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Live
Letters Thirty-third
Sunday in Ordinary Time |
The Catholic Telegraph
November 16, 2001In this last reading from II Thessalonians, the author sets forth one more time the theme that he has presented more than once already: the need for steady perseverance in carrying out the demands of our Christian faith. Shortcuts lead nowhere!
Some members of the young church of Thessalonica had decided that work need no longer be part of their lives. This decision may have been based on the expectation of an immediate parousia, so that any involvement with things of the world would be useless. It may also have been rooted in the pagan Greek attitude that work was for slaves. It may have resulted from a kind of condescending mind-set on the part of some that, since they were more spiritual than the rest, they could not be expected to share in mundane responsibilities like earning a living. Whatever the justification for their aversion to work, by their espousal of off-beat ideas they were undermining the good order of the community.
In our live letter reading for this Sunday, Paul (or the disciple of Paul who is writing in his person) is calling them back to order.
First of all, he tells them that they should follow his (Paul’s) example of working to pay his own way when he was with them. He seems to take a saintly pride in the fact that he didn’t just move in and expect to be taken care of. On the contrary, he supported himself by hard work "night and day."
Of course he had the right to be taken care of! This came with his being a preacher of the good news to them. But he chose not to exercise that right in order to give them an example of how they themselves should behave. (Paul’s insistence on supporting himself in the course of his apostolic work seems to have been a personal characteristic of his and of his immediate associates. He speaks of it in I Thessalonians 2.9 and in both letters to the Corinthians [I Cor. 9.3-18 and II Cor. 11.7 and 12.13]. It seems that in Corinth Paul’s insistence on self-support was seen by some as an indication that he wasn’t as important as other preachers of the gospel who, presumably, allowed themselves to be taken care of by the local community. Paul’s references to his work in the Corinth letters have a defensive ring to them. He certainly has no hesitancy about calling the Christian faithful to imitate him.)
Next our author moves from inviting the Thessalonians to imitate Paul to giving them explicit directions. He reminds them of the directions that Paul gave them when he was with them, namely that refusal to work constituted a forfeiture of the right to be cared for. Then comes the former direction in a new format: "Don’t be so busy about getting other people to agree with your point of view that you can’t do productive work," he says in effect. He instructs them "in the Lord Jesus" to stay busy with productive work and to maintain responsibility for caring for their own needs.
Catholic Christian thought has given lots of attention to the idea of work since the time of the Thessalonian letters. The basic Pauline insight into the importance, indeed, the virtue, of being willing to look after ourselves as best we can has developed into a whole Christian theology of work.
Work is not just something we engage in to keep ourselves away from the troubles that come with idleness. Nor is it just a task that we have to perform in order to earn a living. Paul’s directions to the Thessalonians have led Christian thinkers to the conclusion that work has a central - and positive - part to play in our lives in the Lord.
Work is the contribution that each of us makes to the development and unfolding of creation. God left much of the task of bringing the world to fulfillment to us human creatures. We engage in that task by the words and actions of our work life, by the way we bring together and modify the elements of creation that God has given us. Each day the world is a little different because of all the work that human beings have done. That difference is our human contribution to the created reality that God has entrusted to us.
Catholic social teaching has also come to see that people have a right to work. Simply because they are human beings, they are qualified and expected to participate in the development of creation. To deprive people of the possibility of engaging in this developmental project is to deprive them of an important element of their human existence. This means that society has a responsibility to help men and women become skilled and educated enough so that they can make their personal contributions to the ongoing creative process.
The example that Paul gave the Thessalonians to imitate and the directions that today’s live letter provides are only the initial components of Christian awareness about the implications of work. Certainly we work to stay out of trouble. We work to make a living for ourselves. We work to keep our community peaceful and productive. But we also work to help God bring creation to its fulfillment.
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Conversation Questions.
Is there anyone I find it helpful to imitate? Who? Why?
How does the work I do contribute to the development of creation?
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