Pity
- Michael Haldas
- May 28
- 4 min read
“…“people today often see pity as condescending, another word that has lost any positive meaning. What does pity mean…?...”‘pity’ to be a true virtue [it] must be directed to the good of its object. It is empty if it is exercised only to keep oneself ‘clean,’ free from hate or the actual doing of injustice, though this is also a good motive.” (Thomas P. Hillman, J.R.R. Tolkien)
“The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered …it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.” (G.K. Chesterton)
“Lack of compassion and cruelty occur as a result of a great profusion of the passions. Because the heart has been hardened by the passions, they do not allow a person to be stirred by pity, and such a person does not know how to feel pity for someone else: he feels no pain over someone afflicted, nor will he suffer when he sees his companion shattered, or feel any sadness over those who fall into sins. Rather, because of those passions that have been mentioned, anger and envy become strong and powerful in him. Sometimes a person is stirred to a stupid kind of zeal, wishing as if to take vengeance on behalf of God, giving no place in his soul to pity.” (St. Isaac of Nineveh)
“When I was writing about pity, real pity, and was doing research to see what other Christian writers were writing about it, most of what I found were articles and blogs on self-pity and how to overcome or avoid it. These were all good writings and a lingering self-pity is certainly spiritually regressive. It’s sad to me though that pity, perhaps by necessity in today’s culture, is so often associated with self-pity. I think it speaks to our modern condition plagued by a sense of self that borders on narcissism. True pity, real pity, has little or nothing do with self. It’s not condescending, it’s not belittling, it’s not demeaning; it is all about the well-being of another. In other words, it’s love.” (Sacramental Living Ministries)
“ In His Nativity and in His Baptism, Christ is “manifested,” or “revealed,” to the world as the Light of the world in order to dispel the darkness of ignorance and spiritual blindness which are the direct result of sin…we do not grow into the light by trying to escape the darkness but by meeting it—with courage and tranquility, as we shall then be enabled to do: trying to make sure that the deeper our knowledge of it becomes, the deeper also becomes our sense of oneness with the redemptive pity of God, and therefore the less our danger of coming to terms with evil.” (Fr. Stephen Kostoff, Gregory Wolfe)
“Great changes occur continually in every aspect of our lives – physical, social, and spiritual. Most are beyond our control, for they begin and end with God. The first task of a servant of Christ is to “look unto the Lord our God, until He take pity on us” (Ps 122:2). We are to discern what God wills and how He is calling us to act. Such watchfulness must be continual. Otherwise, the heart may be wounded and our birth in the new life in Christ will be disrupted, injured, or possibly stillborn.” (Dynamis 3/9/2018)
“Remember what man is. He is the image of God, a child of God, a Christian, an inheritor of the Kingdom, a member of Christ. We must therefore esteem every man, although he may bear in his soul the wounds of sins. The wounds - are wounds; they are made by the Devil and sin, but still the image is the image of God. We must pity him for his wounds, grieve, pray for him as for ourselves: for we are all - one body.” (St. John of Krondstat)
“Pity reflects God but self-pity does not…Self-pity is consumed with its own comforts and constantly asks: Why is this happening to me?...God the Word condescended to become one of us, suffer and die for us, only to rise again and offer us salvation because He loves and pities us to the point of doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves. When we pity another person to the point of trying to help them with no other motive than simply that, to help them, we are bringing Christ to them as best we can.” (Sacramental Living Ministries, Susie Larson)
“Let my life today be the channel through which some little portion of Your divine love and pity may reach the lives that are nearest to my own.” (John Baillie)
“Do not scorn pity that is the gift of a gentle heart…learn pity, and endurance in hope.” (J.R.R. Tolkien)
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