Kindness

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“And the King will answer, ‘In truth, I tell you, insofar as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me’” (Matt. 25:40).

Our Lord has wanted to tell us that He is present in every person around us. He invites us to treat everyone with charity.

Kindness is another word for charity. We all have a vocation to be kind to everybody, to try and see in that other person that Christ is there, that the blood of Christ is flowing through their veins.

That includes everybody on the planet, not just the people we like or respect or look up to, but every single person even though we might hardly notice. Christ is in that person.

He says for every little detail of kindness that we practice with every person, it's as though we practice it with Christ.

We're asked to seek out in every person and to treat every person in that way. It puts a very high price and high value then on kindness.

In our prayer this morning we could ask Our Lord for the grace to grow, to be a kinder person—kind with our words, kind with our actions, because that can make a huge difference in the lives of other people.

It can make their day easier; it can lift them up; it can make them feel better. They can feel loved or feel wanted or feel appreciated, and all those things are important.

There was a story once of a man who, on his way into the factory every morning, would greet the guard at the gate with, ‘Good morning, how are you?’

When he was going home in the evening, he would say, ‘Good night, see you tomorrow’—some little few words as he passed by.

Somehow those words came to mean an awful lot to that guard. That man did that day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year.

The guard really looked forward to those few little words of greeting, because it seemed not too many people going in and out of the factory did that.

Then one evening, there was no greeting. He didn't see this man. He began to realize there must be something wrong. ‘This man hadn't come out of the factory, and I'd missed a greeting.’

He began to go and look for him. Everyone had gone home. He looked high up and low down and then he happened to look in the fridge. They had a big walk-in fridge where they stored huge amounts of meat in that particular meat factory.

This man had gone into the fridge and the door had closed behind him. It seems there was no handle on the inside of the door and so he got stuck inside this fridge in freezing temperatures.

The guard happened to check in the fridge and found the man there. He'd been there for a few hours. Everybody else had gone home.

If he'd stayed there the whole night, he would have died, frozen to death. But that guard found him because he had missed those few kind words.

The few kind words that that man had practiced with that other person, whom he could have just passed by, in the end, saved his life.

Kind words can be very valuable. We could examine ourselves and see whether in the last week or two, Have I said a few kind words to somebody?

Have I also been careful with the words that I say? Because it's not just practicing kind words, but also avoiding any harsh words that might hurt somebody.

We might hurt their feelings, we might damage their heart a little bit, and they might feel bad about the words that we say or by the tone that we say those words.

Our kindness involves being careful about all these things, trying to make sure that all the words that pass through our lips are uplifting.

Someone said once that our manners are the clothes that we wear. Manners are very important. Manners are displays of charity. Ultimately our charity, which is our love and our concern for others, is expressed through manners.

That's why manners are good things and are likable. We should try and foster them because that's the way we treat other people.

“Insofar as you did it to one of these, the least of my brothers, you did it to me.” We have to try and practice simple manners with everybody.

There’s an American educationalist who says that social life is built around a few concrete words and phrases like “please,” “thank you,” “I'm sorry, I was wrong.”

Those words have to pass our lips frequently. They make us easier to live with, easier to listen to, an easier person to be with.

They're not things we should take for granted. Sometimes we have to go out of our way to use those words “please,” “thank you,” “I'm sorry, I was wrong”—no matter who it is we're dealing with.

You might be dealing with the checkout person in a supermarket, or with people that we pass in the street that we might never meet again, but we must still say “please,” “thank you,” “I'm sorry, I was wrong”—any little words help to make life easier for other people, because Christ is in that person.

The way that we treat other people, the manners that we practice, reveal the sort of person that we are.

We might think that ‘I'm a very lovable person, I'm very easy to live with or to work with or to be with.’ But it's very good if we get more objective advice.

If you were to go home and ask your Mum some time: Mum, was I always lovable? She might say, Sit down for an hour and I'll tell you about it.

We have all been unlovable, completely, totally, outrageously unlovable. But yet our mothers have loved us in spite of everything.

And God has loved us in spite of everything, in spite of our sins, because “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16).

That very simple phrase that we find in Scripture, that lights up the whole of our life, “God is love,” reminds us we are called to be like God, to manifest love, to communicate love—not just a superficial love, but a love that other people around us can feel, can appreciate, can identify with.

Strong people are kind. They go the extra mile. They are thinking about that other person around me: ‘How can I help them? What can I do for them? What can I contribute?

There's a book that's available there in Books First, and some of these other stores, written by a man who founded the science of management.

The book is called “The Effective Executive.” It's all about being effective. We all need to try and be more effective where we live, where we work.

He asked the question: What makes people effective? He says people who are effective ask themselves the right questions.

The right question is not just, ‘What can I do in this situation?’ It's more than that: ‘What can I contribute? What can I give?’

Effective people don't just do good things; they do the right thing (cf. Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive).

They do the right things because they come up with the right answers—because they ask the right questions.

What can I contribute in this particular department, in this particular task that's in front of me, with this particular team that I'm working with, in this particular floor that I may be cleaning, or table that I may be laying, or class that I may be in? What can I contribute? What can I give that maybe nobody else can give?

If we can find that thing and contribute it, that makes us effective. One thing that always makes us effective, being a team player, working with other people, is making ourselves more pleasant to be with.

We do that through kindness or thoughtfulness. “Charity is patient; charity is kind” (1 Cor. 13:4).

Thoughtfulness in going the extra mile: Can I give the person I work with a little bit of a hand in this particular job? Or if I finish my work, will I go and try and give them a hand in doing their job?

The strong reach out; they connect with others. They unite, they uplift, they improve the world. They ennoble the lives of other people because they imitate God.

They put love into practice. It's not just a nebulous thing in the clouds, it's a concrete reality.

We have to try and look for ways to practice courtesy every day. There are as many ways of practicing courtesy as there are moments in the day—to say “please” and “thank you” and "I'm sorry, it was wrong.”

Every encounter with other people is an opportunity for courtesy: to let them go in front of us, to hold a door for somebody, to help them carry a tray, to help them carry some heavy thing up the stairs, all sorts of little moments.

These opportunities are in the little moments of every day. Whenever somebody treats you kindly, try to show your appreciation. Express your gratitude. Offer your thanks.

“Kindness is the oil that takes the friction out of life.”

When we're living together with other people, in a family, in a school, in any place, the fact that there are a lot of people, there are other people, there's always a little bit of friction.

Kindness is the oil that takes that friction; it makes everything smoother.

Somebody once said that we make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give (attributed to Winston Churchill).

Again, what contribution can I make? When we come to a get-together, it's good to think: What can I say? Or what story can I tell?

If I'm working with somebody, can I tell them some little amusing thing that happened to me? Can I sing them a song? Or maybe if my voice is not everything that I think it is, maybe I shouldn't sing them a song. Or whatever it may be.

You find the right buttons to press. When you press the right button on the machine, the machine works.

Our living together with other people has led us to press the right buttons in their lives. What do they like to talk about? What are they interested in?

How well do you know the people that you live with so that you ask them the right questions? What do they not like to talk about so that we don't bring up those topics?

“Everyone we meet is fighting a hard battle” (Ian Maclaren, The British Weekly). Everyone in the world has some sort of cross that they're carrying, some concern, some anxiety, some worry. They have this exam, they have this sick relative, they have this pain in their little toe, they didn't sleep well last night.

All sorts of little things. Everybody around us is carrying a cross, and so they need our kindness, our gentleness, our concern, our going out of our way, which ultimately means that we forget about ourselves.

The greatest problem in our spiritual life is our selfishness. We all love ourselves too much. We don't think of ourselves as being selfish, but that's the reality.

For us to be kind to other people, it means we forget all about ourselves and we give ourselves to others.

We come to the tabernacle every day to learn all of this from Our Lord Jesus Christ, who has given Himself for us and for everybody. He's our greatest friend. He shed His blood for us, sacrificed Himself—love is sacrifice.

He knows all our faults, and He loves us anyway. Loving people and being kind to them is loving them when they seem unlovable.

With all our sins, we could be unlovable to God. He could have abandoned us years ago, but He still loves us and reaches out to us.

He teaches us that we have to try and do the same with others—people who might hurt us, who might have squealed on us, who might have done something bad with their words or with their actions.

But we still try and love them because we have a commandment to love everybody: “Insofar as you did this to one of these, the least of my brothers, you did it to me.”

“The least of my brothers.” Try to look out for that person in your life who perhaps is the least.

If you're in your second year of college, or third year, or whatever it may be, you're about to finish and somebody's just starting off. Maybe they're in a strange place and they don't know anybody. They've come from a faraway place. So try to look out for that person who might be a little bit lost in your environment.

Those few, gentle, kind words you say to them can mean the world. This person reached out to me, they looked for me, they remembered my name. They realized that I am an orphan, that I don’t have a mother and a father or a sister or brother to look after me, and they looked out for me.

These are little things you can do for other people that they remember for the rest of their lives.

Like some little kid that's maybe twenty years younger than us or maybe they're in Standard Four or they're in Form Three, but we are already twenty-two. For somebody who’s eight or fifteen, someone who is twenty-two is ‘Oh, they’re so big, they're so mature, they're so adult.’

If we turn and say hi to that person or remember their name, we make their day and their year and their life—that older person, that adult, has taken the time to say hi to me.

Sometimes we might think that our words aren't really worth anything, but to a younger person, they can mean the world.

This is the sort of kindness that God wants us to have. We have to try and bring sunshine into the lives of others.

If we bring a bit of sunshine into the lives of others, that also lights up our own lives. We become that sunshine for people. That's what God wants us to be, to bring that bit of sunshine into other people's lives.

Our Lord says, “Always treat others as you would like them to treat you. That is the Law and the Prophets” (Matt. 7:12).

It's very positive. Treat others as you would like them to treat you. Do unto others. Charity and kindness is doing unto others. It's not a negative command.

Our Lord does not say, “Don't do unto others what you would not like them to do to you.” It's not a negative thing. It's doing unto others.

Think: if I would like somebody some time in my work to give me a hand, or to ask how I am or how I slept last night, then, you try and be that person—the one who says those things to other people.

Don’t do things to others that you would not like them to do to you.

If you're planning a practical joke on somebody, or to tell them something a bit funny, but suddenly you realize, you wouldn't like anyone to say that to me, or to practice that joke on me, then think twice.

Seneca, an old Latin scholar and writer back in the early centuries says, “Scatter the dark clouds of gloom and spread sunshine with your smile. Remember, a smile is a curved line that can straighten many problems.”

Sometimes the greatest charity we practice with others is a smile. The kindness of a smile can lift them up, and everybody needs a bit of lifting on a Monday morning, or before an exam, or something else that may be coming their way.

An 82-year-old lady once said that she was in pain. She said, ‘I may be in pain, but I don't have to be one.’ She was more concerned about others than about her pain. Forget yourself.

If ever we're a bit rude or a bit curt or short with somebody and we realize it later on, it's good to go and apologize.

Sometimes movies or other places can give us the impression that rudeness or restlessness is cool. The person on the receiving end may not find it cool.

We should try and be gentle and be kind. If you see that somebody else around you has done something nice, or done a good job, or the work they've done has turned out well, try and recognize their achievements: ‘Hey, that was very nice.’

Or if you're playing volleyball and somebody hits a good shot, say, ‘Oh, well done, that was great.’

Likewise, if they miss the shot or they make the most terrible mistake, we don't have to launch out at them and scream at them all sorts of insulting words, because we know that we all miss shots from time to time.

Michael Jordan, one of the greatest basketball players that ever lived, talked about how he had missed, the final shot in a game where he could have won, something like twenty-six times.

He had won many games and slammed dunks and done a whole pile of wonderful things, but he'd also missed many, many times.

When people make a mistake or they foul up in some way, try and have a kind word in those moments, because everybody feels bad in that moment. We're not there to make them feel worse.

If someone expresses an opinion and we think it's the most stupid opinion that we ever heard in our whole life, we don't have to tell them. We could keep it to ourselves.

We might disagree vehemently with them, but we can always do those things nicely.

Kindness means being a good friend to people. Express your manners with your emotions.

St. Basil in the third century said charity, courtesy, and manners didn't just arrive with the last shower of rain. It had been around for the whole of eternity, ever since human persons existed. He says, “He who shows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love.”

One of the great things we have to try and learn more of in this period of our life is precisely how to practice charity.

We go to college to grow in our knowledge. But it's in homes that we learn virtue.

That's one of the main messages of the formation that we try to receive in this particular residence: learn how to be a better person, which is far more important than the knowledge that we might acquire.

We could have all the knowledge in the world, but we could be the most ill-mannered person that ever existed.

Somebody in the States recently said that third-level institutions in the world today tend to be very good at producing technically skilled barbarians (cf. Steven Muller, former president of Johns Hopkins University, Feature Story, U.S. News and World Report, November 10, 1980).

You see, we could be the most technically skilled person. We could win all the cookery contests that ever existed. We could be the greatest home manager that ever lived. We could win prizes all over the place.

But we could still be barbaric. We don't know how to live well with other people.

We have to try and treat others always with respect—and not just our friends and colleagues, or people at our same level and people much younger than us—but also, maybe, our teachers and other people who are there to teach us things.

Sometimes it might not feel like treating teachers with respect, but we should treat everybody because they're human beings, because God has created them and they're human beings. They deserve our respect.

Sometimes people treat royalty or celebrities or movie stars with respect. But we don't hear about people treating beggars or the homeless or ex-convicts with respect. But you see, that's a mark of greatness.

We realize that this Standard One little girl who's coming in the door to go to a class is a bit lost, or she's crying, or she's lost her pencil, or something. We try and stop and solve this little crisis that this other person may have, treating them with respect.

Everybody needs respect. It's only by treating them with respect that we help people to become greater. We lift them up.

Acting kindly towards people means also that we don't expect anything in return. I don't give you this smile or this kindness because I want your smile back or, I want to borrow ten shillings from you. Or, when the moment comes, I want my fair share.

“We give and not count the cost. We fight and don't heal the wounds” (St. Ignatius of Loyola, Prayer). We don't give unto others because of what they can give to us.

If somebody sometimes has an abundance of money or clothes or something, we're not going to go out of our way and be kind to them because we hope that they'll shower us in some way someday with what they have.

If we act on the expectation of some reward, then that cancels out our kindness. It's not real kindness. It's selfishness because I'm out to get what I can get from this particular person or situation.

We should try and respond to rudeness with kindness. There's no better test of good manners than to be polite to those people who are not polite.

We become kind by being kind. We give good examples of those moments.

If every action that we do is a kind one, then the whole world will rejoice. We lift up the world. We lift up society. We lift up all sorts of things.

When Our Lady heard that she was to be the Mother of God and she was told about her cousin Elizabeth, immediately Our Lady began to think about Elizabeth. ‘What does Elizabeth need? How can I help Elizabeth? How can I be kind to her?’

From thinking about Elizabeth, she came to the conclusion: ‘I should go and visit her, go into the hill country, make this journey, forget about Joseph, I'll solve his problem later.’

She gave herself to that moment. We're told she stayed with her for three months, not three minutes, three seconds or she didn't just breeze into Elizabeth's house and say, ‘Hi Liz, How are things? Bye.’

It wasn't a passing relationship. She stayed there a long time to make a serious contribution (cf. Luke 1:39-56).

We could ask Our Lady that in all the moments and situations of our life, we also might know how to express that same kindness, which is love, to all the people that God places in our path.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

DWM