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Compassion suffers with the sufferer; mercy does not

Secondly, genuine compassion implies a state of suffering in the subject himself; con-passio, indeed, means suffering with someone. He who evinces compassion is in some sense implicated in the situation of the one he pities. Mercy, on the other hand, is not itself associated with suffering, or else God—in His infinite beatitude, to which no shade of suffering attaches—could not be merciful. The subject of mercy in no way becomes a sharer in the situation of its object; he (in a very specific sense, to be sure) controls that situation from above.

Compassion is between equals; mercy is toward an inferior

By this we have already hinted at the third point of difference. Compassion presupposes a fundamental situation embracing its subject and object alike: it constitutes a relationship inter pares (“between equals”).

Mercy, on the contrary, presupposes a superiority on the part of the merciful one. In the sense of intentional awareness, he certainly assimilates or comprehends the suffering of the creature he pities, but his own center of vision, his own spiritual locus as it were, is outside and above that suffering. Therefore, a gesture of condescension is inherent to all mercy: the merciful one bends down in love to the misery that has evoked his commiseration.

Compassion, on the contrary, not only does not require a gesture of condescension but is actually altered and spoiled by its presence. Once condescension enters, we have in the place of genuine compassion a proud attitude which is most likely to insult the person whom it is supposed to comfort. For compassion is eminently a corollary of an all-embracing solidarity of suffering mankind; it essentially demands, on the subject’s part, an attitude of meeting the pitied one on a level of equality. Though it always refers to some concrete affliction of definite persons, it does so taking for granted the fundamental human situation, common to all, a constant background.

In contradistinction to this, mercy among men is but an analogue of the mercy of God: it is only possible as a participation in the latter, an imitation of the attitude of loving condescension whose primary subject is God and God alone. Therefore, mercy is an eminently supernatural virtue, requiring as its basis the Christian ethos. Every attempt to realize it on a purely natural plane is bound to fail—to result, that is, not in true mercy but in the irritating hybrid of a “superior” compassion.

Mercy is more spiritual than compassion

Fourthly, compassion—a specifically human motive of behavior—presupposes the vulnerable human heart as such. It implies a particular kind of sensitive understanding for the suffering creature, an organic sympathy, a certain feeling of sameness, as it were. Mercy constitutes a response very much more spiritual in character. In it, too, lies an ultimate understanding—a type of understanding, however, which is the privilege of one whose vision measures its object in a perspective of distance and height.

The merciful man thus approaches that object from above—from the altitude of his own response to the condescending love of God, not from a self-assumed position of superiority. He understands the pitiable object indeed, in a much deeper sense: somewhat as God, just because He is infinitely above us, is nearer to us than we are ourselves. This is what we meant by saying that the merciful one “controls” the situation which surrounds the wretched creature inasmuch as he views it in a light borrowed from God and comprehends it from above, conspiring as it were with the divine act of mercy.

Mercy presupposes that the merciful can give help; compassion does not

Finally, he who posits an act of mercy does so in reference to a kind of situation in which his intervention may effect some change. This is obviously always the case with God; in regard to us men, however, the presupposition is fulfilled in a very limited measure only. Compassion,