Monday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

 Lectionary: 359

If we are afflicted,
it is for your encouragement and salvation;
if we are encouraged,
it is for your encouragement,
which enables you to endure the same sufferings that we suffer...

After hearing the Lord's complaint. "Why do you persecute me?" Saint Paul could write, "If any part of Christ's Body the Church is afflicted, all are afflicted; if any part is honored, all are honored. 

And when he was afflicted, it was for the benefit of the church; as were the consolations that came to him. 

The individual member still exists, with their personality, character defects, and particular genius still intact; but belonging to Christ they belong heart, soul, mind, and strength to the Church. In the dead of night or in the loneliness of travel from one city to another, Paul knew that the privations he suffered and the sacrifices he made benefited the congregation he'd just left and the assembly he would found. 

For as Christ's sufferings overflow to us,
so through Christ does our encouragement also overflow.

Many centuries before, Isaiah the Prophet had announced the blessing of suffering as he announced the consolation of its end. 

Comfort, give comfort to my people,
says your God.
Speak to the heart of Jerusalem, and proclaim to her
that her service has ended,
that her guilt is expiated,
That she has received from the hand of the LORD
double for all her sins.

The punishment had been harsh; there was no doubt about that. But the sin had been dreadful. Their alliances with idolatrous nations, their political and economic corruption, neglect of the poor, waste of resources: these might have annulled the covenant had God permitted it. But now Jerusalem's guilt was expiated because she had received double for all her sins. 

Even when the prophet protested that the people had not changed, that their loyalty was like the flower of the field. ("The grass withers, the flower wilts, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it") the time had come for mercy and God would show mercy. 

Saint Paul saw that the Lord Jesus had taken upon himself all our guilt; he had nailed it to the cross. And through his Resurrected Body he gave his members healing, comfort, strength, and courage. Saint Paul through many trials of sickness, imprisonment, beatings, and shipwreck found the irrepressible Spirit of the Lord. It would not surrender to anyone's mistreatment. That Spirit must also be shared with the Corinthians and with us. 

Our salvation is neither an idea nor an ideal. It's as real as arthritis. We feel it within our bodies as we make our sacrifices of time, talent, and treasure with and for one another. It's as generous as Saint Paul's paean of praise: 

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

the Father of compassion and the God of all encouragement...