Compassion, where it is truest, noblest, most beautiful, most loving, is in God himself. There we find the example, the model, the inspiration.
One day I discovered in the Bible the word “mercy,” the mercy of God. I learned that God is love, and if God is love, then God is compassion—the two terms are interchangeable.
There is no finer way of showing compassion than to give yourself to others, and at the heart of that giving there will always be acceptance of the other. The compassion which we show to other people has to be modeled on and inspired by the compassion which God first shows to us. Indeed, the truth is deeper. We become the vehicles, the instruments of God’s compassion. Every time we open ourselves to the needs of others, he uses us to show them the meaning of love. That is at the heart of everything; that is the Good News that we have to spread. God, who is love, has compassion, and orders us to love our neighbors as ourselves.
In practice, we have to learn to be compassionate when we are young. It starts in the home. That is where we learn to be compassionate: to be concerned for those who are aging, sick, handicapped, poor, marginal. They are not “over there,” but next door or in our own home. We have to show compassion there, too. It starts in the home.

Cardinal Basil Hume, adapted from A Turning to God