Our heart is enlarged.
Kindness Portrayed
Counterfeits of Kindness
It be punctiliously exact in observing forms, to show exquisite deference to another, to shake hands even, with much ceremony, just before your hand fingers a trigger or closes on a sword-hilt or clenches into a fist, to do all this without deviating in the least from the prescribed code of duelling, is etiquette. To greet another warmly, consult his every need and desire, show him without weariness all you have, carry on a correspondence in which there is not an offensive expression, but every manifestation of good-will – in a word, to act on the principle in your place of business that it never pays, especially where there is competition, to make an enemy – all that is good policy. To observe engagements promptly, to say the right word and perform the proper action at the right time and in the proper way, expressing your sympathy for others’ sorrows, your congratulations for their good fortune, taking your place in the round of social duties with all courtesy, all that constitutes politeness.
The True Coin of Kindness
These are the counterfeits of kindness. They do in act what kindness does; they talk as kindness talks, but they do not think as kindness thinks. Worldly politeness may often so think; business policy may sometimes so think, but it is clear that the code of honor never does and never can have the thoughts of kindness. Kindness is the expansion of the charitable heart. Its words, its works, its thoughts are the outgrowth of love, not rooted in human respect, or greed for gain, or murderous desire of revenge. The kind heart expands to good as the flower opens to the sun to shed its fragrance on the air. Kindness is the honey and perfume of the full bloom of charity. Saint Paul, with his usual plain and vigorous language, brings us into the very root and life of kindness. “Our mouth is open to you, O ye Corinthians; our heart is enlarged.” These words mark the end of one of Saint Paul’s triumphant catalogues of his sufferings, “as the ministers of God, in much patience, in tribulation, … in stripes, in prisons, . . . in long-suffering, in sweetness.” There was no boasting or self-seeking in all this, the Apostle would have the Corinthians believe, but rather the outpouring of his charity, which still, with parted lips, panted like the hart for the living waters, which still ached with love’s swelling heart to do even more. “Our mouth is open to you, O ye Corinthians; and our heart is enlarged.”
The Oil of Kindness
The great difficulty for all the machinery in the world is friction. Friction slackens speed, uses up energy and wears out the machine. If surface could glide over surface and part revolve around part without the grinding of rough faces, the records for speed already reached by us would rapidly be surpassed, and even our fast age would gasp at its accelerated motion. Lubricants are a prime necessity in machines, and kindness is equally necessary to keep our moral world going. Remove the lubricants and the machinery of the world would stop; remove kindness, and school and church and home would develop so much heated friction that they would cease to operate, friendship would disappear from the world and the couples still left undivorced would hasten to break the unkind bonds which galled the wearers. The oil of kindness keeps human society in its large as well as its small groups from breaking up into fragments.
The Unselfishness of Kindness
Kindness is essentially unselfish. It is not kindness to stand before a mirror and smile in genial approbation of the one reflected there, to pat oneself enthusiastically on the back and whisper soothing words to oneself. Such actions might possibly be manifestations of confidence or hope, but more likely they are the outcroppings of pride. No, kindness is for others and beams on them approvingly and encourages them warmly. Nor is it always kindness to encourage people to be just like ourselves. Some are lavish with encouragement when others try to be like them or are following out their plans; but if others are trying to do better in their own way they often look in vain for the approving smile and cheering word. To forward the production of duplicates of ourselves is not the most disinterested kindness nor the highest type of encouragement; it is more frequently disguised vanity and selfishness.
The Imperialism of Kindness
Saint Paul has made “the enlarged heart” characteristic of kindness, and the description is correct. The heart must over-leap the boundaries of self, if it would be kind. Kindness puts light in the eyes where selfishness had put dark looks; kindness smoothes the selfish frown on the forehead and relaxes the sneering curl on the lip, wreathing the features with a gracious smile. Kindness is the foe of selfish coldness and gruffness and indifference; it is the music in the voice, the gentleness in the touch, the warmth in the grasp, the cheeriness of the glad welcome, the hushed accents of condolence. Kindness is the civilizer and enlightener and sweetener of selfishness; the deadly opponent of the beast within us and of all its manifestations. The kind heart must conquer its own stubborn and selfish possessor before it goes abroad and everywhere on its errands of charity. “The enlarged heart” is an ardent believer in expansion and imperialism,but one need not fear its growth. Its conquests are meant to add new territories to the kingdom of kindness, at home first and abroad afterwards.
The Daylight of Kindness
The enlarged heart has made its first and shortest advance when it has converted the whole man into an apt medium of kindness, when it has made Dives look up from his plate and look out of his window and see Lazarus at his gate. The kind heart finds a Lazarus at every gate through which it goes out to the world. Kind acts, kind words, kind looks, kind thoughts, have crumbs of comfort for many a starving Lazarus, as the enlarged heart radiates its warmth in wider and wider circles. The kind heart rivals the sunlight. Out of the glowing furnace of its own enkindled elements leaps the ray of light. In an instant it has darted across leagues of space and touches an eastern cloud with red; in another instant it has glazed a stream with silver and has left the banks green, while it speeds across the fields, whitening the daisies, reddening the roses, coloring a hundred unfolding flowers with a thousand varied tints. Then it flashes through the open window, creeps between reluctant eyelids and wakes a sleeping world to life and work. Such is the mission of kindness, the sunshine of charity, the smile of all the virtues, the radiating goodness of the enlarged heart.
Kindness Personified
Going about Doing Good
On the day that the Church became Catholic in practice by throwing open its gates to the Gentiles, Saint Peter gave an instruction to Cornelius, the Roman centurion, and to his family. In the instruction he related, as the Apostles were accustomed to do, the story of our Lord’s life in brief, His baptism, His death, His resurrection. How does the chief of the Apostles summarize the public life of our Lord? Principally in the words, “He went about doing good.” Nothing could be briefer, nothing could be more complete. This is the condensed gospel of Saint Peter, the life of Christ in five words, the biography of personified kindness. Saint Peter may have thought of the many acts of goodness done by Jesus for those not of the Jews, and so have wished to encourage Cornelius and to have further justification, if it were needed, for opening the Church to the Gentiles. But more likely he wished to put th$ life of his Master, as he knew it, into a striking phrase. At all events, he has succeeded in giving us a full description of kindness when he told Cornelius of Jesus, “who went about doing good.” Saint Paul, too, summed up the Incarnation in a similar way when he wrote of the time “the goodness and kindness of God, the Saviour,” appeared.
Distributing Currents of Love
Kindness, then, would seem to be a very prominent trait in the Incarnation, and surely it is. The Incarnation was the first appearance of the enlarged Heart of Christ, the first stage – and a vast one it was – of His ceaseless travels in going around doing good. The Incarnation is the greatest of God’s acts of kindness. It is the outpouring of infinite love, and so it is the greatest volume of kindness that ever came from the brimming source of charity. When charity is pent up and confined, when the pressure of its currents is held in check, it may be patient, but it is not yet kind. Like the waters of a great lake which filled up the immense bed hollowed out for it when the world was making, so we may imagine God’s ocean of love rose and surged against its barriers until finally it made a way for itself and rushed out and poured down a portion of its great power upon mankind far below. The waters of the reservoir are kind, not when sleeping in the shadows, but when running along the mill-race, sparkling in the sunlight and setting the mills of the world in motion or when directed through a thousand channels to the parched lips of men. God was infinitely kind when He emptied Himself, came down to us, and went about doing good, bringing the love of God to the helpless, thirsting hearts of mankind through the channels of a human Heart.
Drawing All Hearts Captive
To mention all the acts of kindness prompted by the Heart of Christ would be to expand Saint Peter’s brief biography into that of the four Evangelists. Perhaps we may better appreciate the kindness of the Heart of Christ, if we fix our attention upon one or two features where it is especially evident. The kind heart repels no one; it is attractive; it is eminently approachable. The stare, the frown, the sneer, the cutting sarcasm, the brusque indifference, the thousand and one signs of no admittance with which unkindness decks her gloomy portals, are never found along the approaches to the kind heart. Was our Lord approachable? Was the way open to His Heart? Look at the blind and halt and deaf and infirm; look at the sorrowful and bereaved; look at the timid, shrinking children; above all, look at the sinners, at Nicodemus, who came by night, and the Samaritan woman, who found Him at mid-day, at Peter and at Magdalene; look at the countless hearts of countless men and women who are forever journeying to the Heart of Christ, and then say whether the way to the kindest of hearts is wide open. Think, too, of the winning forms under which our Lord liked to picture Himself for us. He is the way, the open door and the fold, the vine and the bread and the water of life, the anxious mother-hen, the good shepherd and the merciful father, the teacher whose burden is light and whose yoke is sweet, and who will refresh all that labor and are heavily burdened. As if all these attractive guises were not enough, He took a Mother and began His life among men by becoming the Babe of Bethlehem, in the manger, beneath the swaddling clothes, and continues His life among men in the Bread of the Tabernacle, beneath the enclosing bands of our commonest food. Nothing could be more winning, more fascinating than the kind Heart of Christ.
Delicate in Sympathy
We expect kindness to be easy of access, to be magnetic. Yet that is not enough. Kindness must not always wait; it must go about doing good, and if it would arouse our fullest enthusiasm it must do good in some new way. The favor need not be great to be called by us kind, and even though great, it will not deserve the name of truest kindness if it is done to order or from mere custom. Kindness can never be machine-like. It is ever new and original and ingenious in its devices, because it is so thoughtful, so delicate in its sympathy. If a machine is out of order, send its number to the maker and he will duplicate any part. The human heart has not become standardized in its kindness. There is something individual and peculiar in every sorrow and pain; and sensitive kindness, feeling that, is ever new in its manifestation.
Unique in Varied Manifestations
We shall not be disappointed if we look for these refinements of kindness in our Lord’s life and shall not be wrong in attributing them to the exquisite sensitiveness of His kind Heart. Many of His great miracles are marked by a thoughtful kindness. At Cana He anticipates the embarrassment of the newly married couple, changing water into wine. At Nairn the Evangelist notes His kindness in hastening to console the widowed mother and in seeing that the resurrection from the dead is crowned by an act of delicate courtesy. He gives the son to the mother. Similar kindness marks the raising of Lazarus from the dead. At other times His miracles are characterized by almost fairy kindness, as when Peter pays the tax from the coin found in the fish he caught, or when the tired and hungry multitudes are fed with multiplied loaves and fishes. The individuality of our Lord’s kindness is displayed too in the vocations and conversions of the Gospels. The terms of address are also chosen with care, “My daughter,” “My son,” “My brother,” “My little children,” “Mary,” and other expressions, are replete with touching kindness. The invitations seem to have been thought out with care. “Come and see,” “you shall be fishers of men,” and the like, and the winning of the Samaritan woman at the well, the singling out of Zachaeus in the branches of a tree, an ingenious situation which merited an ingenious response – all these give further examples of a really kind nature. Most of all, however, is the wonderful tact of kindness shown in opposing the malicious cunning of His foes. Those who try to entrap Him are baffled by His patience and wisdom. It is enough to recall the coin of tribute, the good Samaritan, the answer to the High-priest, and, indeed, every incident of the Passion, but the best example, perhaps, of this unique kindness is to be found in the story of the woman taken in sin, with all its marvelous delicacy in word and act. The Heart of Christ has done kinder deeds than that, but there is no other one that draws from us so quickly the enthusiastic cry: “There in truth is a divinely kind Heart!”