John of the Cross wrote that “the suffering for the neighbor grows the more as the soul unites itself through love with God.” When we feel anguish about a life characterized by death, when we are drawn into suffering, we share in another’s anguish and are enabled to identify with the other person.
For Martin Luther King, Jr., compassionate suffering was an essential aspect of his prophetic calling. King believed that acceptance of suffering was redemptive because suffering could transform both the sufferer and the oppressor. Compassionate suffering was based upon loving others regardless of their worth or merit. Ultimately, compassionate suffering is grounded in the confidence that justice would, in the end, triumph over injustice.
As he preached on Christmas Eve, 1967, “We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws and abide by your unjust system, because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good, and so throw us in jail and we will still love. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and drag us out on some wayside road and leave us half-dead as you beat us up, and we will still love you.”
I tasted compassionate suffering while working at the alternative schools. Although King was preaching to an African-American congregation who already lived with oppression I am a white, middle class woman who has not experienced racial prejudice. I was and am free to drive wherever I choose, live where I want, and can move about
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