7th Sunday C
20th February 2022
St. Colman’s Cathedral, Cobh
“Compassion and Truth”
My friends,
In an email I received during the week there was a most insightful observation from a grandfather whose grandchildren are now at 3rd Level. He explained that they are in contact regularly and when they meet, they are comfortable in each other’s company. That’s because they discuss what he called “neutral topics” of general social interest but never discuss issues of personal behaviour and religious belief.
He went on to suggest that maybe it’s because were he to differ from them he would be considered judgemental. “The result is that I don’t know or understand the comfortable attitudes of the age group”.
That grandfather’s observation is an astute recognition of a stream of ‘political correctness’ to which we are all subject, of which honesty and truth in relationships is the victim. Being described as judgemental is a real impediment to many being truthful and honest about various important issues.
These thoughts are prompted by the Gospel invitation to “Be compassionate as your Father is …
‘Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate. Do not
judge, and you will not be judged yourselves; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned yourselves; grant pardon, and you will be pardoned. Give, and there will be gifts for you: a full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be poured into your lap; because the amount you measure out is the amount you will be given back’.
These words of invitation to compassion, non-judgement, now condemnation and to pardon come at the end of a passage in St. Luke which begins love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who treat you badly.
Taken together these invitations to self-abasement and self-giving are unrealistic to the point of naivety today or indeed any age. To many it is a religious delusion – yet our faith history is full of accounts of women and men who sacrificed their own life to ensure they enriched the lives of others – parents, of course, are foremost among them.
Compassion is a much misunderstood and manipulated virtue. To be compassionate in its essence is to stand with those who suffer – it calls for an understanding heart and resilience of purpose. It is forthright and honest. Life demands we make choices, judgements, assessments, audits, inspections, examinations, academic or medical. They will be good or
bad, right or wrong but they all have consequences for us individually, as family, as a nation. Bad choices and bad judgements call for honesty in recognising them for what they are.
Freedom is God’s gift to the human person. It is not to be equated with licence and liberality, where anything goes. Compassion has been manipulated politically to introduce potentially profound bad choices and outcomes for many peoples lives. You can be sure that the same trick of false compassion will be used to introduce a “Right to Die” regime which will have tragic consequences for the vulnerable elderly as it has for the unborn in our current legislative framework.
Be compassionate by all means but we must also seek to be honest and just.
