus really was cold. I did not want to discourage my grandson’s budding compassion. For years, my four children made a soft bed for baby Jesus every Advent by adding pieces of gold yarn to a wooden crib when they did something nice for someone else. And every Christmas morning we carried the statue, wrapped only in its ceramic swaddling, down to the manger and placed it there before any presents could be opened. Yet never once did any of them worry if the little figure of Jesus was cold. We never wrapped the small statue in a piece of cloth. But here was my grandson full of concern for the tiny image of Jesus.

“Should we make baby Jesus a blanket?” I asked.

My grandson nodded happily, pointing now to the white felt tree skirt that wrapped around the base of the tree. I got a scissors, pulled a back corner of the skirt away from the tree and cut a small square. “Does this look good?”

He smiled, took the square of felt and laid it carefully on baby Jesus. Now, every year our Nativity scene has a square of white felt tucked around the baby Jesus. A notch is cut out of the back of the Christmas tree skirt. It is a reminder of the compassion my grandchildren are capable of showing.

Feeling Another’s Pain

Perhaps I was so touched by my grandson’s concern for the cold baby Jesus because I was seeing the dawning of empathy and compassion in him. Infants and small children are typically not much concerned with the feelings of others. They survive and thrive because they are self-centered. They do not care who they awaken in the middle of the night when they are hungry or uncomfortable. They are not worried about hurting someone’s feelings by declaring they do not like something. They think only of what they want when they grab for a toy or a breakable knickknack.

Those who study early childhood development say it is around the age of eighteen months when a toddler can begin to understand feelings. I have seen that with my grandchildren. They have a set of shape and color matching eggs. Each egg has a different facial expression. By the time she was two years old, my granddaughter could tell me which egg was happy, sad, sleepy, or angry. She liked to point to pictures in the books we read and tell me, based on the facial expressions, whether the character was angry, scared, or worried.

When we see these tender shoots of empathy sprouting in our grandchildren, it is time for us to begin to teach them compassion. We can teach our grandchildren about empathy and compassion by talking with them about feelings. We can be sensitive to their feelings and encourage them to think about other people’s feelings. We can model compassion for them by treating them and others with kindness and gentleness. We can ask them to consider what they might do to help a person who is feeling bad.

Empathy and compassion are not the same. Empathy is the ability to imagine how another person might feel in a particular situation. Compassion is feeling so strongly for what another person is going through that we feel called to action. Compassion does not mean we know or understand their feelings. We can have empathy without compassion or compassion without empathy. Or we can have them both. My grandson felt empathy for baby Jesus when he imagined he was cold. My grandson showed compassion when he wanted to make a blanket for him.

We may think our grandchildren are too young for compassion. We may want to protect them from the pain of the world. We may want to tell them not to worry about the cold infant Jesus, the homeless man on the street, or the victims of disasters flashed on television screens. Our grandchildren, however, are quite capable of understanding and caring.

Child psychologists also say that most four-year-old children are able to realize the impact their actions have on other people. They know their kindness will make someone happy; their selfishness will make someone sad; their screaming will scare a baby; their friendliness can make someone feel welcomed.

I have seen this to be true as well. One day, when we were all together for a family vacation on the lake, my son walked into the condo waving a wire-mesh container. “I’ve got crickets!” he announced. “Who wants to go fishing?”

My granddaughter was the first one to run to his side. He has taught her to be quite a little fisherman. She knew you almost always caught a fish with a cricket on your line. Within seconds everyone but me was heading out the door for some fishing. As they were piling into cars, my five-year-old granddaughter turned around and saw me waving by the door. “Grandma, aren’t you coming?” she asked.

“No,” I replied. “Grandma, doesn’t like fishing.”

“But you will be lonely,” she cried and came running back to me. “I will stay here with you.”

Here again was empathy combined with compassion. This little preschooler was quickly able to imagine what my emotions might be and to think that her leaving could be the cause of it. She compassionately wanted to do something to make me feel better and was willing to give up her own fun to make sure I was okay. Even though she was the first one who wanted to go fishing, she was willing to stay with me so I would not be sad. Only after we all convinced her Grandma had some work to do and would not be lonely did she regain her enthusiasm for the adventure.

So, if we had that understanding of feelings and emotions when we were mere toddlers, and if we could see how our actions might hurt someone else by the time we were four, what went wrong? Why isn’t our world full of wonderful people who hate the thought of someone else being sad, lonely, hungry, or hurting? The answer quite simply is ego. As we get older, our capacity for empathy grows, but our motivation to “take care of number one” does too.

Putting on Compassion

If during our life journey we paid close attention to the Gospels, perhaps we could set aside our ego and wrap ourselves in compassion. Saint Paul describes compassion as a cloak or a jacket we can wear. “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do” (Col 3:12–13). This image of compassion as something we can put on is a lovely image. Wouldn’t it be great if we could imagine ourselves simply picking up a beautiful coat and wrapping it around our shoulders whenever we were tempted to ignore or judge another person in need? Yet, as easily as we put on a cloak, we can throw it from our shoulders when it becomes uncomfortable. Now that we have grandchildren watching us, it might be a good time in our lives to wrap compassion around us more securely and fasten it with a strong clasp of prayer. We do not want it to slip from our shoulders as it might have once done. We want our grandchildren to always see us as people who care for those who suffer. In this way, we can help grow compassion in their young hearts.

If we doubt compassion is one of the most important virtues for us to nurture in our grandchildren, we need only look at Our Lord’s teachings. In the Judgment of the Nations story, Jesus tells us very clearly how we will be judged (see Mt 25:31–45). We will not be judged on how much we prayed or how much we went to Mass. We will not be judged on how much we studied Scripture. We will certainly not be judged on how much money we made, how nice our home was, or how up-to-date our wardrobe was. We will simply be judged by how often we showed compassion. Jesus will call us to join him in eternal peace and joy if we fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, or welcomed the stranger. He will open his arms to us if we provided clothing and shelter to the needy, cared for the sick, or visited those in prison. These acts of mercy are all the outpouring of compassion. For if we really feel compassion for another person we want to help them.

Compassion is not a passive emotion. It is a very active virtue. True compassion is empathy in action. If we are in pain or suffering, we act. Likewise, when we feel the pain and suffering of another, we want to take action.

Cultivating Compassion

We may naturally start to feel empathy as toddlers, but it takes great faith to practice the virtue of compassion in our self-centered society. It is so much easier to keep the focus on ourselves, look the other way, or deny another person is in need. We learn to convince ourselves this child is not cold or that old person is not lonely. Eventually we become numb to the suffering around us. Our Information Age is partly to blame for this numbness. Today, the hurts and pains of the world are flashed before our eyes so often on news shows, the Internet, and social media that we just stop seeing them. The needs seem overwhelming. What can one person do? Ronald Reagan once said, “No one can help everyone, but everyone can help someone.” Compassion is an extremely personal act. We don’t have to fix the world. We just have to care for the people God places in our path.

We need two things to practice compassion. The first is God’s grace. Let us ask God every day to open our eyes to one person who needs our help and then give us the grace to do what is necessary. The second thing we need is acceptance. We need to see that all people are just like us. They feel the same pain we feel. They have the same range of emotions. The mother holding a starving infant on the dusty streets of a Third World country feels just as much worry and pain as the mother holding a sick child in the sterile emergency room of a modern hospital. Once we begin to realize we are emotionally wired the same, then we start to know real compassion. When we open ourselves to the possibility of truly suffering with the person who is hungry, grieving, lonely, sick, or scared, we become ready to take action.

Looking into the Face of Jesus

We learn compassion not only by seeing ourselves in a suffering person, but also by seeing Jesus there. It is sweet and sentimental to look at the angelic baby Jesus in a crib and put a blanket on him. It is not as charming to look into the bloodied face of Jesus on the cross. Yet, this is where we must look if we want to become more compassionate. We must gaze at the suffering Christ on the cross. Imagine the blood dripping from his wounds. Feel the pain of his every breath. And then remember why he suffered like this. He did it for love, and to give us the grace to be better and more compassionate people. He did it to save us from our sins of indifference.

We cannot truly adore the infant in the crib if we are not also willing to follow the man on the cross. Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, known as the Little Flower, is a witness to this. We call her Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus and think of her as a gentle and humble little saint. But the full religious name the Carmelite order bestowed on her was Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face. The Holy Face is the suffering face of Christ Veronica wiped with a towel. It is the face that was crowned with thorns. It is the face that cried out, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34).

We, too, are often guilty of not knowing what we are doing. Often, we are not aware of how our actions or words cause pain to others. But for the sake of our grandchildren, we need to start paying greater attention. We need to learn to see the suffering Jesus in the face of every suffering person. If the world is going to be a better place, it will only be because more people are showing compassion for one another.

We can also cultivate more compassion in our grandchildren by encouraging them to think about how another person might feel and to consider whether there is anything they could do to make that person feel better. Depending on our different circumstances, we all have opportunities to expose our grandchildren to those who need compassion. When my mother was in a nursing home, my brother and sister-in-law regularly took their granddaughter to visit her. The little girl quickly became comfortable being in the presence of the sick. She could look into the face of the people she saw and not back away. No doubt she will always be compassionate to the elderly and sick.

My mother-in-law is 102. My grandchildren regularly see Great-Grandma here at our home and like to share their toys with her. Recently, my husband and I sponsored a five-year-old girl in a developing country. Her picture is on our refrigerator. I tell my granddaughter about this little girl who wants to learn to read but has no books. We color pictures for her and send her some of our stickers.

Even if face-to-face work with the needy is not possible for us or our grandchildren, we can still include people who are homeless, immigrants, those who are sick or dying, and the many who are lonely in our daily prayers. Through her great devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus and her prayers for missionaries, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux became a saint without ever going beyond the walls of her convent.