Theophylact of Ohrid, on 2Cor 1:3

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort.”

“In the first epistle he promised to come to them, but since he did not come, he supposed that he had greatly grieved them with the thought that he had preferred others over them. So, wishing to justify himself and show that many temptations that had befallen him had delayed him, he offers a fine explanation in his defense. I give thanks, he says, to God who saved me from dangers; through this thanksgiving he hints that there were certain great obstacles holding him back, for deliverance from which he also gives thanks. Place a punctuation mark after the word "God," then begin: "and Father of the Lord." But if you understand this jointly—God and Father of the Lord—there will be nothing novel in it, for He is of one and the same Christ: by His humanity, God, and by His divinity, Father. That is, He showed such great mercies that He brought us out from the very gates of death and deemed us worthy of every consolation in afflictions. It was the custom of the saints to name God according to the benefits received from Him. Thus, on the occasion of victory in war, David says: "I will love You, O Lord, my strength" (Ps. 18:1), and again: "The Lord is the strength of my life" (Ps. 27:1); on the occasion of deliverance from the darkening and eclipsing of the mind and from grief: "The Lord is my light" (Ps. 27:1). So now Paul calls God the Father of mercies and the God of consolation as a result of what happened to him. Notice his humility: having received deliverance from trials for the sake of the Gospel, he does not say that the deliverance was according to merit, but according to the mercies of God.”

Imported from an open dataset — not yet checked against the printed edition.