Suffering With Joy

Saints Crispin and Crispinian and the Virtue of Kindness

October 25, 2010

Today’s saints, according to “Butler’s Lives of the Saints”, are two brothers who came from Rome to preach the Gospel in Gaul.  During the day they preached and at night they made shoes.

Many people were attracted to them because of “their charity, disinterestedness, heavenly piety, and contempt of glory and all earthly things; and the effect was the conversion of many to the Christian faith.” Eventually, though, the devil couldn’t let them continue and inspired the Roman authorities in Gaul to torture and behead them.  They won their crown about the year 287.

The Missing Virtue

I couldn’t help thinking of the great virtue of kindness in regard to these brothers. We have so little kindness on line and in person – civility and personal respect in the public sphere seems remarkably absent.

Just think of what happened to Juan Williams last week and what his former boss said about him.  I don’t agree with Williams’s politics or his viewpoints on many things, but he has always conducted himself as a gentleman and never tried to ram his opinions down anyone’s throat. Whether you agree or disagree with him, you could always have a reasonable conversation with him. He was no party hack, avoided political correctness, and that’s what got him fired from NPR.

I am also thinking of Kathleen Basi’s blog, So Much to Say, So Little Time, which is a great place for moms and dads with special needs kids, as well as the rest of us who want inspiration for daily living.  Kathleen referenced Amy Julia Becker’s post on the NY Times parenting blog where many comments were unkind and bitter concerning accepting a Downs Syndrome child.

I was horrified at the nastiness some people did not hesitate to express. I think that when we are unkind to others, we not only diminish ourselves, we diminish all mankind. When we do it publicly, the diminishment is even greater.

No one seems to speak of kindness these days.  To gauge by the media, it’s been replaced with vapid political correctness, condescension, or slimy kissing up.  More than ever before, our world is in grave need of increasing kindness on the personal, one-to-one basis, yet it is hard to be a kind person if no one has ever been kind to you. And so, the vicious circle.

Comments on the Becker post showed that there are many resentful people out there, and people closed to life – people who evidently have never felt personal kindness at a deep level from others – people who are so caught up in the things of this world that they don’t recognize kindness when it presents itself to them – people who may be difficult to be kind towards.

We Can Do Better

As Christians, with God’s grace we can always do better at being kind. Now is the time, with so many wounded people in this world, to build the virtue of kindness and spread the message of God’s love .  Let us look every day for more ways to be kind to those we meet, in our families, at our church, at the grocery, in the doctor’s office, at the gas station and anywhere else we happen to be.

I recommend the book, The Hidden Power of Kindness: A Practical Handbook for Souls Who Dare to Transform the World, One Deed at a Time by Father Lawrence G. Lovasik, S.V.D., a wonderful priest who died in 1986.  He did work in America’s coal and steel regions, founded the Sisters of the Divine Spirit, a missionary congregation, and wrote many other books for children and adults on living a holy life.  This book will be my Advent spiritual reading and I may present quotes from it here from time to time.

Meanwhile, regarding today’s saints, it’s ironic that those who died because of their kindness are the very ones we need to ask to help us be more kind.

V.  Praised be Jesus Christ!

R.  Now and forever.  Amen.

(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)

Tags: Catholic Church