THE HEALING COMFORT

 Meditation for Monday of the 10^th Week in Ordinary Time
(2 Cor 1:1-7; Mt 5:1-12)

It is popularly said that you cannot give what you do not have. We need to receive in order to give out to others. This is the message St Paul emphasized at the beginning of his letter to the Corinthians. Interestingly, he talks about COMFORT as what we need to receive and give out to others.

Who needs comfort? It is the suffering and afflicted. If we are to comfort others, we need to receive comfort first. And for us to receive it, we must be in need of it, which is suffering and affliction. Should we then create affliction in order to be comforted? He answers, no! “For as we share abundantly in Christ’ suffering, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.” So the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, through our SHARING IN THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST, comforts us in all our afflictions, “That we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”

By meditating on and embracing the sufferings of Christ, St Paul says we learn how to patiently endure in suffering. This transforms our human suffering into a means of our participation in the sufferings of Christ, which brings us divine comfort. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

In the spirit of the beatitudes, the comfort we receive is what we must give out to others, building up their hope in Christ Jesus. In others words, the only comfort we have is the one we received and have given away! There are so many lonely and wounded hearts around us today; fear and uncertainty have build nests in many people. Let us go forward, marked with the sufferings of Christ, to bring His divine comfort to those around us. Amen.

Fr Jude Chinwenwa Nwachukwu, C.Ss.R
Saints Peter & Paul Catholic Church,
Tedi-Muwo, Ojo, Lagos.
Monday June 7^th, 2021.
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