Mercy and Compassion

“As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd” (Mark 6:34).

Jesus “had compassion”. This is one of the verbs that best characterizes Jesus’s ministry as he goes among the people. Mercy and compassion are intimately intertwined throughout Biblical language. Right at the beginning of Misericordiae vultus, Pope Francis explains: “Jesus Christ is the face of God’s mercy” (1). Indeed, as Jesus goes among the people, he observes their suffering and responds with an outpouring of compassion. Jesus is one with His Father in looking on the world and suffering with the suffering of humanity. Compassion literally means to “suffer with” in Latin. God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is not indifferent to the world. He is not distant from the suffering of humanity, but embracing the one who suffers, he takes this suffering up into His own life. The renowned Russian Orthodox contemporary thinker, Father Alexander Men, insisted that this is Christianity’s particular perspective on suffering: God does not magically remove suffering but rather comes to share our suffering. God suffers with us. The history of salvation reveals God’s mercy and compassion as God does not abandon humanity in its suffering but comes to share the burden. In fact, so many of the saints discovered the face of Christ in those suffering.

In the Greek of the New Testament, the verb “to have compassion” (splangkhnizomai), is used eleven times and uniquely for Jesus and by Jesus. Compassion floods Jesus as he observes the suffering of the sick, the lonely, the tormented and the bereaved. When he encounters the leper (Mark 1:41), the widow who has lost her son (Luke 7:13), the blind men outside Jericho (Matthew 20:34) and the crowds (Matthew 9:36, 15:32), Jesus acts out of compassion. Furthermore, Jesus uses the verb to describe protagonists in his parables, like in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10) and in the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15). The key moment in both parables is the moment of compassion. In his parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus describes the Samaritan who comes upon the wounded man on the Jerusalem-Jericho road: “a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with compassion” (Luke 10:33). Compassion distinguishes the Samaritan from the pious, religious people who had passed this same way before him. Seeing the wounded man, they had passed by without stopping. In his parable of the Prodigal Son, Jesus describes the father, who sees his wayward son, who had rebelled against him and squandered his inheritance, returning to him: “while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him” (Luke 15:20).

The verb, “to be filled with compassion” (splangkhnizomai in Greek) is used only in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke and nowhere else in the New Testament. The word appears only rarely in Greek literature before the writing of the Gospel and seems to be a word with Semitic origins. It is derived from the word “splangkhne” which literarily means innards or viscera – the innermost part of the body. Whereas thought is traditionally identified with the brain situated in the head and love is identified with the heart, the verb “splangkhnizomai” in Greek gives a corporal sense to the sentiment of compassion – one senses compassion in the most innermost part of one’s being, viscerally. Compassion surges out from within towards the object of compassion and embraces it – the Samaritan and the father of the prodigal son are incarnations of this movement. It is noteworthy that in both parables, compassion provokes a whole series of verbs that describe the acts that followed the sentiment of compassion – the caring for the wounded man and the celebration of the son’s return. Compassion is not a passing sentiment but the motor for action that transforms lives.

Anyone who speaks Arabic or Hebrew can identify the connection with Semitic languages. The word “mercy”, in Arabic (rahmah) and in Hebrew (rahamim), shares a root with the word for “womb”, in Arabic (rahm) and in Hebrew (rehem). Thus, the word for mercy in Semitic languages also evokes a corporal sense, the womb, where life begins. The human being from the moment of his/her origin in the womb (rahm), created in the image and likeness of God, is formed to reflect the mercy (rahmah) of God. This image of God is, first and foremost, an image of a Father/Mother, merciful and compassionate. It is here too that the Biblical reflection, at the very heart of the Judeo-Christian tradition, emerges in the Islamic tradition with the beginning of the Quran, where God is described as both merciful and compassionate (rahman and rahim), two words with the same womb-like root. In Islam, these are God’s two most fundamental attributes.

A later, mystical Jewish tradition understands the act of creation as an act of mercy. God must contract His own presence in order to make place for the world – the act of mercy and love on which all creation is founded. Whereas in the beginning, God fills all time and space, He contracts Himself as a necessary prelude to creation. The human person, created in His image, is called to imitate this act of self-limitation so that place can be made for another. Jesus’s parable of the merciful lord versus the merciless slave underlines the importance of imitating the mercy of God. The slave who owes much to the master is forgiven because of the compassion of his lord, “out of compassion for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt” (Matthew 18:27). Yet, in Jesus’s parable, the slave, just liberated by his lord, is incapable of similar compassion for his fellow slave, who owes him much less than he owed his master. As his fellow slave cries out for mercy, “he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he should pay the debt” (Matthew 18:30).

In his final parable in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus insists that our salvation depends on this going out to others, especially those who are suffering. In his description of the Day of Judgment, the king says to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me” (Matthew 25:34-36). Jesus reveals to those who were merciful and compassionate that he himself was one with the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and the imprisoned. The revelation is twofold: Jesus is always with the suffering and the merciful are indeed blessed. The merciful will receive mercy, Jesus had promised in the Sermon on the Mount (cf. Matthew 5:7), and his final parable shows the fulfillment of this promise.

Mercy and compassion must grip us in our viscera as we look upon our suffering world. They must motivate us to get up and go out to mend a broken world. Thus, we not only imitate God and follow Christ but we also reconnect with the very origins of life. In a world where selfishness and cruelty sometimes seem to have the upper hand, the disciple of Christ reaches out to those who are most in need of mercy and compassion in order to give expression to the Kingdom of God that is already among us.