A Jesuit Catholic University
in Omaha, Nebraska, since 1878

[479] Ephesians 4:32-5:8 Psalm 1:1-2, 2-3, 4+6  Luke 13:10-17

Weekly Guide for Daily Prayer The Daily Reflections

“Brothers and sisters:
Be kind to one another, compassionate,
forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ.

Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love.” -Eph 4:32-5:2

Live in love.

It makes me wonder what the world would be like if everyone were to live in love.  Or even what my life would be like if I did it better.  Human love is always imperfect, but despite the faults we may find within this love, there is deep beauty and redeeming life when we truly love another person.  It’s a chance for us to step outside of ourselves, even if just for a moment, and breathe deeply with lungs that are not our own.  To love another simply because they exist, this is the love we are to imitate.

I think that this agapic, selfless love begins with compassion.  Compassion, when you break the word down into its Latin roots, literally means “suffering with.”  In the Gospel reading for today, Jesus heals a crippled woman on the Sabbath.  Though Jesus was not a cripple himself, I image that it was compassion that prompted him to call the woman to himself and heal her.  He spent his life with the broken and outcast of society, and he experienced ridicule for associating with those people.

Can you imagine what it would feel to be that woman who was healed?  Imagine being hunched over for eighteen years, unable to look people in the eye.  What would it be like to eat a meal or drink a glass of water?  What about sitting down and getting up?  And what if you were healed, but your religious leaders said that you shouldn’t have been cured?

I think that these things can start small, perhaps taking root in personal friendships and relationships.  We may not fully understand our friends’ struggles, but we walk with them anyway.  This accompaniment is a “suffering with,” an attempt to understand the other person, compassion.  We can build upon this foundation and extend compassion to others who aren’t close friends.  I like the way Marc Ian Barasch, in his book Field Notes on the Compassionate Life, talks about this idea.  He describes it as having the good eye, which he defines as “to intentionally focus on what is most pure in each person—to see their highest and holiest potential.”  I think that this is how God sees people, and if we can practice using the good eye, then perhaps we will be closer to living a compassionate life, and by extension, living in love.