Vicariousness
True vicariousness is sacrificing one's own comfort for another's greater need.
Charles Wagner, in “The Gospel of Life,” gives this interesting incident:
Something happened last winter, in Paris, that I shall place side by side with the mite of the gospel. You will remark the profound analogy, the close spiritual kinship of these two cases.
In the north wind of December a shelter was raised where warm soup was given to the unfortunate. A very old woman, who had long waited her turn, at length sat down and was served. Before she touched her portion, she noticed that a young, robust working man beside her had already consumed his with an avidity that betrayed that he was famished. At once she pushed her plate toward the workman and said to him: “I am not hungry, will you eat this?” The workman accepted. But some one had noticed all that had passed. As they went out, he took the old woman aside and said to her: “You were not hungry then?” “Oh, yes,” she answered, blushing, “but I am old and can bear it, and that poor young man was more in need of it than I.”