Homily, 6-12-23; Monday of the 10th Week in Ordinary Time:
Encourage; we hear the word encourage or encouragement ten times in our short reading from St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. With this repetitiveness, I find the passage a little bit confusing, especially with our understanding of the word encourage. In the Latin text the word translated as encourage is consolationis (cōnsōlātiōnis), which Google translates as comfort. I looked into different translations of this passage and found that some use the word consolation, but most use the word comfort instead of encourage.
For me, the passage makes more sense when I think of the concept of comfort rather than encouragement. Let me read the passage substituting comfort and see how it works for you.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in our every affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as Christ’s sufferings overflow to us, so through Christ does our comfort also overflow. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which enables you to endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is firm, for we know that as you share in the sufferings, you also share in the comfort.”
Comfort also fits better with the Beatitudes that we heard in our gospel passage. We heard: “Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
St. Paul and Jesus both tell us that we will have sufferings and afflictions as we pick up our crosses and follow Jesus. But God will bless us by comforting us, so that we will be able to endure those sufferings. We who are comforted are then called to comfort others who are suffering to build up the Body of Christ. We pray not only for ourselves, but also for the whole Church. We pray as the Communion of Saints. We pray for all the members of the Church Militant here on earth, including all her leaders. We pray for comfort for the souls in Purgatory, the Church Suffering. And we ask the saints in Heaven, the Church Triumphant, to pray for our comfort and encouragement so that we may endure our earthly afflictions.