Compassion: Reflection on the Christian Life

In this provocative essay on that least understood virtue, compassion, the authors challenge themselves and us with these questions: Where do we place compassion in our lives? Is it enough to live a life in which we hurt one another as little as possible? Is our guiding ideal a life of maximum pleasure and minimum pain? Compassion answers no.

After years of study and discussion among themselves, the authors look at compassion with a vigorous new perspective. They place compassion at the heart of a Christian life in a world governed far too long by principles of power and destructive control. Compassion, no longer merely an eraser of human mistakes, is a force of prayer and action - the expression of God's love for us and our love for God and one another.

Compassion is a book that says no to a compassion of guilt and failure and yes to a compassionate love that pervades our spirit and moves us to action. Henri Nouwen, Donald McNeill and Douglas Morrison have written a moving document on what it means to be a Christian in a difficult time.

About the Authors:

Donald McNeill is a priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross. Don taught theology and developed service learning programs at the University of Notre Dame for three decades where he helped fund the Center for Social Concerns. He is currently a Senior Fellow living and ministering in Chicago with the Metropolitan Chicago initiative of Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies.

Douglas A. Morrison is a priest of the Archdiocese of Hatford whose background includes parish, hospital and pastoral conseling ministries as well as college and university teaching and administration. He is presently Deputy Director and CEO of Unity Health Care, Inc., whose mission is to provide health and human services to the homeless and underserved in Washington D.C.

Henri Nouwen was a priest of the Archdiocese of Utrecht, the Netherlands. Since his death in 1996, ever-increasing numbers of readers, writers, teachers, and seekers have been guided by his literary legacy. Henri taught at the University of Notre Dame, and the Divinity Schools of Yale and Harvard. In 1986 Nouwen came to make his home at L'Arche Daybreak near Toronto, Canada. He died suddenly on September 21, 1996. in Holland and is buried in King City, Ontario.

Joel Filartiga, a medical doctor in Paraguay, drew the illustrations for this book in memory of his seventeen-year-old son, Joelito, who was tortured to death by a police squad in 1976.