Generosity

In 1927 Evelyn Underhill gave a retreat called "Inner Grace and Outward Sign" in which one of the subjects she talked about was "Generosity." The following is from that talk as recorded in the book The Ways of the Spirit edited by Grace Adolphsen Brame:

"We see the good--beautiful--noble Shepherd. The Greek word carries all those meanings. It is a word which suggests absolute perfection. And next, what is the outstanding characteristic? 'The Good Shepherd gives His life for the sheep.' No one could suppose that the sheep were as valuable as the Shepherd! In ordinary existence, we should call it a terrible waste of a life. But these things are not done on commercial lines, lines of worthwhileness in the supernatural world. Uncalculated, unfailing, generous, self-spending devotion: that is the mark of the Good Shepherd and of all who work for God on other souls.

"The Good Shepherd not only dies for the sheep; He also lives for them. Imagine that--just for the sheep! He doesn't live to develop His personality, to cultivate His own soul. He gives all His life, with all its varied opportunities and interests, for the sheep. Compare the life of a devoted shepherd in all times and all weathers, tending his flock with all the varied interests and opportunities offered by existence, and see the measure of renunciation hidden in the phrase to which we have given our attention.

"Willing, self-oblivious, generous sacrifice for the apparently unworthy is raw material for supernatural transfiguration. This is the mark of real leadership and yet more of real redemptive, willing, loving, sacrifice of infinite worth for the apparently worthless. It seems so wasteful to common sense, but it is the normal method of the saints. There you touch the supernatural. There the human creature really transcends the self and partakes of the nature of Christ. 'If any would be first, let him be the servant of all.' 'I am among you as one who serves.' That is the conviction to carry with us when we have to tackle a tiresome or unrewarding job.

"Now let us pass on from the great ideal picture of the Good Shepherd and see that generous, compassionate, self-giving love in action in the history of the Passion. Then I think we shall see what St. Ignatius meant when he said that the contemplation of the Passion always gave the soul an inclination to the most perfect things.

"Look at the royal generosity with which Christ, faced with a tragic destiny and a horror of suffering and loneliness which are to test His endurance to the ultimate, spends his last hours in deeds of self-giving of a simple kind. He takes a towel and basin of water and kneels humbly to wash the dirty feet of the very men who are going to forsake Him. Then He takes bread and wine and imparts them to that same weak and faulty collection of men, giving His very life.

"'The Good Shepherd gives His life for the sheep.' I suppose that those two scenes alone, if we lost the rest of the Gospel, would give us the saving essentials of the Incarnation.

"And in the pictures of the hours to come, we see the generosity that keeps compassion burning brightly, not only among the countless claims and demands made upon it, but within the most awful hours of anguish and desolation. We may be sure it was a glance of loving pity that finished Peter and made him go out and weep bitterly. It was generous, selfless compassion that spoke to the daughters of Jerusalem and that won the thief on the cross. In Christ, the horror and hatred of sin which is felt by the Holy, melts into generous pity, and nothing is so supernatural, so destructive of evil as that.

"Look at the thief on the cross. There is nothing very splendid or interesting about him. He is an ordinary criminal who got caught, the sort of person who passes through a barrier erected in constructing a street. But the saving energy of Christianity is not directed to interesting sinners but to ordinary sheep. There is no picking and choosing there. The poor publican and the prostitute woman found in adultery were both the sort we see daily in the papers, pitiful exhibitions of human weakness.

"Yet on these, the generous compassion of redemptive love shines in its full transfiguring energy. The woman's sins are forgiven. Words are spoken like: 'Go, and sin no more.' 'Today you will be with me in Paradise.' Even on the Cross, Christs [sic] points beyond mere retribution to a freely, gladly given joy. It is like the laborers in the vineyard who had been taught the same lesson: there are no calculations such as people deserve. We too are called, if we would be perfect, to take this view of human shabbiness and sin.

"Generosity means that longing to bring joy, peace, and salvation, not to the loveable but to the unloveable and at one's own cost. It is to bring all this to the people whose views and beliefs we dislike or whose conduct we disapprove. It is to bring it to those who are tiresome, embittered, selfish, degraded, and whose whole being seems twisted out of shape. It means to desire the happiness of people who don't desire it. And it means longing to rescue these at our own cost.

"Nothing else but such generous love will help them or release them: no justice, no good advice, no teaching or reforming. Nothing but indulgent, uncritical sacrificial love, giving your life in some form, in spite of suffering and renunciation, for the unworthy. To know that is the secret of Christianity, and to do it is the secret of sanctity.

"Generous love serves and suffers for those from whom it can never hope to receive love, gratitude, or even justice. And in doing that, it shows itself to be the Child of God and enters into the joy and mystery of Christ.

"There is a wonderful prayer in Lancelot Andrewes' Morning Office: 'Look on me with those eyes of Thine with which Thou didst once look on the Magdalen at the feast, at Peter in the court, and at the thief on the cross.'

"What was that look? It had to have been a generous, uncritical, and compassionate look. That then is the standard. And how does it tally with our own practice? When we come up against Magdalen, not as an object for philanthropy, not as someone we find in a rescue home, but as one in our own set, do we meet her half way or not? Which pulls the hardest: generosity or respect?

"Then there is Peter. How is our standard of generosity strained when our apparently most devoted friend or co-worker leaves us in the hour of need to save the situation for him or herself?

"And there is the thief. What do we do when, in the moment of acute physical and mental anguish that taxes all our endurance, an unloving and importunate stranger intrudes on us, begging help?

"Have we the self-oblivion that can love to the very end and be generous with compassion in such cases as these? If not, we still fall short of the standard required of the members of the Body of Christ. Ruysbroeck said that 'a wide-spreading love to all in common' was the mark of a soul in full union with God, and that is a very costly kind of love to give.

"Amiability will not accomplish this. The task needs courage and faith, for it means giving all you have, every scrap, not only what is needed, but the bit you need not have given. It means a self-dedication which gladly accepts all the pain and tension a redemptive life must involve. Though you try to rescue or to reform or to serve with kindness, it means the difference between the incalculable generosity of the Shepherd who gives His whole life versus those prudent measures of self-donation which are careful and safeguarded from serious risk.

"Why do we go to Communion unless it is to unite ourselves with the self-giving action of Christ and join ourselves to the Mystical Body through which the love of God acts on human life? We don't go for some private comfort and advantage. That is not Christian. The Gospel contains not one instance in which Christ sought or had a privileged spiritual advantage. We go to Communion to offer ourselves in one generous, unconditional sacrifice to God and to be made a little more fit to mediate His unlimited, generous love to others.

"Now we come to the painful application of these thoughts. How do we stand in respect to the active generosity which God asks of us? Are we entirely willing, quick, eager to do or to renounce, to welcome or endure whatever God brings out of this retreat for each of us? Certainly there will be something for each, big or little, in relation to Him or to others. Do we set any secret limits to the invasion of His grace? Are we so simple and fully given to God's purposes and service that we are truly indifferent to the means by which He calls us to fulfill our vocation, whether in wealth or poverty, success or drudgery, nice work or nasty, health or weakness, honor or contempt?

"The generous soul refuses nothing asked by God. It never says, 'I couldn't be expected to do that or put up with this. That is excessive. This is hardly wise.' It never deliberately stops short of perfect and says: 'Enough!' Its decision is not based on 'What ought I to give?' but on 'What can I give?' It brings us once again face to face with the searching three questions of Ignatius that we have considered in another retreat: 'What have I done for Christ? What am I doing? What can I do?'"