For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, works for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;
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Ambrosiaster
AD 400
Paul is saying that our present afflictions are light because they are happening within time and space. In return for this light tribulation, we shall gain a degree of glory beyond measure. Commentary on Paul’s Epistles.
The human patience which is good, praiseworthy and deserving the name of virtue is said to be that by which we endure evils with equanimity so as not to abandon, through a lack of equanimity, the good through which we arrive at the better. By their unwillingness to suffer evil, the impatient do not effect their deliverance from it; instead, they bring upon themselves the suffering of more grievous ills. But the patient, who prefer to bear wrongs without committing them rather than to commit them by not enduring them, both lessen what they suffer in patience and escape worse things by which, through impatience, they would be submerged. In yielding to evils that are brief and passing, they do not destroy the good which is great and eternal, for “the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared,” the apostle says, “with the glory to come that will be revealed in us.” And he also says: “Our present light affliction, which is for the moment, prepares for us an eternal weight...
For our light affliction, which is but for a moment. All our tribulation is light and short-lived when compared with the exceeding weight of eternal glory, and is to it as a single feather is to all the lead in the universe.
S. Augustine (Enarr. in Psalm 70), when explaining the words of Christ, "For My yoke is easy, and My burden light," says beautifully: "The one burden is oppressive and wearisome, but that of Christ sustains thee. One pulls thee down, the other lends thee wings. If you take away its wings from a bird, you take away, indeed, a weight, but by removing the weight you force it to remain on the ground. Restore the weight, and it will soar aloft. Of this kind is the burden of Christ."
S. John Chrysostom had this in his mind when he was being led to Cucusus into exile. And then when, in extreme bodily weakness and fever-stricken, he was forced by his guards to travel from there for seventy days continuously, with the hope that he would succumb to the hardships of the jou...
Worketh. In the Greek, katergazetai, which the English Bible of the year 1577 falsely renders by prepareth, unwilling to allow, with the apostle, that tribulation worketh eternal glory. The ardour with which the apostle speaks is sufficient to inspire the most timid with courage. A life full of crosses, labours, persecutions, injuries he calls momentary and light, if compared with the eternal, immense, and incomprehensible glory prepared for us. (St. Augustine)
All earthly substance, compared with the happiness of heaven, is rather a loss than a gain. This life, when put in comparison with that to come, is rather a death than life. (St. Gregory in Evangel.)
Having closed the question by a reference to hope, (and, as he said in his Epistle to the Romans, We are saved by hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; Romans 8:24 establishing the same point here also,) he sets side by side the things present with the things to come, the momentary with the eternal, the light with the weighty, the affliction with the glory. And neither is he content with this, but he adds another expression, doubling it and saying, more and more exceedingly. Next he also shows the mode how so great afflictions are light. How then light? While we look not at the things that are seen, but at the things that are not seen. So will both this present be light and that future great, if we withdraw ourselves from the things that are seen. For the things that are seen are temporal. 2 Corinthians 4:18 Therefore the afflictions are so too. But the things that are not seen are eternal. Therefore the crowns are so also. And he said not the afflictions are so, but the things tha...
Such, after all, is the way with good people: when they endure something for his sake, far from attending to the appearance of what occurs, they understand the reason behind it and thus bear everything with equanimity. Likewise Paul, the teacher of the Gentiles, identified imprisonment, arraignment, daily peril, all those many unbearable hardships as light burdens, not because they really were so by nature but because the reason behind their happening produced such an attitude in him that he would not turn back in the face of these oncoming threats. Listen, after all, to what he says: “For the light weight of our passing distress produces in us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison”; expectation of the glory we are destined to attain, he is saying, and of that unceasing enjoyment makes us bear without difficulty these hardships one after another and consider them of no consequence. Do you see how love of God reduces the intensity of troubles and prevents our having any sense...
Says: "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for as a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen "that is, our sufferings, "but at the things which are not seen "that is, our rewards: "for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal."
