Introduction
(A
piece of art)
The story of the loaves
and fishes was recounted frequently in the life of the early church on the
occasion of Eucharist. That’s why it came to be recorded in all four gospels. You can even detect a kind of
liturgical ring to this scripture passage. The reading of the story and
the words of the priest at the consecration sound so much alike: “He took the
bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to the hungry people.” “He took the bread, blessed it, broke it,
and gave it to his disciples, saying
“This is my body…’”
Years ago when I was
stationed at St. Benedict the Moor Church on Sixth and State, every now and then we would celebrate the Benedict Community Meal at a
special Sunday evening liturgy. On
those occasions we too would recount the gospel story of the five loaves and
two fishes. It brought to mind another
story that began some years before
-- the story of a young Irish
lad and his wife, Mike and Nettie Cullen, who opened their little house, their
little casa, and shared their five loaves and two fishes with anybody hungry
off the streets of Milwaukee. That’s
the story of the well-known Casa
Maria here in Milwaukee. Their little
operation of “Loaves and
Fishes” grew in time into a huge
community meal which finally came to settle
at St. Ben's.
On those liturgical
occasions we would borrow a very tasty
piece of tapestry from the art museum of Alverno College. It was executed by
the famous Milwaukee artist, Sr. Helena Steffensmeier (School Sisters of
St. Francis). We borrowed it so often, they finally gave it to us. On the very
top of her work she has placed five small loaves and two small fishes. You can
easily miss them because the rest of the tapestry (which is most of it) is "squandered"
upon a monotonous line-up of 12 large baskets arranged in three rows of four,
and all of them overflowing with leftovers. Very artistic but also very clever.
The work screams out a number of messages:
It screams “abundance!” In a
world that willing to divide and share
there’s plenty for everyone. It screams ”leftovers!” Don’t throw them
away but gather them up; there’s a world out there that’s starving. It screams
“Courage!” See how much you can do with so little!
But there's a stitch
missing on this piece of stitchery.
It’s a spiritual element, and if that very spiritual woman, Sister
Helena, could have, she would have worked it into her tapestry. That stitch is compassion. The gospel says, "The heart of Jesus was moved with compassion for the hungry
crowds who were like sheep without a shepherd" (Mt 14:14; Mk 6:34). Now compassion might just well be the most
important element of the entire story.
For it wasn’t money that fed the five thousand (there wasn’t enough
money around to buy even a mouth-full for each of them). In a sense, it wasn’t
even the miracle that fed the hungry crowd; it was compassion that fed
them, for it was compassion that urged
Jesus to work the miracle that fed the
five thousand.
//Compassion is what happens to us when we let the glaring sufferings or needs of others get to us. Then by hook or by crook we’ll find a way to satisfy a sea of hungry people, even if there isn’t enough money around to buy so much as a mouth-full for every one; even if all there is at hand are only five loaves and two fishes. //Compassion is what happens to us when we let the glaring sufferings or needs of others get to us. Then by hook or by crook we’ll find a way to insure 40-50 million uninsured hard-working American citizens who can’t afford health insurance, even though our very well-insured politicians tell us there is no money around to do it. //Compassion is what happens to us when we let the crying needs or sufferings of others get to us. That begets moral will in us to find the cure for cancers and AIDS. And moral will in turn begets political will which, by hook or by crook, always manages to find the money it is looking for.
The first salvos of the up-coming presidential elections were sounded this past week. And most of us are too busy with what we think is important to us at this moment (midsummer) to take much notice or care. But the show is on whether we notice it or not, and soon the old election strategy is going to kick in. That strategy revolves around labels, especially the labels of “liberal” and “conservative.” The idea is to pick a label, paint it in the worst light possible, and then pin it on the other candidate. The winner in this game becomes president. Do you see how intimately the process is tied up with truth? (Do you also see my tongue in my cheek?)
If the ugly strategy is
successful, that’s not so much the
fault of the people who choose to cleverly use it; it is our fault, the fault of “we, the people,” who choose to allow the strategy to work, in
the first place. We choose to live by labels and sound bytes that carry only
half-truths, and not by “sound
bites” into the full truth. In
this strategy the first victim is not the candidate who loses the presidential
election; the first victim is truth.
If you listen carefully
to the label-strategy of “liberal vs conservative” you detect that compassion (the very idea of
compassion) has become its very first
victim. Compassion is corrupted
to suggest the very worst horrors of welfare in which we all agree nobody fares
well. If you listen carefully to the strategy, you detect that compassion has been robbed of its rich root meaning
(“con—passio”), “suffering with others.”
The first victim of the label-strategy is truth; it so degrades the idea of
compassion that politicians are ashamed
and afraid to use it. It’s now become
the “c-word.”
Ashamed to use
“compassion” -- that perfectly noble
Christian word? Ashamed of the “c-word?” Not Jesus. //To the scribes and
Pharisees he cries out one day, “Woe to you who are so scrupulous in paying
tithes on mint, cumin and dill, but all the while you neglect the really
important matters of the Law, like
compassion and justice” (Mt 23:23). //Ashamed of the “c-word”? Not Jesus. To
the Pharisees who fault him for eating
with sinners, he cries out, “Oh, if you only knew meaning of the scripture that
says, `It is compassion I want from you people, and not your animal sacrifices'"
(Mt 9:13; Hosea 6:6). //Ashamed of the “c-word”? Not Jesus. When the religious
leaders fault him and his hungry
disciples for picking grain on the Sabbath,
again he quotes the prophet Hosea,
“It is compassion I want from you people, and not your animal
sacrifices" (Mt 9:13; Hosea 6:6).
Ashamed of the “c-word”?
Not Jesus. When the teacher of the Law
asks him, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus
crafts for him that Mother of All Parables: The Good Samaritan. “Once upon a time a man was going from
Jerusalem to Jericho. He was waylaid by robbers who left him half-dead. Along
came a Jewish priest who passed him by.
Along came a Jewish levite who passed him by. Along came a Samaritan, who
stopped and poured the oil of compassion into the poor man's wounds” (Lk
10:29-37). //Ashamed of the “c-word?”
Not Jesus.
The political rhetoric of
the day has turned “compassion” into such a politically incorrect word that even Democrats are afraid to use it these days. There are exceptions. Mario Cuomo (former
governor of New York State) wasn’t afraid to use it in that famous address to
the Democratic Convention in 1984, in San Francisco, that city named after St.
Francis of Assisi. He said, “We would
rather have laws written by the patron saint of this city than laws written
by Darwin (survival of the fittest
law).” Then Cuomo spoke about
government “not ashamed but courageous enough to use the word love and
compassion.” There are even a few
republicans who are beginning to cautiously use the “c-word,” because they know well that there are people out there, many in fact, who
still believe in compassion.
Let political
rhetoric of the day warn us about the evils of welfare to the poor, in which no one fares well. /And let it equally warn us about the evils of
welfare to the rich, in which a chosen few
fare very well. But don’t let the rhetoric of the day rob us of that
Christ-like quality of compassion. That
warning is more important now than ever before because we have a cultural
crisis on our hands, i.e. “the terrifying lack of compassion and care that has
settled in upon us all” (Franciscan Father Leonardo Boff).
In a culture in which violence
is so much fun, compassion
becomes an endangered species.
//In a culture that has us talking more and more to hi-tech gadgets
which speak to us but can’t detect our suffering or need, compassion is an
endangered species. //In a culture that has us chanting me, me, me,
compassion (which is the detection of the suffering or need in you, you, you)
becomes an endangered species. //In a culture which has us running off to the
next thing on our list, with no time to stop and notice the sufferings of others, compassion becomes an endangered species. It needs no help from
rhetoric to make it even more endangered.
How are we going to save
the endangered species? How are we going to reverse our cultural crisis – this
“terrifying lack of compassion and care that settled in on us all”? There are
no neat recipes for all the important issues in life; all we can do is make a
“stab at it.”
How save compassion – the
endangered species? Well first of all,
stop allowing your kids, stop giving them permission, to feed themselves with
violence. The result of a study on the influence of violent entertainment upon our children was released just this past week. I am sure the
study was thorough, scholarly, and expensive. It came out with the “remarkable”
conclusion, which we already knew
before the study began, that violent
entertainment does make our kids
violent. Did anyone think that it makes them more compassionate?
Secondly, stop allowing
your kids, stop giving them permission, to spend a life-time staring at hi-tech
gadgets: you don’t learn compassion by being all locked up alone in a world all
your own.
Thirdly, stop the “me,
me, me” chant in your kids. It makes them immune to the sufferings and needs of
others.
Finally and most
importantly of all, stop the rushing. Stop the “not-stopping.”
Most of us are decent people. But we are so busy rushing off to the next item
to be checked off our busy list, that
we rush right by human suffering or need.
We have no time for compassion. We must make time. Slow down so that you
can recognize the moments of life that call for compassion on the road of life.
Then stop and pour the oil of compassion that the moment calls for.
Do that and you make the wonderful discovery
that compassion poured out is a lot more
gratifying than getting all the items on your list checked off. Items
checked off eventually exhaust us, as we start to wonder what in the world is
it all about. But compassion poured out
energizes us, as it pours meaning into life.
And although compassion
might be too spiritual or intangible to
stitch into some tapestry, believe it or not, it is something you can hear
and see. For someone has said of Mother Theresa: “You can hear a song singing in her heart, and you can see a glow
shining from her wrinkled face.”