Give Compassion

In this episode, Fr Richard Healey invites us to reflect on our relationships, especially those we find challenging. He humorously suggests picturing someone difficult to love, even himself, if no one else comes to mind. Through a thought experiment involving a royal decree and a letter from Pope Francis granting amnesty, Fr Richard encourages us to consider our actions and motives. He draws on the biblical story of David sparing King Saul to illustrate mercy over vengeance. Emphasizing agape love, Fr Richard calls us to embody Jesus’ teachings, transforming our capacity to love through God’s grace.

00:00:00 Now, is there someone in your life that you kind of struggle really hard to love? You know, maybe it’s the bully that was at school. Maybe it’s one of your neighbors that loves those really loud late night parties and keeps everyone in the house awake. Maybe it’s just someone you you work with or a colleague or a boss. Maybe you have to go further afield and maybe it’s, you know, a billionaire or somebody who’s trying to destroy the planet, it seems. Or maybe it’s a politician that you just think is doing an awful kind of job. Okay. Have you all thought of someone that might come to mind? Some of you might. It might be really difficult to conjure up somebody that you find difficult to love. You might have to picture me if. If all else comes. You know, if you can’t think of anybody else, at least you think. Think of me. Okay, now imagine the scenario that you have complete amnesty. So King Charles has written you a writ and has decreed that no matter what you do to that person, you will not be punished for that.

00:01:11 There will be no consequences whatsoever. You will have the ultimate get out of jail free card. And indeed, Pope Francis has also written a letter indicating to you that you will not face any eternal consequences for any action that you might unleash upon that person. Now, what will you dish out to them? What will be the plot that you might conceive against them? Now, you probably shouldn’t spend too much time thinking about this. It may not be particularly helpful, but now, if King Charles and Pope Francis haven’t given you those decrees, and indeed a film crew is there filming everything that you’re about to do, they’re filming not just the externals, but they’ve got a special camera that’s able to record your thoughts and the motives of your heart. How might that change your intentions? How might that change your response to that person? Will it change the way that you are? If you’ve just read this gospel, if you’ve been infused with the love of God, how might that change your situation? You know, that’s the scenario that we were given in our first reading.

00:02:35 Saul was the king. King David was the young upstart. He’d already been secretly anointed. There are multiple stories that refer to his anointing, so probably coming from different sources, different strands. But he’s already there as the young interloper, and he’s already proven to be more popular than King Saul. And so Saul is there. Did you hear how many soldiers he happened to have with him? It’s not just a few 3000. 3000 suggests that he’s a bit on the defensive side. He’s feeling a little bit paranoid. It’s not just a small bodyguard, but 3000 is enough to do some serious damage. And they’re hunting the fields, hunting through the caves, the crevices, trying to find David. But instead, this deep sleep, this Todd Meyer is the Hebrew word falls upon all of their crew, and so they’re unable to to stir, even when David and his men creep right up into the very midst of the camp, they find the spear that is King Saul’s. And one of David’s men says, look, I can just pick up this spear right now and thrust it through him.

00:03:46 I want him to do it twice. I’ll be able to do it just one single thrust, and that will be the end to your problems. But David is in one of his moments when he’s recognizing the presence of God in his life, and David recognizes it. No, that is not the way to go, that I cannot lay a hand against the anointed, even though he is also the Lord’s anointed. And so he says no, instead goes away and holds up the spear and says to King Saul from a distance, you know you are in my hand, and I could have done this damage to you, but I chose not to do it. The way of Jesus, the way of life, the way of grace is such a different way to the way that so many people in our world continue to espouse and continue to say, you know, vengeance and violence and retribution. And every day we see political leaders continuing to say that we will seek revenge against this group for doing this awful thing against us.

00:04:48 There’s no grace, there’s no mercy, there’s no semblance of of anything like the Christian message. And the teaching of Jesus hasn’t yet seeped deeply within our hearts to to bring about this change, this transformation that is necessary for us to truly be named and claimed as the followers and disciples of Jesus. It’s only as we begin to slowly understand what it is to experience this, because so often we’ve had a sense of God as someone who is pretty stingy, someone that requires us to be absolutely perfect and complete, and to have ticked every box, to have checked everything, to have completed all of the rights of initiation, to have done everything as completely and as perfectly as we possibly can. But here, in this wonderful sermon on the plane, Saint Luke gives us a beautiful summary of the teaching of Jesus. It’s so much shorter than the the version that we have in the Gospel of Matthew there. It’s 111 verses in chapters five, six, and seven here. It’s all within just this six chapter, only 29 verses long.

00:06:05 And yet it still continues to pack this punch, inviting us more deeply into this experience of surrendering ourselves to God. And if Jesus gives us the same teaching not to hate your enemies, not to destroy them, not to seek vengeance against them, not to plot attacks against them, but to love. And the word there as it always is. In the Gospel of Luke, the word love is a verb. It’s the word agape. It’s a word that willing the good of the other as wanting the very best for them. Note he’s not calling us to be friends with them. It’s not the word philia. He’s not calling us to be lovers with them. It’s not the word eros. It’s the word agape. It’s a word that describes the situation of our response, of our whole being, the whole of our longing, the wanting to be able to recognize what is necessary in there to do that doesn’t require, you know, warm and fuzzy feelings within us, but it does require a response. It does require from us this desire to share that grace and that gift with those around us.

00:07:16 And it gives us that beautiful image of what the father wants to give us. He says, give. And how will we receive that, that that giving it will be the full measure, pressed down, shaken together, flowing over. You know, there’s no stinginess whatsoever in that image, you know, making sure that as much as possible will fit within the container that we have developed centuries of desire had a beautiful image towards the end of her life, and she said that she realized that the Lord had given her this great capacity to love. They hadn’t always been like that. That when she was a child, that there wasn’t that great capacity because she hadn’t suffered as much but a suffering. And all of the struggles that she had in her short life had given her an increased capacity to love. She realized that that had expanded that that desire for God, that capacity for God. And she realized that when she died, that God would fill that vessel that she had created off her life very much to the brim.

00:08:22 And it’s that image that Jesus uses today. You know, if our capacity to love hasn’t yet been tested, if it’s still very small, the Lord will still give us that full measure. Pressed down, shaken together, overflowing, even if it’s just a little thimble. But if we’ve grown that capacity to love a little bit more, he will fill that to the brim with his love. If we’ve grown our capacity to love even more into a big bowlful, then the Lord will fill that. If it’s a bucket, the Lord will fill that. If it’s a swimming pool, the Lord will fill that press down. Shaken together, overflowing. The Lord wants for us to grow. He wants for us to grow in love. He wants for us to be people that are capable of receiving the abundance of his love. So let’s indeed open ourselves to his goodness and grace and allow that love to fill us, to shape us, to call us so that we can experience that mercy, that compassion and share that compassion just as the father invites us into.