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Why We Must Embrace Empathy, Sympathy And Compassion

Why We Must Embrace Empathy, Sympathy And Compassion

Last updated on: October 22, 2026 at 3:58 am by Henry Karlson

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Why We Must Embrace Empathy, Sympathy And Compassion 2026-10-22T03:58:53-05:00 Henry Karlson

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Jesus showing compassion giving comfort to St. Mena — photograph of anonymous icon uploaded by: Clio20: Christ and Abbot Mena / Wikimedia Commons

Christians are meant to promote and engage empathy, sympathy and compassion, as all three of them are elements of charity, the charity which we are called to embrace, looking after and taking care of those who are in need. The three theological virtues are faith, hope and love (caritas /charity), with the greatest of them being love. If we do not embrace the way of love, our faith and hope will be diminished. If we find excuses to reject the way of love, we will no longer be faithful to Christ, and if we are not faithful to Christ, our hope will turn into presumption, which will make it difficult for us to repent and change our ways. Love fuels our faith and our faith is what allows us to have hope, which is why, when our love declines, we will find our faith and hope likewise diminishes (though we might not always realize it, because we often confuse faith with the affirmation of a set of propositions, which we can continue to hold onto, even as we confuse hope with presumption, thus believing we live in hope when what we have is not hope, but false certitude).

If we love someone, we will want to know them, we will want to understand them and their situation. This is where empathy comes into play, for the more we know them, the more we understand them and what they experience, the more we consider what it is like for them to experience what they experience, the better we will be able to help them. Indeed, we can start by showing them that they are not alone. Nonetheless, if we cannot do that, if their experience is beyond anything we can comprehend, we still should sympathize with them and show them compassion. In general, the more we get to know someone, the more we will be able to empathize with them, as we will discover what we have in common with them. What we should never do is believe this is something bad to do, as if empathy will have lead us astray. Love never leads astray, which is why empathy, when it is established in and with love, will never lead us astray. What will, however, is its denial.

As Christians, we should be known for our love, for the way we seek to live in harmony, not just with our fellow Christians, but with everyone. We should be the salt of the earth, helping to make the world better a place. No one, especially a Christian, should mock those who suffer; no one, especially a Christian, should be cruel, adding to the suffering of the world. Everyone, especially Christians, should use their own experiences, their own suffering, their own weaknesses, their own failings, to understand everyone else, to be empathetic so that they can then respond to the needs of others with love:

A man who does not live in harmony with his brothers, who mocks at those who weep and sneers at those who are glad, has no sympathy with them because their feelings do not affect him, he can never really see the truth in others. The proverb fits him well: the sound man feels not the sick man’s pains, nor the well-fed man the pangs of the hungry. It is fellow-sufferers that readily feel compassion for the sick and the hungry. For just as pure truth is seen only by the pure of heart, so also a brother’s miseries are truly experienced only by one who has misery in his own heart. You will never have real mercy for the failings of another until you know and realize that you have the same failings in your soul. Our Savior has given us the example. He willed to suffer so that he might know compassion; to learn mercy he shared our mercy.[1]

Everyone hurts. The world is full of suffering. We are all sinners; we all have failed God in various ways. We must not let the sins of others get in the way of caring for them, even as our sins do not get in the way of God caring for us. We should use our own experiences, including and especially, the way we have sinned and have been treated with care despite our sins, to teach us how to show others the compassion they need. Indeed, our empathy with them, our ability to share with them the fact that we are sinners like them, sinners who have received mercy and help throughout our lives, should help us be sympathetic to them and their needs. We should not let their sins get in our way of helping them. “True compassion towards one’s neighbor is to feel sympathy in one’s very bones for all his sufferings, both physical and spiritual.”[2] Empathy helps us realize the basic needs we have are one and the same as the needs everyone else has. It makes it easier for us to have compassion on others, and not to let anything get in the way of that compassion, when we can be empathic with them. But it is not necessary. Some people find it difficult to be empathic. They still can know that it is their duty to care for and help those in need. We don’t need to know why they are in need, if we see they are in need, especially if the need is immediate, we should address it, and deal with the why later, as St. Augustine indicated in a letter to St. Jerome:

Someone once fell into a well where the water was deep enough to hold him up so that he did not down, but not enough to choke him so that he could not speak. A bystander came over when he saw him and asked sympathetically: “How did you fall in?” He answered: “Please find some way of getting me out and never mind how I fell in.” Thus, as we confess and hold by our Catholic faith that the soul, even of the little infant, has to be delivered from sin, as from a well, by the grace of Christ, it is enough for him that we know how he may be saved, even if we do not find out how he came into that evil state. [3]

If someone is bleeding profusely, we must do what we can to stop it. Once we have done so, then we can look into the situation further, finding out why it happened. Similarly, when dealing with people in great need, we should deal with the needs instead of asking how and why they have such need – their need is before us, and that is our responsibility. Are they hungry? We must make sure they have food; are they homeless? We must make sure they have proper shelter, one which is actually safe. Once their needs have been met, we can look at and deal with what caused them to be in such a situation, hoping that by doing so, we can make sure it doesn’t happen again. And when we do that, when we examine the root causes of the situation, we must make sure we do so out of love, with compassion, acting for the sake of their benefit and not for a way to ignore our responsibility (personally or collectively) to them. Those who deny this, those who criticize empathy, acting like it is “suicidal” are trying to find any and every excuse they can to deny their obligations to others; they only care for and love themselves, and they believe taking care of others will get in the way of fulfilling all their lusts and desires. This is why they think it is suicidal to embrace empathy, because to them, any denial of their passions leads to the destruction of their way of life and the vision of the self they possess that emerges from it. They are right, something will be put to death, but what is put to death is not their true selves, only their false self, and all of its constructs, as empathy takes has them embrace the way of the cross; they die to themselves, to their false selves, so that they can emerge and live as person God meant them to be.

Our false self likes to make us think of ourselves as an individual cut off from all others; the reality is our personal existence is relational, and our existence can never be entirely disconnected from everyone else. We are interdependent persons, not individuals. This is what allows us to know them, and in doing so, we find we come to know our true selves. Because we cannot know ourselves if we think of ourselves merely as an atomic being cut off from everyone else. Those who deny empathy, those who call it suicidal, are the ones denying their true self, sacrificing it for the false self. They are the ones who end up being suicidal as they continue to embrace the destruction of their true selves. To reject empathy, to reject sympathy, is to reject the way of love, the way set up by Christ for us to find true life. Love will not have us deny others their needs; love will not seek to blame them when they need help. Love will not tell them they created the situation they find themselves in, and so now they must find their own way out of it all by themselves. Even if there they can and should be held responsible, that does not deny our responsibility to them. We must recognize that even if they are the ones who have gotten themselves into the situation they are in, they now can’t get themselves out of it without help. We must not fall for any form of Pelagian spirituality! Certainly, someone who fell into a well can be told they should have been watching where they are going, but telling them that won’t help them get out of the well; once they are out, we can remind to be more mindful of where they are going, so that we hope they won’t need our help again. Empathy has us see ourselves in their shoes, to understand what it is like to be treated without compassion. Since we would not want to be mistreated, since we would hate being told we are all to blame for what happens to us, when we need love and compassion, empathy has us realize we should not treat others with such disdain. Empathy is not suicidal, it rather, is a way of becoming better, of growing, becoming who it is we are meant to be. Those who suggest it is suicidal have not paid attention to the Christian way of life; they have denied Christ when Christ said to pick up their cross and follow him, and because of that, they must be pitied and helped, just like anyone else we would help.

[1] St. Bernard of Clairvaux, The Steps of Humility & Pride. Trans. M. Ambrose Conway OCSO (Collegeville, MD: Cistercian Publications, 1989), 35.

[2] St. Albert the Great, The Paradise of the Soul. Trans. Robert Nixon OSB (Gastonia, NC: Tan Books, 2023), 78.

[3] St. Augustine, “Letter 167 to St. Jerome” in Saint Augustine: Letters Volume IV (165 – 203). Trans. Sister Wilfrid Parsons, SND (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1955), 33.

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