The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: the Second Epistle to the Corinthians
Be not ashamed then, O Bishop, or prior, or doctor, or pastor, to imitate these men — to visit the poor after their example, to enter hospitals and prisons, to hear the confessions of peasants, to give counsel to the unhappy, to instruct the simple and ignorant, to be made all things to all men, to zealously seek the salvation of all. In these works do not shrink from toil, fatigue, and sorrow, even unto death ; in this cause be pleased and delighted to suffer scoffs and even blows. So Christ did and suffered, so did S. Paul, so did the Apostles in general. In this consisted their virtue, holiness, and apostleship. In that last day of the world, when the Chief Shepherd and great Doctor shall sit as Judge, to examine the deeds of each one and to pass on each one sentence of an eternity of bliss or an eternity of woe, He will not ask you how many benefices, what wealth, or servants, or knowledge you had, but how you used them — how many by them you converted, how many poor you fed or gave drink to, how many you visited in prison, how far you spread His Gospel and extended His glory, what labours, dangers, ridicule, and persecutions you bore for Him ; what hunger, and thirst, and weariness. These things God has done ; and, while we have time, let us think on these things, let us do these things, that we may stir up in ourselves and in all men the spirit of the primitive Church and of the Apostles, that we may follow Christ our Leader, and the Apostles His princes, and so by our zeal and burning charity, set on fire a world now growing old and stiffening with cold. Then shall we in due time hear with the Apostles : “Verily I say unto you, that ye who have followed Me, in the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of His glory, then shall ye also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”
Listen to what S. Chrysostom has to say of these sufferings and victories, and the courage of S. Paul (Horn. 25, 26): “Paul, as a champion athlete , against the world contends in every kind of contest, and conquers in all. This was his apostolic character, and by these contests he spread the Gospel. Just as a flame of inextinguishable fire, if it falls into the ocean and is swallowed by the waves, emerges again as bright as ever — so too S. Paul, though pressed on all sides , was not oppressed; not knowing how to yield. Suffering but left him the more glorious victor and martyr a thousand times.”
S. Chrysostom (Horn. 2) says again : “ Paul, through the abundance of his devotion , somehow did not feel the sufferings that he underwent in the cause of virtue ; nay, he thought virtue itself its own reward. Daily , he rose higher and more ardent; in every attack he rejoiced and gained the victory ; when suffering under blows and injuries he counted it triumph. He sought death before life , poverty before riches ; he longed for toil more than others’ rest ; he counted cities, nations, provinces , and power as of as little account as the sand. He regarded nothing bitter and nothing sweet, as men commonly regard things . He looked on tyrants as moths ; on death, tortures, a thousand sufferings as mere child’s play, provided that he might endure something for Christ. He was as adamant, nay, harder and stronger than adamant. Like a bird he flew over the whole world to teach it, and, as though hampered by no body, he despised all sufferings and dangers . So thoroughly did he despise all earthly things that heaven might seem already his.”
Ver. 28. — Beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily . The weight of business that daily presses upon me. The Greek word here used denotes, says Budaeus, to collect a band, to call together a meeting, as, e.g., when the mob assembles and makes an attack on the aristocracy and the magistrates. So the Apostle here uses the word to denote those manifold cares which, as it were, formed a band and rushed upon him from every side, and almost overwhelmed him, and this not once only but continuously. Chrysostom, Theophylact, and Ephrem understand it to mean that factious conspiracies, seditions, tumults, popular outbreaks, and plots were being always set in motion against him. This is, indeed, the literal meaning of the Greek; but S. Paul has already mentioned those troubles in ver. 26. The former meaning is, therefore, the better. The next clause, “ the care of all the churches,” is explanatory of this. Anselm and Theophylact say beautifully: " Everywhere Paul teaches, but he also suffers greatly . He endures his own sufferings, and at the same time bears the sufferings of others . He bears the infirmities of individuals, and at the same time is anxious about the salvation of all.”
S. Chrysostom here (Horn. 18) teaches us beautifully, by his example , that nothing is sweeter than this anxiety, thought, labour, and grief of a good pastor for the Church. “ A mother too,” he says, “ in the midst of deep grief for her child has pleasure ; in the midst of anxiety she has joy . Though her anxiety be a source of bitterness, yet her devotion gives her great happiness.” Let great men, and those that are ministers of Christ, desire to be ever in motion as the heart is, or like the heavens, and, as Suetonius says of Vespasian, to die standing. Pacatus says, in his Panegyric of Theodosius: “ Divine things delight in continual motion, and at the same time eternity feeds itself on movement, and your nature delights too in what we men call labour . As the heavens revolve with unfailing rotation , and the waves of the sea are ever in motion , and the sun never stands still, so are you , O Emperor , always engaged in matters of business that seem to return in a regular cycle.”
Ver. 29. — Who is weak and I am not weak? Who is weak, or grieves, or is afflicted, and I am not with him weak, grieved, or afflicted ? Who is offended and I am not on fire, both with grief, because the evil that my neighbour suffers when he is scandalised is mine, and with zeal also, to remedy his trouble and remove the cause of offence ?
S. Gregory (Hom. 12 in Ezek. iv. 3), on the words, “Take thou unto thee an iron pan,” thinks that by the pan is meant the mind of Ezekiel, who, on seeing the overthrow of Jerusalem, was, as it were, roasted in a pan with compassion. Of this God puts him in mind to place a pan between himself and the city. Such, too, was S. Paul when he said : “ Who is offended and I bum not ? ” “ Paul had set on fire his heart,” says S. Gregory, “ with zeal for souls , and so had made it a pan in which, from love of virtue, he flamed against vice.”
Ver. 30. — Of the things which concern mine infirmities . I will glory of the afflictions, blows, persecutions, and sufferings that I have borne for Christ. Through them I seem weak, i.e., despicable, mean, and worthless (Chrysostom). Observe that Paul glories not in his miracles but his infirmities, because in them there shines forth the effectual power of God’s grace, and also because in these he surpassed the false apostles, and thirdly, because they are the tokens of real virtue and of an Apostle.
Ver. 32. — The governor under Aretas the king. This satrap of King Aretas was, says Theophylact, the father-in-law of Herod. Josephus says that Herod Antipas, who put to death John the Baptist, married the daughter of Aretas.
Ver. 33. — And through a window in a basket was I let down. This escape of S. Paul from Damascus happened in the year 39 (Acts ix. 25), when, as Josephus says, Aretas, King of Arabia and of the country near Damascus, waged war against Herod, because Herod had repudiated his wife, the daughter of Aretas, for the purpose of marrying Herodias. In this war Herod was worsted, and slain by Aretas. This brought on Aretas the vengeance of Tiberius Caesar, who sent Vitellius, governor of Syria, to take or slay Aretas (Josephus, Ant lib. x. c. 7). Using the opportunity, the Jews, enraged with S. Paul, seem to have accused him before the prefect of Aretas of disturbing the people under a pretext of preaching the Gospel, and so drawing them away from heathenism, and consequently from Aretas. They wished to show that this would end in his betraying Damascus to the Jews and to Vitellius. Hence the prefect sought to take Paul, but he, being warned, escaped by being let down by the wall in a basket. Cf. Baronius (Annals, vol. i. p. 304).