Religion
Christian compassion
Martin Sullivan
"Except for those whose whole soul is inhabited by Christ everybody despises the afflicted to some extent, although practically no one is conscious of it", This is a sentence from Simone Weil's pen in a volume Waiting on God (Routledge and Regan Paul, 1950). It sounds fiercely and dogmatically Christian and yet the woman who wrote it never joined the church and refused to be baptised. We may, for a moment, then put her exceptive clause on one side and examine the truth of her general statement. I for one subscribe to it honestly but shamefully. More than one instance comes to my mind but I think frequently of my relationship with an afflicted person which bears out what Simone Weil said. A man used to come to see me for help who suffered from a series of complaints. He had practically no stomach, severe arterial trouble in his legs and a fierce speech impediment. His expectancy of life was short. Every week he came to see me to tell me what he was doing and to seek my companionship. Before he could speak he had to wind himself up, stamping his foot on the ground, hitting his thigh with his hand and making a noise like a motor car engine trying to respond to a faulty self-starter. Frequently I was compelled to hear the same story over again and as the months slipped by he seemed to grow worse. I began to feel the effect of his visits upon me and after a time, as I watched him stumbling up my drive, I could feel my fists beginning to clench. Why can't he make some effort to defeat his infirmity or try a little harder? I understood what Simone Well was saying and I felt deeply ashamed.
I think St Paul was driving home the same lesson when he exhorted us to weep with those who weep. He is not talking about a few crocodile tears, as easily dried as shed. I think of some widows shattered by the unexpected deaths of their husbands, comforted at once by the sympathy and support of relatives and friends. Very few of them can stay the distance. Within a few months the widow is expected to pull herself together, to resume her normal life and to put her grief behind her or conceal it completely. The weeping has stopped and sorrow can easily turn, first to impatience and then to contempt.
There are, however, personal and social examples of a love and devotion to the afflicted which literally light up the human scene. We are occasionally privileged to read about them or see them on a TV screen and the work which is done in this way has a transcendental quality about it which most of those engaged in it would probably dismiss. They feel they are doing nothing unusual and it is their attitude which enables them to get through to those to whom they minister. A mother recently revealed in a newspaper article an account of her years with an autistic child, now an adolescent. It was an unemotional objective statement, but running through almost every line was the apparent hopelessness of the situation. And yet this woman never gave up and somehow held this boy and the rest of her family together. She said she was not a Christian but her whole ministry was Christ-like, and if she could not believe that it sprang from Christ then He arid she must nevertheless have been drawing up the same source. As a Christian I claim He is that source. I can only hope, that faced with a situation like this, I could draw up it as freely as did this mother.
Martin Sullivan is Dean of St Paul's
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