The Compassion of the Mystics - Dr. Bernard McGinn

God’s “loving kindness,” “mercy,” “tenderness,” and “compassion,” all closely related terms, are featured in the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. Compassio, “suffering with others,” was not, however, a value in ancient society, so early Christians had to create a new theology and practice of compassion that deeply influenced the Christian mystical tradition. Among the numerous examples of the “mysticism of compassion” this talk singles out mystics of the early thirteenth century, concentrating on il Poverello, Francis of Assisi, the “poor man,” who presented an image of universal compassion to a society wracked by political tensions and economic inequalities. Francis’s contemporaries, the “holy women” (mulieres sanctae) of the early thirteenth-century Low Countries, such as Mary of Oignies, Beatrice of Nazareth, and Ida of Nivelles (“the Compassionate”), provide further evidence of the central role of compassion in the “New Mysticism” of the thirteenth century. Finally, a brief consideration will be given to Francis de Sales (d. 1626), the great seventeenth-century mystic, who not only was an outstanding personal witness to compassion, but who also set out a profound theology of compassion as one of the necessary “little virtues.”

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