Villa La Paz Newsletter September 2024

Compassion – sorrow for the sufferings or trouble of another or others, accompanied by an urge to help; deep sympathy
Webster’s New World Dictionary
Third College Edition

Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it. As busy, active, relevant people, we want to earn our bread by making a real contribution. This means first and foremost doing something to show that our presence makes a difference. And so we ignore our greatest gift, which is our ability to enter into solidarity with those who suffer.
Those who can sit with their fellow man, not knowing what to say but knowing they should be there, can bring new life into a dying heart. Those who are not afraid to hold a hand in gratitude, to shen tears of grief, and to let a sigh of distress arise straight from the heart can break through paralyzing boundaries and witness the birth of a new fellowship, the fellowship of the broken.
Henri J.M. Nouwen

And according to Christ, how we love the hungry, the lowly and the lost-and yes, even the leper-is how we love Him. Every act of love, compassion and sacrifice transforms our world in which hatred, cruelty and avarice reign into a new world in which the kingdom of God blossoms.
Gerard Thomas Straub

The school of Christ is the school of charity. On the last day, when the great general examination takes place, there will be no question at all on the texts of Aristotle, the aphorisms of Hippocrates, or the paragraphs of Justinian. Charity will be the whole syllabus.
St. Robert Bellarmine

Every day we are faced with opportunities to offer compassion to those around us. It may be in small things such as helping an elderly person cross a street, holding a door open for a person laden with grocery bags or taking someone who cannot drive to a doctor’s appointment. It can also involve acts which involve emotional tension, such as comforting a sick or dying person, expressing condolences to a family member of a deceased person at a funeral, or caring for ailing and elderly parents. All of these require a dying to oneself and entering into the needs and suffering of another. It entails forgetting our needs to meet the needs of another. This is not sacrifice since sacrifice implies something given up. Rather, by engaging in compassion and identifying wholeheartedly with another in need, we receive the inestimable gift of sharing in Divine Love. We grow in the knowledge that what we have done for another through compassion we have done to Christ Himself Who identifies with those who are suffering and in need.

Compassion must begin in the family, a microcosm of life. How can we be compassionate in the world if we cannot be compassionate with spouses, children, bothers or sisters. The parent who reprimands a child who accidentally smudges a wall with a handprint has missed an opportunity to sow love and understanding for that child. A spouse who becomes impatient with his or her spouse for a minor misunderstanding or inconvience has lost an opportunity for the bond of love between them to grow.

Compassion requires constant dedication to the understanding that we are all one, we are all interdependent and what affects one directly affects all indirectly. We cannot escape the fact that this oneness enjoins us to identify with anyone who is suffering and, if you will, join them in their distress. We must realize that through the compassion of our Heavenly Father all that we have, all that we are graced with is given to us by Him. We do not achieve. Rather we accept and we must share these gifts with others.

Dear God,
As you draw me ever deeper into your heart, I discover that my
companions on the journey are women and men loved by you
as fully and as intimately as I am. In Your compassionate heart,
there is a place for all of them. No one is excluded.
Give me a share in your compassion, dear God, so that your
unlimited love may become visible in the way I love my brothers and sisters.
Amen.
Henri J.M. Nouwen

Perhaps no other group is more deserving, more in need of compassion than the children of the world. So many, too many are born in dire circumstances, deprived of adequate food, adequate medical care, adequate housing, many being forced to flee wars and persecution. The children on these pages come to us because the medical care they require is beyond the reach of their parents. This is the lot of too many children in the world and requires out utmost compassion and love for them.

We thank you for supporting our children and the children of the world. We wish you God’s peace and ask for your prayers.