21. Compassion Is the Fire That Jesus Came to Set on the Earth.
21. Compassion is the fire that Jesus came to set on the earth.21
While Aquinas is happy to talk about contemplation and to practice it, for him contemplation is not the culmination of the spiritual journey. Rather, compassion is the goal. Indeed, this one topic was the single most important conflict between the monastic tradition that had dominated for eight centuries and the new upstart “mendicant orders” of Francis and Dominic. Aquinas talks about the conflict: Share the light, he says! “It is a greater thing to give light than simply to have light, and in the same way it is a greater thing to pass on to others what you have contemplated than just to contemplate” (287).
Aquinas celebrates our powers for compassion: “In itself compassion takes precedence over the other virtues, for it belongs to compassion to be bountiful to others, and, what is more, to succor others in their wants.” Compassion is our imitation of God: “Compassion is accounted as being proper to God” and renders divinity “manifest” (395–96). Compassion bears witness to the divine: “Of all the virtues that relate to our neighbor, compassion is the greatest” and it “likens us to God as regards similarity of works. For “the sum total of the Christian religion consists of compassion as regards external works.”
Justice and compassion go together for “the will of Christ is twofold—namely, of compassion and of justice.” Thus Christ is about two things—compassion and justice. “Compassion does not destroy justice, but in a sense is its fulfillment.” Indeed, he declares that “in a certain way compassion is Christ himself.”
Why does Aquinas call compassion “the fire the Lord came to send on the earth” (Luke: 12:49)? “Because compassion proceeds from love of God and neighbor which is a consuming fire.” He invokes the prophet Isaiah, who says “his tongue is like fire. … charity is called a fire primarily because it illuminates. . . . secondly, because it warms.” He cites Proverbs: “It is more pleasing to God to show compassion and justice than to offer sacrifice” (Prov 21:3) and Hosea: “I desire compassion and not sacrifice” (Hos 6:6). How can one overcome a hard heart? “The Holy Spirit dissolves the hardness of hearts, as Luke 12 puts it: ‘I have come to send fire on the earth” (423). Furthermore, he teaches that “the first effect of love is melting.” Thus the Holy Spirit melts the heart through the fire of love.
Aquinas teaches that justice, truth, and compassion “are the same in essence,” and he offers this image taken from the psalms. “The psalmist compares justice to mountains, truth to clouds, which are higher, and compassion to the skies, which are higher than all things.” “God is justice” he says, and “the most just.” Furthermore, “justice is the chief of the moral virtues. By it one is directed in one’s relations toward another.” In doing justice we “imitate God” as “we imitate God by being compassionate because compassion is bound to accompany love. ‘Be you compassionate as your Creator in heaven is compassionate’ (Luke 6:36). And this must be in deed” (505). Compassion is not just a pious work or an object of meditation—it requires deeds.
“We find these two things, compassion and justice, in all the works of God. … Compassion without justice is the mother of weakness. And therefore it is necessary that they be joined together according to Proverbs 3:3: ‘Compassion and truth will not forsake you.’” Aquinas defines compassion this way: “To be compassionate is to have a heart that suffers from the misfortune of others because we think of it as our own. … You are truly compassionate when you are eager to repel the misfortune of others” (391–92).
Conscience
is more to be obeyed
than authority
imposed from the outside.