COMPASSION FATIGUE ?

No Compassion Fatigue

The word “compassion” is from the Latin “patior” = I suffer. The prefix “com” means “with”. To have compassion is to suffer with. A man or woman who is transparently compassionate will never collapse with compassion fatigue.

Like the virtue of love, compassion is caught, not taught. Blessed Mother Teresa   communicated compassion. “Communication” conveys the goodness of sharing in community, simply by being present and loving. The structures and methods of compassion are taught with the help of anthropology, sociology, and ethics. Compassion grabs these sciences and turns them into the art of developing humanity. Like the Word becoming flesh, flesh in turn becomes Word, bringing out the glory of God in flesh fully alive. Listen to Mother: “As a rule it begins with a smile of the eyes, a smile of the face, the smile of the touch, the way we touch people, the way you give to people. All that is love in action. And that is why people who come in contact with the Sisters feel that presence, feel that touch, that contact with Christ in the Sisters, and the Sisters feel that contact with Christ in the desolate disguise of the poor.”

One day the Sisters brought home a very ill man, malodorous and eaten by worms. Mother was at home. She could see that the poor man was dying and that nothing could be done. So what she do? She pulled out a pair of nail clippers and began to pare his nails, hands and feet. By the market mentality it didn’t matter whether the man died with nails clipped; but from the divine perspective it made all the difference on earth and heaven that he was served by a compassionate fellow human. What rejoicing must there not be in heaven by the thousands of men, women and children who were served by Mother. The definition of love according to Thomas Aquinas is “The effective desire for the good of the other.” The key word you must have guessed is “effective”. Love is not merely a desire but something good that you’re going to do in practical terms for fellow humans. Mother Teresa’s compassionate love was effective from day one, which she communicated to her Sisters, MC priests and Brothers, and lay co-operators – a community of compassion enveloping the world. Listen to Mother: “Calcutta is everywhere. People are surprised when they see our poor people, when they see our street people. But at the same time they find in Calcutta the warmth. See the people lying there. But there is that connection. If there is only one blanket, and there are 10 people, they will cover with that one blanket. There is that greatness of love among them. Suffering here is much more physical, much more material. But in some other places where our Sisters are working suffering is deeper and it is more hidden. You can find Calcutta all over the world if you have eyes to see; not only to see but to look.”

The poor cannot wait, for they are “anxious for tomorrow” and “worry about what to eat and what to wear” [Mt. 6, 34], and unless someone helps them immediately, “they will collapse on the way” [Mk 8, 3]. Jesus spans the Hebrew chequerboard, but his focus is primarily on the outcasts. These were social throwaways dumped on the human trash pile. Jesus touches them, loves them, and names them God’s people. His actions were thorough and charged with urgency. Those at the periphery were shot to the centre: the poor, diseased, hungry and lamenting, the possessed, the persecuted and heavy laden the ignorant rabble, the little ones, the lost sheep, the foreigners and the harlots. From now on they have a voice; which is why Pope John Paul II at his Calcutta rally could declare, “Let the poor of Mother Teresa speak!”