Faith

The parable of the Good Samaritan is depicted in a stained-glass window at Good Samaritan Hospital Medical Center in West Islip, N.Y., on World Day of the Sick, Feb. 11, 2021. CNS photo/Gregory A. Shemitz

On Ordinary Times

Wednesday, February 18, 2026Faith

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All people of good will should be moved when they see their sisters and brothers in acute pain or in the despair that pain can bring.

Lucia A.
Silecchia

Two days in early February, one beautiful and one tragic, forced me to think deeply on the meaning and nature of compassion.

First, the beautiful. Feb. 11, the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, was also the 34th World Day of the Sick. For the occasion, Pope Leo XIV issued a message focusing on compassion.

He spoke of compassion as "loving by bearing another's pain." Using the Good Samaritan as a model of compassion toward the suffering, Pope Leo urged us to be moved by the pain of others and to act as we can to offer love, care, and comfort. Specifically, he reflected that compassion "implies a profound emotion that compels us to act ... and leads to a committed response to another's suffering. ... [C]ompassion is the defining characteristic of active love."

In a particular way, Pope Leo praised the Samaritan -- forever remembered as "good" -- for doing three things. First, the Samaritan did not stay a safe distance away but "drew near," approaching the suffering victim wounded by his injuries. Second, he "tended the wounds," providing active, physically messy, and necessary attempts at healing. Finally, he "took charge and provided care," for his vulnerable neighbor who was unable to handle these things for himself. The Good Samaritan offered the financial means to arrange continued care and enlisted the help of others in providing that treatment.

In this explication of true compassion, Pope Leo called us to the profound, deep love that should impel us not merely to feel sorry for those who suffer, but to enter into that suffering, to offer the healing and solace that we can, and to remain close to those who suffer in their hours of need.

In contrast to this beautiful vision, however, Pope Leo also lamented the reality that today, all too often, our culture is "a culture of speed, immediacy and haste -- a culture of 'discard' and indifference." This "culture of discard" was, sadly, on display merely five days earlier. On Feb. 6, the governor of my home state signed into law the legislation that added New York to the list of 14 jurisdictions in the United States to allow assisted suicide. This statute will now allow medical professionals to prescribe poison to hasten the death of those who suffer. New York is, sadly, the latest in a growing list of states to do so, in opposition to both the ancient Hippocratic oath ("I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked.") and the modern American Medical Association ("Physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician's role as healer.").

In the political statements made at the signing of this law, and in "celebrations" surrounding the legislation, the word that kept resurfacing was "compassion." The bill was sold as necessary to provide solace to those who suffer as a loving act of "compassion." Indeed, I surrendered my membership in the New York Bar Association when its leaders urged me to support the bill as a way to advance "compassion." Yet, the way in which it would end suffering is by hastening the death of those who suffer.

All people of good will should be moved when they see their sisters and brothers in acute pain or in the despair that pain can bring. Like so many, I have walked with loved ones to the end of their lives and I know first-hand the deep pain that season of life holds for all it touches. I also know the agonizing decisions that accompany the natural end of life.

Yet, the most reliable studies show that it is not physical pain or financial worries that people cite most often as the reason they opt for assisted suicide. Rather, data from multiple states indicates that patients' top concerns are loss of autonomy, inability to engage in activities that make life enjoyable, and loss of dignity. These are precisely the real fears and heavy crosses that cry out for the "compassionate closeness" Pope Leo called for and that only true love can provide.

These two days -- Feb. 6 and Feb. 11 -- offer two opposed views of what compassion means. The one now legally enshrined in far too many places tells the most vulnerable that their lives have less value. The other is a challenging call to suffer with those who suffer, to understand that autonomy is not what defines our humanity, and to know that dignity is neither fleeting nor lost when limitations come.

As the years go by, they bring us all closer to the final chapter of our lives on earth. Those final pages are not ours to write. I hope that we all find ourselves surrounded by those family, friends and physicians who know the holy compassion of the Good Samaritan. Until then, I also hope we may be inspired to show that holy compassion to others at the end of their ordinary times.

- Lucia A. Silecchia is Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Faculty Research at the Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law.