GOZZOLI, Benozzo: Raphael and Tobias (on the pillar), 1464-65;
Fresco, Apsidal chapel, Sant’Agostino, San Gimignano.
The Angel of Comfort
by Anselm Grün
Comfort is always asked for when we have experienced a loss, if a friendship has shattered, when another person has hurt us deeply, if a loved one has passed away. How different the experience of comfort can be, shows a look at language. The German word for “comfort†is “Trost†and it derives from the same roots as the German expression for faithfulness “Treue†(and they are related to the archaic English expression “trothâ€, which in turn derives from the Middle English word “trostâ€). Therefore the German word for comfort has something to do with strength and stability (T/N: for the English word “comfort†this is even more clearly visible: as the etymology goes back to Late Latin confortare “to strengthen greatlyâ€, from Latin com- + fortis strong). Someone who has suffered a loss, loses her balance. She needs someone to give her stability and strength again. The Greek Bible uses parakalein for the word comfort. This means: to call for, comfort, to have kind words for someone. Someone who lacks something needs an angel at her side, who picks her up if necessary, and who comforts her. In Greek giving comfort is mainly done with talking, with words that give meaning back to the meaninglessness which results from every loss at first. But those words must not be false comfort of hushing someone up. Because hushing up is nor really something I do for the other person. If I hush someone up, I don’t really talk with someone, but rather talk against her. I say something that I don’t really believe myself. I use words that don’t give strength or meaning. But comforting someone means that I talk to someone, that I use words that reach the other person, that are meant only for this person, words, that reach her heart. Comforting means to find words from heart to heart: that I find words in my heart, that I don’t fall back on empty phrases, but that I find words which touch the other’s heart, which open up a new horizon for her and make it possible for her to find new stability.
In Latin another word for comfort is consolari (the root of consolation). This means to be with someone who is alone (T/N: solus, -a, -um is the Latin adjective for “alone, singleâ€), who has been left alone with her pain, with her bereavement, with her misery. Consolation means that you go someone, who is locked up inside herself, whose mouth and heart have been closed by her distress. Not everyone is capable to do that. Not everyone has the courage to try and find someone who is hiding behind her pain. Not everyone has the courage to enter a house of mourning, where abyssal suffering and loneliness of another person are waiting for you. Being there for someone means to share her pain and to stay with her within her pain. I can’t console someone from the outside, by falling back on pious words I read somewhere. I have to endure in her house of darkness, of brokenness, of sorrow. If you are capable of entering the house of mourning, then the mourning person will experience you as an Angel of Comfort. She will experience that with you an Angel of God has visited her like “whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us†(Lk 1, 78).
At all times men have called upon the Angel of Comfort in their pain, asking him to come to them and stay with them. Johannes Sebastian Bach has sung about in an impressive way in his tenor aria in the Michaelis Cantata: “Stay, ye angels, stay by me! Lead me so and stay beside me that my foot may never stumble!†This is a very emotional song of faith – faith, that we are not being left alone in our suffering, but that the Angels of God will accompany us and stay us and persevere until our pain transforms into a song of gratitude. I wish that an an angel may comfort you in your grief, that he may give you stableness when you have become unbalanced, that he will have kind words for you if you have become speechless with your pain, that he will visit you in your loneliness and make you feel that you are no longer alone, but that there is an angel at your side who is with you on all your ways. If you know about the Angel of Comfort, then you can confront your grief without fear, then you don’t have to skip it. Grief that has been comforted will not paralyse you, but will lead you deep into the secrets of your own being and the secret of Jesus Christ, who came to us in our grief as comfort for all of the world.
© by Anselm Grün, 50 Engel für das Jahr, 1997;
translation by JunoMagic.
Song for December 14:
(Click pic!)
Die Rose des Gabriel (“The Rose of Gabriel”)
by Hans-Jürgen Hufeisen,
album “Das Engelskonzert” (“Concert of Angels”)