I Rejoice Exceedingly In
All My Tribulations
Again Paul turns to speak of love,
softening the harshness of his rebuke. For after convicting and reproaching
them for not loving him as he had loved them, breaking away from his love and
attaching themselves to troublemakers, he again takes the edge off the reproach
by saying: Open your hearts to
us, that is, love us. He asks for a favour which will be no
burden to them but will be more profitable to the giver than to the receiver.
And he did not use the word “love” but said, more appealingly: Open your hearts to us.
Who, he said, has cast us out of your
minds, thrust us from your hearts? How is it that you feel constraint with us?
For, since he has said earlier: You
are restricted in your own affection, he
now declares himself more openly and says: Open
your heart to us, thus once
more drawing them to him. For nothing so much wins love as the knowledge that
one’s lover desires most of all to be himself loved.
For I said before, he tells them, that you are in our hearts to die
together or live together. This
is love at its height, that even though in disfavour, he wishes both to die and
to live with them. For you are in our hearts, not just somehow or other, but in
the way I have said. It is possible to love and yet to draw back when danger
threatens; but my love is not like that.
I am filled with consolation. What consolation? That which comes from
you because you, being changed for the better, have consoled me by what you
have done. It is natural for a lover both to complain that he is not loved in
return and to fear that he may cause distress by complaining too much.
Therefore, he says: I am
filled with consolation, I rejoice exceedingly.
It is as if he said, I was much grieved on
your account, but you have made it up for me in full measure and given me
comfort; for you have not only removed the cause for any grief but filled me
with a richer joy.
Then he shows the greatness of that joy by
saying not only I rejoice
exceedingly but also the
words which follow: in all my
tribulations. So great, he
says, was the delight that you gave me that it was not even dimmed by so much
tribulation, but overcame by its strength and keenness all those sorrows which
had invaded my heart, and took away from me all awareness of them.
Source: The Liturgy of the Hours – Office of Readings
From a Homily on the 2nd
letter to the Corinthians
Photo taken from Wikimedia Commons
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