The other night we were talking about the Fifth Commandment. As with everything else, Catholics have a rich understanding of the larger meaning of this rule. One direction it got me thinking, since it has always been the focus of my own spiritual path, is about compassion, or gentleness, or love, as one's abiding principle. Though this is not a specifically Catholic position, there is room for it within orthodoxy. I can believe the Church's position on just war, for example, but in searching my own conscience find no examples in history or current events in which this doctrine has been put into action.
But sticking (at least for the moment) to absolute orthodoxy, within the Catechism itself the Commandment's proscription against murder is understood to extend to anger. Anger construed in its active sense as wishing another ill is, I think, fairly obviously the opposite of charity/caritas, which is itself the active version of love or, viewed differently, the inevitable fruit of compassion. In this view, there is some transactional quality behind even the impulse to charity, inasmuch as it would seem to me that, lacking the ability to feel the other's position, being therefore unable genuinely to embrace empathy or compassion, there is no soil for mercy or charity to grow in. It is not simply a matter of 'If A then B,' which is, if you believe it, rather a lot by itself, making charity not merely a result but an inextricable concomitant of compassion and love. It is as well the understanding that 'If not A then not B,' -- and 'If not B then clearly not A.'
In this framework, my good works evidence my love, and lack of love, by contrast, confers a quite different meaning on ostensible works of charity. I argued tonight that once someone internalizes this comprehensive compassion there are certain acts that the person will never be able to do, there are certain choices that will never again have to be made. It is a different way of being, a different way of interacting with the world. If one has reached the point of being able to see the Divine, the Buddha-nature - or in Quaker terms, the Inner Light - within others, the point of being able readily to relate to another's suffering, it is not a matter of choosing not to strike. Certain reactions do not arise, and therefore certain responses are precluded a priori. They are precluded unconsciously, actually, since the mind does not have to go yet again to the point of laboring intellectually over a matter which was in fact long ago decided.
And this is all very pressing to me, given my own particular road of spiritual development. On my path, compassion, tolerance, and gentleness have always seemed the most necessary bedrock, the attributes without which other virtues are either meaningless or impossible. Moreover, in order to attain those three, one must start with the very first stone, which is humility. One cannot understand the struggles of another, let alone wish to ease the other's suffering, if he cannot first comprehend - viscerally, completely, in the profoundest depths of his soul - the truth of 'there but for the grace of God go I.'
My view is simple: there is no species of human suffering that is the province only of one type of human. The paths that lead to suffering are as diverse as the people who choose them and who are thrust into them, but in the end, sadness, loneliness, and fear are experienced as the same thing by us all, at whatever age, in whatever country, with whatever level of education or wealth. Whatever someone else is feeling, the specifics of his or her situation notwithstanding, is something each of us has, will, or can feel ourselves.
It is easier to feel compassion and thus be giving when the stakes are low, when the issue is something like rude and aggressive driving, or getting overcharged by a mechanic, than when it involves actual hatred or violence -- but that is where the principle is proven. That is where a person either lives his truth or renounces the core of his beliefs. Responding calmly to mild stress is one thing; very, very, very few of us even consider running over pedestrians on a crosswalk because they are making us late for a business meeting. In situations of real violence or deliberate victimization, literally turning the other cheek is a significantly deeper commitment.
One of the things I take greatest comfort in within Catholic spirituality is the huge emphasis laid on individual discernment, on prudent use of one's own conscience to determine the correct path in novel circumstances. This is likewise one of the things I most respect about the Friends; both share a belief that with prayer and devout listening we have it within ourselves to hear God's will, an amazing God-given power of judgment. In Catholicism, obviously there is more dogma and doctrine than with the Friends, but if after the best use I can make of my conscience I find in that something I cannot fully accept, or one element, such as mercy, the necessity of which outshines all other imperatives, that is between God and me, so long as I don't portray my actions as being representative of all official Church teaching.
And that is a tremendous gift of spiritual liberty, borne of a deep respect for the many ways we in our wondrous diversity can inhabit God's Word. If this catholicity of gifts and spiritualities were not recognized, then in a manner of speaking either the Carthusians or the Franciscans would have to be 'wrong.' Either the noble soldier serving his country or the grandmother in the Peace and Justice Ministry would be a heretic, and somebody or other would have to chuck either the thinky Chesterton, the silent John Main, or the loving Jean Vanier off the proverbial Train to Glory. I'm glad we get to keep them all!
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