Compassion and Contemplation

On compassion and the contemplative life…

Often I have said to people, “I will pray for you” but how often did I really enter into the full reality of what that means? I now see how indeed I can enter deeply into the other and pray to God from his center. When I really bring my friends and the many I pray for into my innermost being and feel their pain, their struggles, their cries, in my own soul, then I have compassion. Compassion lies at the heart of our prayer for our fellow human beings. When I pray for the world, I become the world; when I pray for the endless needs of the millions, my soul expands and wants to embrace them all and bring them into the presence of God. But in the midst of that experience, I realize that compassion is not mine but God’s gift to me. I cannot embrace the world, but God can. I cannot pray, but God can pray in me. When God became as we are—that is when God allowed all of us to enter into his intimate life—it became possible for us to share in his infinite compassion.
In praying for other, I lose myself and become the other, only to be found by the divine love which holds the whole of humanity in a compassionate embrace.