Written by Apostle Wagner Zeppenfeld
God's grace never fails.
We are in His hands from the time we rise until we go to bed.
His sweet voice guides us through the fire.
And in the darkness His presence comforts us.
He is faithful at all times.
But are we faithful to Him?
To be faithful to Him means to keep His commandments, to put His teachings into practice.
We need to nurture the best feelings in our hearts and little by little these good feelings will strengthen us in such a way that no evil feelings will enter our lives.
We need to be attentive to modern revelations, we need to be attentive to the words of the living prophet in our days, because God speaks through him.
Today I will leave a few words with you about one of these good feelings that has the power to change our lives: compassion.
A very common word in most people's vocabulary, but not always used in the best way. We don't always understand its true meaning, or the greatness of such a sublime feeling coming from God.
A feeling that is fundamental for us to reach a higher realm.
The word compassion comes from the Latin compassio, which means the act of sharing the suffering of another person. In Latin, compassio means to understand another person's pain and to feel his or her suffering. The person who feels compassio, or compassion, is able to put himself in the shoes of another person who is suffering, understanding what he is going through. This understanding leads to the desire to help, sharing the burden of pain.
More than just feeling what the other person feels, we need to act, to take action. Empathy is feeling what another person feels. Compassion is empathy in action. Compassion is seeing a person's world through their lens, you understand how they feel, and then you do something about it.
Compassion awakens the will to help others overcome their problems by consoling and giving emotional support.
When someone sympathizes with an individual, they are not feeling sorry for them, but rather showing respect for their pain and taking some action to ease the anguish they feel. That is exactly where its beauty lies, in the desire to want to help purely and simply to do good.
In the Sealed Book of Moses chapter 5 verse 33 it is written:
I'm not talking about pity, because to pity someone, is a petty feeling derived from the evil one. But above all, I am talking about empathy, when we want others to have the greater good that we have or want to have.
So, there is no me, there is no you, there is no him, there is us.
One needs the other, I need you and you at some point need me.
And if we want to build a just society where brother will look after brother, we need to pay attention to these details, we need to nurture the best feelings coming from God.
We need to love each other, we need to want the greater good of everyone around us. If we are happy why not take this happiness to others, if we have something good why not share it, if we have the Sealed Book changing our lives why not want this same change in the lives of others?
We need to be one in heart. We are all sailing in the same boat, where Christ is the one who is guiding us, through a living prophet in our days, we are together in search of the same goal, to build Zion. But for this we need to unite and be just one people.
It is possible to show compassion for someone in many ways, starting with a simple conversation or even a hug or a handshake.
Many times, all a person needs is to share their anguish or just to let off steam, and having someone to talk to is a great emotional support. To be compassionate is to understand that it is possible to suffer with another, but without discrimination or judgment. Compassion requires empathy with the other's pain and makes us want to ease that suffering, and it is small gestures that make all the difference.
The change we want in society starts with us, by treating ourselves better, practicing empathy and compassion with each one of us and then with all people.
For compassion goes beyond an exercise with the other, it also goes through the process of self-knowledge, one must be compassionate with oneself, forgiving one's own faults and producing a positive feeling inside. When one is compassionate with oneself, one can then overflow this emotion to others, assuming that our positive actions generate great effects in people's lives.
Self-knowledge is also important in the process of awakening compassion, for the simple fact that being compassionate requires loving the other. But loving the other implies first loving oneself. One of the main commandments: "Love your neighbor as yourself".
Compassion should be directed to improve more and more and serve as a guiding feeling, and its great benefit is in awakening the desire to want to help, to transform realities, to do good, whether for oneself or for others.
Compassion is a constant practice; on hearing about someone's problem there is an impulse to seek solutions. The desire is to offer comfort and a way out of the position of discomfort.
I would like to cite an example, imagine that a person fell into a river and started to drown in front of you. To be compassionate means to do everything in your power to save them.
If you can swim, you can get into the river and pull the person in distress out of the water. If you can't swim, you can ask for help from someone who can. If there are no other people, you can call the fire department and throw something into the river to get the person to hold on. Compassion refers to doing everything in your power to alleviate the suffering of another.
Compassion, when it is true, helps us to stop navel-gazing and start looking up to see what is going on around us. It reminds us that we are not alone in this world, that other people matter too. Moreover, if the help we offer is honest, it will give us enormous inner peace.
The act of compassion brings us closer to others, it offers us the possibility to give the best of ourselves in order to help others, with humility and affection. It makes us more human, sensitive and honest with the people around us, and certainly with ourselves. Every time we care for someone who is in need, we are pleasing to the heart and offering the other sincere help.
In the Bible we have several passages that show and teach us the power of compassion in our lives.
I would like to talk about two passages from the Book of Luke.
Christ went to the city of Nain with his disciples, and when he arrived near the city gate he saw a funeral cortege, where the body of a young man, the only son of his mother, a widow, was being carried away. And the young man sat up and began to speak. And Christ handed him over to his mother.
In the parable of the Samaritan, another story is told of a man who was on his way down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him naked and beat him, and left him almost dead.
Two men passed by and did nothing, then a Samaritan passed by who was moved with compassion, bandaged his wounds, put him on his own animal, took him to an inn, and took care of him.
In both passages we can notice that the feeling that caused the people to be helped was the feeling of compassion.
The true follower of Jesus must be someone who, wherever he goes, knows how to look and listen, so that he does not go through life blind and deaf. And this should be the question we should continually ask ourselves: "What have we seen or heard since we left home?
Compassion has the power to transform us, to change our lives, to make us better people, more human, to help us detach from the material and focus on the spiritual. And above all we have the opportunity to change the lives of the people around us, filling their days with hope.
"Be the change you want to see in the world."