Kindness

by Frederick William Faber

The author explains that kindness has the "power of making the world happy, or at least of so greatly diminishing the amount of unhappiness in it as to make it quite a different world from what it is at present." Covers Kindness in General, Kind Thoughts, Kind Words and Kind Actions.

124 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1889

About the author

Frederick William Faber, C.O., was a noted English hymn writer and theologian, who converted from Anglicanism to the Catholic priesthood. His best known work is Faith of Our Fathers. Though he was a Roman Catholic writing for fellow Catholics at that point, many of his hymns today are sung by Protestant congregations.

Reviews

[Elisabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

First of all a thanks to Maria Therese and her blog https://catholicaudiobooks.wordpress.... which has loads of good Catholic audiobooks arranged by category. I would one hundred percent recommend looking at them. Also to the reader who read it on librivox.org, who did a really good job:-)

This is such a good book on the power of kindness!!! Every Catholic should read this.

[Robert Corzine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oratorian priest Fr. Frederick Faber was a student, friend, and fellow convert with Blessed John Henry Newman. He was the founder of The Brompton Oratory, a spiritual writer and retreat master. He is perhaps best known as a writer of hymns, most famously "Faith of Our Fathers."

This little book, Kindness, is an earnest and charming call to practice the simple virtue of Kindness. That's really it. Four short chapters (On Kindness in General, Kind Thoughts, Kind Words, and Kind Actions). It turns out to be in his hands a profound, humble, "little way" of grace. He is a wise and practical director and a winsome writer.

You will be able to begin putting this into practice immediately. Not ready to make great sacrifices or take bold stands or preach eloquently? OK, smile at someone; say a kind word. It really is a "little way." Fr. Faber even gently points out some of the dangers and pitfalls of those who want to charge the heights of the spiritual life before learning the lessons of the plains.

But neither is he dumbing down the spiritual life to "be nice." I suspect very few readers will get through the chapter on Kind Thoughts without the realization that they have a long long way to go. "Kind thoughts are rarer than either kind word or kind deeds.They imply a great deal of thinking about others. But they also imply a great deal of thinking about others without the thoughts being criticisms. This is rarer still." He is well aware that "the habit of not judging others is one which it is very difficult to acquire" and that "it is generally not acquired until late in the spiritual life." But since it is absolutely essential, what shall we do? He suggests a practical middle step between where we are and where we need to be: "as it is impossible all at once to stop judging, and as it is also impossible to go on judging uncharitably, we must pass through the intermediate stage of kind interpretations." The passage that follows is worth whatever trouble it takes you to read and internalize. But the whole chapter is only about a 20 minute read.

Fr. Faber is easy to follow and I'm pretty sure these chapters started life as conferences for retreats. So it's not a bad route to listen to the audio version as I did the first time through (there is a free librivox.org recording). However, he is also eminently quotable and it's a bit frustrating not being able to underline or copy the best bits. There's also a free text version to read or download at archive.org .

[Galicius · Rating 4 out of 5]

This work was a pleasant surprise to me in its direct approach in putting the lessons of spiritual awakening into a straightforward day to day living. This astute man put it into a simple language how to put into practice what many theologians perhaps fail to provide an easy way to an average person who wants to apply their teachings immediately. The answer is in the title of the book. It has some surprises about a life of devotion and how not to lead spiritual life.