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Live
Letters Twenty-Ninth
Sunday in Ordinary Time |
The Catholic Telegraph
October 18, 2002As our liturgical year draws to a close, we begin five weeks of consecutive readings from the first letter of Paul to the Thessalonians. Probably this letter was chosen for this place in the calendar because it is concerned (in chapters four and five) with the second coming of Jesus and the final conclusion of God’s work of redemption. We’ll be hearing from these chapters in a few weeks.
This letter is important, however, not only because of what it has to say about the second coming of Christ, but also because it is the oldest part of the New Testament and so the oldest existing Christian writing. It was written about the year 50, some twenty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus and about twenty years before the earliest gospel.
Acts (17.1-9) tells us that Paul had started to preach the gospel to the Jews at Thessalonica. Some of them were converted and some Gentiles as well. Other Jews thought that Paul and his companions were dangerous, so they trumped up some charges against them and the missionaries had to be smuggled out of town at night. Paul wanted to maintain his contact with his recent converts and continue to offer them his encouragement, so he wrote them this letter, thus instituting a whole new means of Christian communication.
Ordinary secular letters of the time opened with the name of the sender and of the addressee. There followed a short greeting and a brief word or so of thanksgiving. This is the pattern that Paul follows here (and in most of his other letters), except that the thanksgiving section here is disproportionately long, constituting about sixty percent of the whole letter. Maybe Paul wanted to be sure that the Thessalonians knew how fond of them he was. It may also be that he was still groping with the ins and outs of the literary form that he was creating.
Paul offers thanks to God most of all because of the Thessalonians’ perseverance. Conscious of their election by God, i.e., their call to salvation, they have been persistent in their "work of faith and labor of love and endurance of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ." All this came as the result of the persuasive power of the Holy Spirit that they had perceived in Paul’s preaching.
There are two things that seem worthy of special mention as we reflect on these earliest extant words of Christian documentation.
The first is that the very first words of the letter after the conventional opening are words of thanksgiving, not just conventional words that could have been found in any letter of the time, but heartfelt and earnest words of gratitude that will continue, off and on, for much of the rest of the letter. "We give thanks to God always for all of you." The first words we hear from the silence of the Christian past are words of gratitude.
This suggests to me that the very beginning of our own encounter with God and with our fellow believers ought to take place in the context of gratitude. The first things for us to present in prayer and in our relationships with one another should be the expression of thanksgiving for what we have received. It is a theme that is always relevant, a subject on which there is always more to be said. Giving thanks is never inappropriate. Being grateful is never out of season. This centrality of gratitude is expressed not only in these first words of the first writing of the New Testament, but also in every celebration of the Eucharist in which we take part. Every time the priest prays the preface of the Eucharistic prayer in the name of Christ and the people, he says to God, "We do well always and everywhere to give you thanks ..."
The other thing that seems worthy of comment is the theological richness of these few verses. From this very beginning of recorded discourse in the Church we hear about the Persons of the Trinity: the church is "in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ;" the gospel came to them "in the Holy Spirit." We also hear about faith, hope, and charity, the foundational virtues of Christian life that define the Christian condition and color everything we are and do. If we read the text carefully, we will see that Paul speaks of these virtues not as accomplishments of the Thessalonian Christians, but as gifts of God that the new Christians have received. "Your work of faith and labor of love" refer to the Thessalonians’ response to God’s initiative and God’s gratuitous invitation to life and community with Himself. Likewise, "endurance in hope of our Lord Jesus Christ" involves patience in trials but also the certainty of salvation that is grounded in God’s faithfulness. Finally, Paul also speaks of "our gospel." This is not a set of propositions or a portfolio of information, but the proclamation of who Christ is and what Christ did and how Christ’s life, death, and resurrection constitute our salvation.
In this ordinary yet very special reading, God’s word offers us the gentle voice of the apostle coming to us from the very beginning of the Church’s mission, offering God thanks as we are called to offer thanks, and speaking about matters of faith that are still essential to us today.
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Conversation Questions.
What part does thanksgiving play in my personal spirituality?
What elements of the Christian faith do I see as most basic?
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