Main news for 19 October 2016

The apostle's words about consolation in sufferings may at first glance seem strange: after all, only a masochist can rejoice in sufferings. Of course, history, and not only Christian history, knows many examples of people who, faithful to their idea, remained faithful to it despite all persecutions and trials, and were proud that they did not betray their principles no matter what.

But if there is joy here, it is certainly not from the sufferings themselves and most often not during the suffering, but when everything is already behind them and one can, summing up, state one's own steadfastness in trials for faith or for an idea. The apostle, judging by his words, speaks of something else: of consolation precisely at the moment of suffering, consolation that is greater the stronger the suffering is. To explain this from the point of view of the laws of the untransformed world is impossible. But from the point of view of the Kingdom and its life, everything falls into place. Of course, suffering remains suffering, and in itself it naturally brings no joy. But suffering is part of the untransformed world that lies in evil. It itself is a manifestation of this evil, and in the Kingdom there is no place for it.

And the apostle is speaking not simply of sufferings, but of persecutions for Christ, for witness to the Kingdom. Such witness is possible only insofar as the witness himself has shared in the life of that very Kingdom to which he bears witness. And he is persecuted precisely because in the untransformed world he dares to live according to the laws of the Kingdom and to call others to the same. It is not surprising that the deeper the witness's rootedness in the life of the Kingdom proves to be, the more strongly the world rejects him, the more intense the persecutions and the greater the sufferings.

But the life of the Kingdom is experienced all the more deeply and really, the more deeply the witness is rooted in it. This life of the Kingdom is what he experiences as consolation. In fact, Christian confession, just like martyrdom, only outwardly resembles those sufferings and persecutions for an idea of which the history of the untransformed world knows many.

A martyr for an idea suffers or even gives his own life only in exchange for confidence in his own rightness and for the right to consider himself the uncompromising expresser and bearer of his idea. Of course, sometimes even this is enough, for some ideas and principles are not far from the Kingdom.

But a Christian confessor suffers, and a martyr gives his earthly life, not for the idea of the Kingdom, but for that fullness of the life of the Kingdom which he will lose if he tries, at the price of compromise, and in fact of renouncing the Kingdom, to preserve its miserable earthly likeness. And Paul, as can be seen, bears witness to this, as a modern philosopher might say, existential dialectic, on the basis of his own experience as a Christian witness, confessor, and martyr.