Changes

Compassion is the equivalent of ''miséricorde'' [mercy]. It is a pity full of strength and kindness, a pity that pardons and makes amends, forgets all offences and wants always what is best for everyone.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/31-march-1933#p2</ref>

...the state of perfect, integral, universal love, which is the very essence of compassion and the most perfect expression of the Grace which wipes out the consequences of all error and all ignorance. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/17-october-1956#p3</ref>

==A Virtue of Psychic Being==

It must be said that all those beings who have never had an earthly existence—gods or demons, invisible beings and powers—do not possess what the Divine has put into man: the psychic being. And this psychic being gives to man true love, charity, compassion, a deep kindness, which compensate for all his external defects.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/4-november-1958#p18</ref>

==Divine Compassion==

And it is quite evident that with the amplitude and totality of the vision, there comes something which is a compassion that understands—not that pity of the superior for the inferior: the true divine Compassion, which is the total comprehension that each one is what he must be. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/11/27-november-1965#p46</ref>

According to the law of man the guilty ought to be punished. But there is a law more imperative than the human law. It is the Divine law, the law of compassion and mercy.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/the-ways-of-working-of-the-lord#p22</ref>

The divine compassion reaches out not only to the one who is eaten but also to the one who eats, not only to the one who is tortured but also the one who tortures.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/general-1#p5</ref>

Human pity is born of ignorance and weakness; it is the slave of emotional impressions. Divine compassion understands, discerns and saves.

<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-527-528#p1</ref>

But then, when that true Compassion of divine Love comes and you see all those things that look so horrible, so abnormal, so absurd, that great pain over all beings and even over things… Then there was born in this physical being the aspiration to relieve, to cure, to make all that disappear. There is something in Love in its Origin that is constantly expressed by the intervention of the Grace; a force, a sweetness, something like a vibration of solace, spread everywhere, but which an enlightened consciousness can direct, concentrate on certain points. And that’s just where I saw the true use one could make of thought: thought is used as a channel to carry the vibration from place to place, wherever it’s necessary. This force, this vibration of sweetness is there over the world in a static way, pressing to be received, but it’s an impersonal action, and thought—enlightened thought, surrendered thought, the thought that is nothing more than an instrument, that no longer tries to set things in motion, that is satisfied with being moved by the higher Consciousness—thought is used as an intermediary to make contact, to build a connection and allow this impersonal Force to act wherever it’s necessary, on precise points. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/agenda/07/september-28-1966#p21</ref>

...[inmost being] accepts a spiritual compassion for this ignorant human and animal world and its peoples, the joy and happiness and satisfaction of beauty that comes from the perception of the Divine everywhere. It plunges the nature inward towards its meeting with the immanent Divine in the heart's secret centre and, while that call is there, no reproach of egoism, no mere outward summons of altruism or duty or philanthropy or service will deceive or divert it from its sacred longing and its obedience to the attraction of the Divinity within it. It lifts the being towards a transcendent Ecstasy and is ready to shed all the downward pull of the world from its wings in its uprising to reach the One Highest; but it calls down also this transcendent Love and Beatitude to deliver and transform this world of hatred and strife and division and darkness and jarring Ignorance. It opens to a universal Divine Love, a vast compassion, an intense and immense will for the good of all, for the embrace of the World-Mother enveloping or gathering to her children, the divine Passion that has plunged into the night for the redemption of the world from the universal Inconscience. It is not attracted or misled by mental imitations or any vital misuse of these great deep-seated Truths of existence; it exposes them with its detecting search-ray and calls down the entire truth of Divine Love to heal these malformations, to deliver mental, vital, physical love from their insufficiencies or their perversions and reveal to them their true abounding share of the intimacy and the oneness, the ascending ecstasy and the descending rapture.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-ascent-of-the-sacrifice-i#p23</ref>

I saw and felt this Compassion working through the meshes of the net, and how the Grace is all-powerful, meaning that the “Law” isn’t an obstacle any longer. I saw this Compassion touching everyone and giving everyone their chance; I understood what he really meant when he said that it “gives everyone their chance”—equally, without the slightest distinction of importance or condition or anything, or of state: exactly the same chance to all. So then, the result of this Compassion was to awaken them to the existence of the Grace, to make them feel that there is in the universe something like the Grace. And with those who aspire and have trust, the Grace acts immediately—it always acts, but with those who have trust it becomes fully effective.

A state of Grace is prepared in the individual often behind thick veils by means not calculable by the mind and when the state of Grace comes then the Grace itself acts. There are these three powers: (1) the Cosmic Law of Karma or what else; (2) the Divine Compassion acting on as many as it can reach through the nets of the Law and giving them their chance; and (3) the Divine Grace which acts more incalculably but also more irresistibly than the others. The only question is whether there is something behind all the anomalies of life which can respond to the call and open itself with whatever difficulty till it is ready for the illumination of the Divine Grace—and that something must be not a mental and vital movement but an inner somewhat which can well be seen by the inner eye. If it is there and when it becomes active in front, then the Compassion can act, though the full action of the Grace may still wait attending the decisive decision or change; for this may be postponed to a future hour, because some portion or element of the being may still come between, something that is not yet ready to receive.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/the-divine-grace-and-guidance#p4</ref>

===Divine Disgust===

It is a disgust that is full of total compassion.

It is something that takes upon itself the bad vibration in order to cure others of it. The consequences of a wrong and low movement—instead of throwing it back with cold justice upon the one who has committed the mistake, it absorbs it, in order to transform it within itself, and diminishes as far as possible the material consequences of the fault committed.

… the old story about Shiva who had a black stain on his neck because he had swallowed all that was bad in the world, is an imaginative way of expressing this divine disgust. It made a black stain on his neck.

<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/18-august-1954#p26,p28</ref>

It is from a state of deep compassion that the Divine acts in Matter and this deep compassion is translated in Matter precisely by the psychic sorrow.

...the Divine's state of compassion is translated in the psychic consciousness by a sorrow that is not egoistic, a sorrow that is the expression of the identification through sympathy with universal sorrow... <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/26-may-1954#p23,p24</ref>

...initial ''cause'' is the pain of separation created by the adversary...it is the suffering that comes from divine compassion, the suffering of love that feels compassion for the world's misery, whatever its origin, cause or effect. But this suffering, which is of a purely psychic character, contains no egoism, no self-pity; it is full of peace and strength and power of action, of faith in the future and the will for victory; it does not pity but consoles, it does not identify itself with the ignorant movement in others but cures and illumines it.

It is obvious that in the purity of its essence, only that which is perfectly divine can feel the suffering; but partially, momentarily, like flashes of lightning behind the dark clouds of egoism, it appears in all who have a vast and generous heart. However, most often, in the individual consciousness it is mixed with that mean and petty self-pity which is the cause of depression and weakness. Nevertheless, when one is vigilant enough to refuse this mixture or at least to reduce it to a minimum, one soon realises that this divine compassion is based on a sublime and eternal joy which alone has the strength and the power to deliver the world from its ignorance and misery.

<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/5-february-1956#p4,p5</ref>

=Why is Compassion Needed?=

The compassion seeks to relieve the suffering of all, whether they deserve it or not.