And in this pouring abroad of our pity we
experience relief and the painful sweetness of goodness. This is what
Teresa de Jesus, the mystical doctor, called "sweet-tasting suffering"
(_dolor sabroso_), and she knew also the lore of suffering loves. It is
as when one looks upon some thing of beauty and feels the necessity of
making others sharers in it. For the creative impulse, in which charity
consists, is the work of suffering love.
We feel, in effect, a satisfaction in doing good when good superabounds
within us, when we are swollen with pity; and we are swollen with pity
when God, filling our soul, gives us the suffering sensation of
universal life, of the universal longing for eternal divinization. For
we are not merely placed side by side with others in the world, having
no common root with them, neither is their lot indifferent to us, but
their pain hurts us, their anguish fills us with anguish, and we feel
our community of origin and of suffering even without knowing it.
Suffering, and pity which is born of suffering, are what reveal to us
the brotherhood of every existing thing that possesses life and more or
less of consciousness. "Brother Wolf" St. Francis of Assisi called the
poor wolf that feels a painful hunger for the sheep, and feels, too,
perhaps, the pain of having to devour them; and this brotherhood reveals
to us the Fatherhood of God, reveals to us that God is a Father and that
He exists.
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