It is helpful to observe that repentance through compassion is perhaps nowhere more available to us than in our mediated relationships with society. Living in the world, we are surrounded constantly by stories of awful vice and sin, found in the news, on the web, told through friends and the like. Our usual instinct, which is one strongly encouraged in the secular world, is to sit in judgment of the wrongs we hear about on a daily basis, and probably to grow angry in a way that we perceive to be righteous. Yet, compassion invites a completely different approach. When surrounded by real sin and vice, we are welcomed to embrace it all as our own. Reading a news story on corporate embezzlement, we are invited to turn to God in earnest and ask forgiveness for the crime of theft. Hearing about a political sex scandal, we are encouraged to turn and beg for mercy in the face of our own lust. Indeed, reading even about the horrors of a murder, we face an opportunity to ask God to forgive us for taking the lives of his beloved creatures. If we are not the real perpetrators of such acts, then it is indeed true that we do not bear the guilt for them, and will not answer at the judgment as though we do. Yet, if we exercise compassion, they offer us an even more beautiful chance to turn to God here and now than our own sins do.
It is easy for most of us to identify at least some of the sinfulness we see around us, and it is easy to see the incredible spiritual danger that exists for anyone living in a society not just rife with, but often fueled by temptation. It is far more difficult to see the simultaneous opportunity that is presented to us by living constantly among those who are tempted, and indeed give in every day to such temptation. Yet, this opportunity is real, and even more present to us than it was to a desert monk like Abba Apollos. Life in society is a string of moments inviting compassion. To seize even one or two of these moments a day would effect a spiritual transformation in us that we could scarcely imagine. It would be to instantly lighten the burden of all those we meet while providing ourselves with one of the greatest blessings we can receive. It would be to heal and be healed in a single act, to repent without needing to be struck first by guilt, to press ourselves and everyone around us forward from anger and into love, which is purity of heart shared in common.
It is certainly the case, however, that most of us will probably spend the vast majority of our time like the foolish elder. If we are not simply complicit in the sin around us (as we usually are), we are most often sitting in judgment of those who are so engaged. Our own failure in this regard, however, can become, once again, an opportunity. As Abba Chaeremon notes, a lack of compassion within us is a sign of how far we still need to go in our struggles.
Moreover, when a soul has not yet been rendered free of faults, one clear sign is that it does not experience a feeling of mercy in the face of other people’s transgressions, but rather clings to rigid, juridical scorn. Indeed, how will it ever be possible for someone to obtain perfection of the heart if he does not have the very thing that can fulfill the whole of the law, as the apostle shows saying, “bear on another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ” [Gal 6.2].25
For Abba Chaeremon, the degree to which a person is able to exhibit compassion is like a litmus test of the state of her own soul. Holy people will always co-suffer with those around them, while, ironically, those who are still in their own sins will sit in judgment.
Therefore, as with charity, there is a negative opportunity in society if we are able to exercise discretion by at least seeing our own lack of compassion. When we fail to take up spiritual co-suffering with another, this failure itself is a sign that there remain within us the marks of our own unrepentance and sin. It shows us that we continue to push ourselves and those around us in the direction of anger, rather than love, and thus participate in preventing our connections to others in society from becoming Christian friendships.
In light of this, we are invited by the Conferences to look out upon society and ask what kinds of thoughts and feelings are brought up within us when we see the sins of others. If we are not able to turn our engagement with society into a constant series of experiences of co-suffering compassion, then at the very least we must be able to exercise discretion to turn life in the world into a series of reminders to ourselves of how far we still have to go toward purity of heart. In the world, even more than in the desert, we are invited to turn to compassion and reminded of what it means when we fail to do so.
~Daniel G. Opperwall, A Layman in the Desert
25 Conf. I I.X.I.
