The Book of Margery Kempe Compassion and Forgiveness Quotes

Kempe is nearly driven to despair because of an insensitive priest. In this delicate post-partum moment, she loses her will to unburden her soul, which would have helped her heal. It's important that she begins her narrative with this episode, as though it is meant to instruct priests to be more compassionate and encourage women to persevere.

Just before arriving in the Holy Land, Kempe settles the score with her treacherous companions. And though they've been most un-Christian in their behavior to her, she's schooling them on how to do things right. The word "charity" here isn't what you think; it's not about giving a handout to those less fortunate. This charity is caritas: the love each human being is supposed to have for others because each person is supposed to be made in God's image.

When she is in Jerusalem, Kempe's affective piety reaches new heights. She's so affected by the suffering of Christ that she suffers emotional meltdown in many places and learns to "cry"—which really means scream, wail, shriek, screech, you name it. It's a new affliction that's meant to show her increasing understanding of Christ's sacrifice.

Kempe is in Italy when this happens—and it's something you would never see in England. It's clear that the Italians have a better understanding of Kempe's sensibilities than the English do, and they often show her a level of acceptance and compassion that she will never have in her home country.

Despite the poor treatment she suffers at the hands of most other human beings, Kempe is very concerned for the state of their souls. She speaks with Jesus more than once about her sorrow for other souls' damnation, and she even gets into quite an ugly spat with him about it. Her tears are purely tears of compassion for others, since Jesus assures her more than once that she is favored and that all her sins are always forgiven.

Kempe cannot believe that Jesus, who she sees as all merciful, would ever condemn any soul to hell. She thinks of his actions in this matter as a kind of vengeance, but Christ assures her later that this is not so (it's a matter of justice, he says). However, Kempe dedicates much of her praying time to ask for the salvation of others—even those who hate her.

Kempe's not interested in payback, no matter how bad things get. Her goal is the salvation of the world, not just her own personal spiritual happiness. That's quite extraordinary, really, given her experiences in the real world. In this, she's living out her understanding of Christ's sacrifice and is willing to suffer shame in exchange for spiritual merit.

Kempe enters imaginatively into the Passion and death of Christ on more than one occasion. In this case, she suffers dramatically not simply because of Christ's suffering, but also because of his mother Mary's tears and isolation. Her compassionate response to the mother of Christ is perhaps a personal identification as parent (she does have fourteen children, even if she really never mentions them).

Kempe apparently spends a lot of time and tears on the souls of the lecherous—those would be people who have a problem controlling sexual desires. It's possible that Kempe herself suffered from this same sin before her conversion (maybe this is even the nature of the sin that she couldn't confess on the first page of her narrative), so she might have a personal link to those who still struggle with this problem.

Kempe takes to task a group of people in London who repeat a slanderous "proverb" that was written about her. The group doesn't realize that it's about her, but Kempe schools them, and they are mortified. Kempe has no concern for her own discomfort in this situation; she just wants these people to learn to be better people and not take joy in speaking ill of others.