Compassionate Presence: A Radical Response to Human Suffering

Compassion plays a central role in the teachings of all world religions. Christianity in particular demonstrates its vitality through compassionate engagement with those suffering with Christ serving as a paradigm and source of motive power. These concrete acts of mercy and solidarity disclose God's intimate regard for the welfare of humanity. The purpose of this book is to affirm compassion as the pulsating heartbeat of Christian theology and praxis through the hermeneutical perspectives of brain science, psychology, and practical theology. More importantly, it offers readers specific compassion cultivation practices that will nurture the trait of compassion as a way of incarnating God's compassionate presence and response to a world marked with suffering of all kinds. Nolasco and MacDonald remind us that compassion is the vital center of the Christian life. They not only ground compassion theologically--they explain how it works neuro-physiologically. In a world all too prone to demonizing the other, their work comes as a healing grace, an act of compassion itself. --Frank Rogers, author of Practicing Compassion, and Compassion in Practice: The Way of Jesus Rolf R. Nolasco Jr. is Professor of Counseling Psychology at Providence Theological Seminary, Calgary, Alberta. He is the author The Contemplative Counselor: A Way of Being (2011). R. Vincent MacDonald is a registered psychologist in Alberta.