Glory to Jesus Christ. I'm Mother Natalia, a Byzantine Catholic nun from Christ the

bridegir monastery and this is Pines with Aquinas. Last week I shared with you

a homily from a priest friend of mine who said in a very hyperbolic way,

God is not merciful and God is not compassionate.

He then followed this up with God is mercy and God is compassion. So the point he was trying to make is that these aren't just characteristics of God.

It's not like God is merciful right now,

but the next moment he might not be merciful.

God can't not be merciful. He can't not be

compassionate and thus he is mercy he is compassion.

You know we could say

mother Natalia is charitable and I think that's usually true but I wouldn't say

Mother Natalia is charity because when I've woken up in the morning and I have not yet had my coffee. I'm much slower to charity.

And yeah, so there are these characteristics, these ways in which we grow back into our likeness of God, but God, he is charity, he is mercy, he is compassion.

So last week I spoke about what mercy is and this week I want to share about compassion

because I think this is one of the most

misunderstood words in our society today.

Because what we think compassion is in our society is letting people do whatever they want.

Just saying to someone, if this is what makes you feel good, if this is what makes you happy,

then because I have compassion,

I'm going to approve of that thing and support that thing.

Even if deep down I think it's harmful to you.

But what compassion actually is the Latin word for compassion, the root is compasio, which I'm sure is not how you pronounce it, because I don't know how to pronounce Latin,

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