The Need for Compassion - Sermon for the 8th Sunday after Pentecost (2025)

The Son of God and God has clothed Himself with our humanity, furtherly clothing Himself in the letters of ink of the Holy Gospel. Today, we are given a little glimpse of one of the many qualities of Christ, as in every place of the Gospel.

In St. Matthew’s Gospel which we just heard, Christ is moved with compassion because of human illness. St. Mark explains that He is moved with compassion because the people are as sheep without a shepherd. In St. Matthew, Christ’s compassion moves Him to heal those sick. In St. Mark, Christ’s compassion moves Him to teach the lost sheep many things. St. Luke sums up: Christ healed those in need of healing and taught lost souls about the Kingdom of God. St. John explains that this multitude was following Jesus because they saw the miracles He did on those sick. The sick heard of the Healer and followed Him, seeking health. Those wandering in darkness heard of the Light and Enlightener, seeking enlightenment. Those suffering from this fallen world heard of the Compassionate One, seeking compassion.

Compassion is the single most prominent and frequent state of soul found in Christ within the pages of the Gospel. Only once does the Gospel specifically state that Christ was moved with wrath. And even there this wrath is accompanied by, mingled with, and swallowed up by sympathetic sorrow over the hardened hearts of hypocritical sinners who thought it more virtuous to remain indifferent instead of to compassionately heal a man on the Sabbath. And if Christ’s overturning of the avaricious tables of the hypocrites in the Temple is called to mind, the Gospel does not state that He was moved by wrath but, when this occurred, the disciples remembered the words of the Prophet David: “The zeal of Thine house hath eaten me up.”

Compassion can be called a blessed passion, just as St. Maximus calls love a blessed passion. An indifferent man is not blessed. An unfeeling man is not loving. Worse is the one who deems his insensibility virtuous peace or a spiritual grace than the one who often gets easily angry but soon repents. The first deems his darkness light, which is blasphemy. The second knows his weakness, confesses his sin, and seeks repentance.

Compassion is a blessed passion. It is a suffering heart afflicted by deep pain over even the smallest harm witnessed or heard of in creation, especially for fellow man.

Compassion cannot be acquired except through another blessed passion—compunction. Compunction is deep fiery pain of heart over our sinfulness, even over the smallest specks of sin—a fiery pain of heart which is cast into the deeply compassionate heart of Christ; Christ Who touches our heart with His love and compassion, washing it with the gentle waters of understanding, forgiveness, and mercy.

Love begets love. Compassion begets compassion. We love God and others only when we have experienced the love of God for us. He first loved us. We must reciprocate. We must love Him. We must love all as He does. We come to know this love when we come to Him with our sinfulness or afflictions, seeking healing and enlightenment from Him, entrusting ourselves to His mercy, compassion, and long-suffering. When we cast our wounds into His heart through humble prayer, experiencing His compassion even but a little, we are filled a little more with His very own compassion. Then this compassion will teach us to have pain over the illness, sin, and darkness of all the world.

This world, without compunctionate and compassionate Christians, has no hope. If we Christians remain in hardness of heart both over our sins and over the suffering and sins of others, who will be a light to the world? Christ is the Light of the world Who has enkindled His Apostles and through them all Christians as lights of the world.

Light both warms and illumines. Without human warmth how will divine fervor ever seize our hearts and those of others? Without human efforts of keeping our mind attentive, sober, filled with Scriptural and Patristic wisdom, and fixed on Jesus through simple prayer, how will divine illumination ever dawn forth in our minds and hearts and those of others?

In the book of Acts it is said that St. Paul wept as he taught the unbelieving for three consecutive years. In case we think this three-year period is exaggerated hyperbole, merely symbolic, or just plain fiction, the saints teach us that this experience is open to human nature. St. Isaac the Syrian experienced and speaks about this lengthy weeping. It is told of St. Arsenius that his eyelashes fell out because of his unceasing weeping.

Let us not delude ourselves, thinking such a grace easily obtainable or something we could ever be worthy of. Yet let us not dismiss ourselves and travel to the opposite path. Let us at least seek the source of such weeping—compunction over our sinfulness; compassion for the suffering. Let us at least mourn our lack of mourning and sigh over our lack of contrition. Or at the very least, let us confess that we are ignorant of just how insensible we are.

Our world is ripped apart by political division, wars and rumors of wars, social chaos, familial discord, sin, corruption, spiritual darkness, and demonic influences. There is no hope for our world as long as we are condemning those who are spiritually ill and spiritually blind. There is no hope for our world as long as we, Christians, do not live in Christ. Christ did not condemn, judge, hate, berate, turn away from, harm, insult, or commit forever to hell those wounded by the illness of sin and those blinded by the darkness of ignorance of the truth. The Gospel manifests a Compassionate Healer not a Vindictive Destroyer, a Gladdening Light not an Ominous Gloom.

St. Luke’s Gospel states that He healed those in need of healing. More literally from the Greek: He healed those in need of therapy. Today, more than ever, mankind is in need of therapy, the therapy of Christ. Although human helpers have been given to us by God, if we do not cling to the divine-human Christ Who is Spiritual Healing and Health Himself, we will not find what our soul thirsts, pines, and longs for.

We may confide in family, in spouses, in friends, in a counselor or therapist, in a trusted mentor, and we must unfailingly confess everything and seek counsel from our spiritual father. Yet if neither we nor they are praying for Christ’s help, or even if only one side is praying, we are bound for failure, or at least imperfect help, settling for merely human help bereft of divine aid.

How do we confide always in Christ the Healer and Light of our souls? A little effort. Make frequent small efforts to call out to Christ throughout the day. Call upon Him when you are grateful. Call upon Him when you have sinned. Call upon Him when you are in need. Increase these efforts. Add small effort to small effort and greater effort will be born. Efforts solidify into habits.

The habit of prayer is forged into a stable inclination ever reaching for Christ. Such a disposition is transformed by grace into a state of awareness of God’s presence. This is spiritual vision of God. When God is seen by us, we are seen by Him. When we become aware of Him Who is always present, we feel that same compassionate pain-filled glance of Christ pierce our hearts, that glance which pierced Peter’s heart with repentance and tears after he denied Christ.

When we are seen by God, we see ourselves a little bit as God sees us. Then our sins are seen but simultaneously swallowed up in His light of love. Then His compassion warms our cold hearts and refreshes the fire of our contrition. When we see ourselves in this manner as God does, we begin to see others as God sees them. We then acquire God’s eyes and heart, Christ’s eyes and heart. The light of sympathetic understanding dawns forth in our mind. Our heart joins in harmony with the mind. The mind is drawn down into the heart. Compassion is born. Then it grows. Then we can grab ahold of it, take ahold of our heart, and drive the salvific nail of the name of Jesus Christ further into our hearts.

Then Christ is known a bit more. This knowledge is the perception of eternal life. Such perception fills the heart with a taste of endless immortality. This is nothing other than a portion of deification in this life. See how a little good effort can grow into deifying knowledge! Such deifying knowledge has no limit or end, neither in this life nor in that to come. For Christ, being God, has no limit or end. To Him, together with His Father and the All-Holy Spirit be glory, honor, power, love, and worship unto the ages of ages. Amen.