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
