Phenomenology of Prayer II

"Empathy is a feeling (a suffering or undergoing) of the world in and through another person. . .We allow the other, at least as long as empathy lasts, to incarnate himself in us" (Benson, 68-69). This excerpt really caught my attention while reading through the 4th chapter. It took a common everyday concept and connected it to the spiritual ideas of kenosis and incarnation. In the spiritual sense, it consists of the kenosis of both you and the other and the incarnation of the other in  you until the empathy fades. Before reading the segment, Empathy and Incarnation, I viewed empathy as merely feeling and understanding what the other was feeling at a particular time. After reading, my view of empathy changed and I realized that it is something much more than what I had originally thought and this excerpt also helped me to better understand empathy and its connection to incarnation.