Monday in the 21st Week of Ordinary Time, August 23, 2021

1 Thessalonians 1:1-5, 8b-10

Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy to the Church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: grace to you and peace.  We give thanks to God always for all of you, remembering you in our prayers, unceasingly calling to mind your work of faith and labor of love and endurance in hope of our Lord Jesus Christ, before our God and Father, knowing, brothers and sisters loved by God, how you were chosen. For our Gospel did not come to you in word alone, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with much conviction. You know what sort of people we were among you for your sake. In every place your faith in God has gone forth, so that we have no need to say anything. For they themselves openly declare about us what sort of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to await his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus, who delivers us from the coming wrath.

St. Paul founded the Church at Thessalonica in the late 40’s AD during his first missionary journey.  Both Jewish and Gentile Christians made up the congregation.  They proved staunch and fervent, but struggled to understand such completely new doctrines as the resurrection of the dead and the end of the world.  The remarks Paul makes to them in his letters regarding the end of the world seem to indicate that this teaching played a large incentive for their conversion, and also their imperfect knowledge of them.  As their situation and concerns are very much our own today, it pays us to consider Paul’s words to them.

“Grace to you and peace.”  “Grace” is added to the traditional Jewish salutation, “peace”.  With this word, Paul both wishes for them God’s favor and the supernatural gift which “grace” is.  “Grace and peace”: for, the possession of grace allows for peace, inward and within the community.  “We give thanks to God always for all of you.”  This is an interesting expression, as though they had done Paul some great service rather than that they had received a great service from him, in bringing them the Faith.  And yet he does give thanks for them, for their having faith in Jesus Christ.  It is a sign of his love for his spiritual children.  “Remembering you in our prayers, unceasingly calling to mind your work of faith and labor of love and endurance in hope of our Lord Jesus Christ, before our God and Father.”  Paul now tells the Thessalonian Christians what his gratitude for them results in.  He remembers them in his prayers, and he praises them to God for their faith, hope, and love.  This would have meant a great deal to these new Christians, for they held Paul in the highest esteem and considered him their father.  “Knowing, brothers and sisters loved by God, how you were chosen.”  Paul emphasized in his teaching, imitating the Apostles who had known the Lord to do this, that those who believed in the Lord Jesus were “chosen”.  Their very belief proved that they had been chosen from the foundation of the world.  It feels very different to walk into a house of one’s own volition and to stay there in an audience as an anonymous part, and knowing that you have been chosen to come inside, and that you are a desired member of an assembly.  To know oneself as chosen by God in his marvelous Providence is absolutely liberating.  You are known and cared for by Almighty God.  “Our Gospel did not come to you in word alone, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with much conviction.”  Paul seems to speak of the working of miracles as well as of a dramatic coming of the Holy Spirit upon those assembled to hear him, as is sometimes recorded as happening in the Acts of the Apostles (cf. Acts 10, 44-47).  

“You know what sort of people we were among you for your sake.”  Paul speaks of the devout, humble life he lived among the Thessalonians, maintaining himself with his tent making and not demanding royal treatment and large sums for his living, as the promoters of pagan cults did.    He lived this way for their sake, that is, to provide them an example of how a Christian should live.  “In every place your faith in God has gone forth, so that we have no need to say anything.  For they themselves openly declare about us what sort of reception we had among you.” Here, Paul commends their faith in exuberant terms, as a parent praises the first steps of his child.    “How you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.”  “To serve” does not effectively translate the Greek verb, which means rather “to be subject to”, and “to obey”.  “To serve” conveys the idea of undertaking a function for a time; but the verb means entering a relationship.  “And to await his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus, who delivers us from the coming wrath.”  Paul mentions, for the first time, a theme that will become very important later in this letter and in his second letter to the Thessalonian Christians.  Our work as Christians is to await, through faith and virtuous acts, the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  We ought to recall that the Thessalonians had never seen Jesus and only learned of him through Paul.  That they believed in Jesus despite this second-hand knowledge of him is truly amazing, and ought to make us “cradle Catholics” wonder about the miracle that is each conversion.  This Lord Jesus will deliver us “from the wrath to come”, which is how the Apostles seem to have preached about the end of the world, as we note it also in 2 Peter 3, 7, among other places in the New Testament: “But the heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of the ungodly men.”  We note that Paul says that Jesus will “deliver” us “from the wrath to come”: it is as though the wrath will sweep away all but a few who are “delivered” (the Greek more graphically means “rescued”).  

We remember too that we are chosen by Almighty God, not due to any merit of our own but solely due to his free gift, and that, through grace, we have chosen him in return.