My modest proposal is that if we cannot always “embody the hurt” of others at least we can compassionately accompany them as they struggle to face, faithfully live, and respond to the painful parts of reality. At least we can help conquer callousness and encourage deep sympathy by reviving sensitivity and our capacity to be moved.

Rabbi Heschel, Jurgen Moltmann, Elizabeth Johnson, and others have helped us retrieve an image of God that flies in the face of portrayals of the Divine as cold, aloof, indifferent and uninvolved. God is a God of pathos. For Christians, Jesus embodies and extends the pathos of God. Even though pathos refers to the relatedness of God to humanity and the world and not exclusively to “suffering with,” and despite the fact that it can at times connote anger and judgment as well as love and compassion, in the end what pathos always means a little more than anything else is mercy (hesed). To be made in the image of God means each of us alone and all of us together are prophetic caregivers, mediators of mercy, bearers of deep sympathy, and partners with God in caring for one another and for the world.

REFLECTION:

Try moving through today mindful of practicing deep sympathy toward people, places, things, and situations. In addition, be conscious of what it might mean to “feel for God” in those situations?

Pax,

Dan

ARTWORK: THE GOOD SAMARITAN, Van Gogh