30th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Oct. 26, 2014
1 Thess 1: 5-10
St. Ursula, Mt.
Vernon
“You became imitators of us and of the
Lord, receiving the word in great affliction, with joy from the Holy Spirit, so
that you became a model for all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia” (1 Thess
1: 6-7).
We began reading 1 Thess last week, and so
we know that the “us” and “we” of today’s reading are Paul, Silvanus, and
Timothy, who have brought the Gospel to Thessalonica. Their preaching seems to have been very
successful, and if Paul’s testimony in this passage is true, that success would
seem to be in part because the missionaries have backed their preaching by
their actions: “You know what sort of
people we were among you” (1:5), people worthy of imitation.
If the whole Church is missionary, as the
2d Vatican Council has reminded us, and Pope Francis has reminded us; if all of
us are to be evangelizers of the people and the culture that we inhabit—then
the 1st form of our preaching is necessarily our lifestyle, our example, and
not our homilies, catechism lessons, radio programs, Facebook, etc. Contrariwise, the scandalous lives and words
of some Christians serve to drive some people out of the Church and to alienate
some who weren’t believers to begin with.
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| St. Paul St. Mary's Church, Fredericksburg, Va. |
Paul takes that role-modeling a step
further: “You became imitators of us and
of the Lord.” “The Lord” here refers to
Jesus, whom every Christian is called to imitate, on whom every Christian is
supposed to model himself or herself. Paul
is also saying that he and his collaborators are doing exactly that, so that by
imitating them the believers at Thessalonica are at the same time imitating
Jesus.
Isn’t that the way we’re all supposed to
live, sisters (and brothers)? to live so
that people see Jesus in our actions and words, and are attracted to imitate
those admirable actions and words? In
recent years, how many kids have wanted to be no. 2—not Avis, but Derek
Jeter? They pretend to hit like him,
field like him, throw like him, and perhaps hope someday be a Yankee like
him. Shouldn’t young people look at
their parents, their teachers, their church leaders, their coaches or Scouting leaders,
and see role models whom they want to imitate and who are worthy of
imitation? If we don’t provide good
models of Jesus and the saints for them, then we leave them only athletes and
entertainers to look up to.
Paul says that the Thessalonians “received
the word in great affliction, with joy in the Holy Spirit.” That seems like something of a contradiction,
affliction and joy both coming from the word—the word of the Gospel that Paul,
Silvanus, and Timothy have preached.
How might God’s word afflict us? By calling us to conversion! Who finds change easy and welcome, especially
moral change? Even we who already
profess to be Christians find it hard to shake off our sins, to renounce our
vices. Doesn’t the idea of going to
confession, admitting our guilt out loud and committing ourselves to greater
fidelity, afflict many of us, maybe most of us?
Secondarily, God’s word is a source of
affliction for those who take it seriously because a serious Christian life is
a sign of contradiction in the world. We
don’t feel at home in our contemporary culture, do we? We’re afflicted, or conflicted. We may feel pressured to conform; as kids may
be pressured to engage in inappropriate behavior, so may adults be.
At the same time, the word of God gives us
“joy from the Holy Spirit.” We receive
the word of forgiveness, of reconciliation with God, and of God’s offer of
eternal life—all reasons for profound joy and peace of heart.
That kind of joy is contagious. “You became a model for all the believers in
Macedonia and in Achaia.” By imitating
Paul and his companions, by imitating Christ, by committing themselves to
conversion of life and taking on the hostile world, the Christians of
Thessalonica have themselves become models for other believers. While Paul may be exaggerating to some extent
about how far their fame has spread, still, it’s no little thing that all the
local churches of mainland Greece, such as those at Philippi and Corinth, look
up to them.
“From you the word of the Lord has sounded
forth,” Paul continues (1:8). Paul uses
a word suggestive of a trumpet blaring out a regal command or a battle signal,
something really noticeable, something one must pay attention to. The Thessalonians haven’t kept their faith
quietly to themselves, like the ill-fated servant in Jesus’ parable (Matt
25:14-30) who buried his master’s gold talent in the ground, carefully
preserving it but also leaving it barren and useless. Rather, they’ve let the whole world—at least
the Christian portion of it—know that they’re disciples of Jesus Christ.
What that “sounding forth” entailed is a
bit hard to say. Did they send out missionaries? Did they send messengers of fraternity to the
other Christian communities? Did they
send financial assistance to the needy?
Were they outstanding hosts of travelers coming from the other churches
on either ecclesiastical or personal business?
Whatever it was, “in every place your faith
in God has gone forth” (1:8). Wouldn’t
it be a wonderful thing if that could be said of us? that everyone knows what committed and faithful
Catholics we are, by our words and even more by our actions? We might think now of some of the tributes
paid to the late Fr. Benedict Groeschel not only for his TV appearances, his
books, his homilies, or his teaching but
also for his work for and among the poorest people of our nation;
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| Fr. Ben Groeschel, St. Joseph's Seminary April 22, 2009 |
or of the tributes paid to journalist
Jim Foley, whom ISIS murdered in August and who was a very committed Catholic. One of Foley’s peers wrote of him: “Foley was a devout Christian who, unlike
most journalists I've known during my almost four decades in the field, was
unapologetic about his heart for social justice and the inspiration he found
for his beliefs in the New Testament.”[1]
How does our faith go forth—to our children
and grandchildren, the people we work with and socialize with, even our fellow
parishioners?
Finally, Paul gives a bit, a tiny bit, of a
summary of the Gospel that he preached in the middle of the 1st century: “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” (1:9-10).
There you have the conversion: “turning from idols to serve the living and
true God.” In the case of the people of
Thessalonica, there was a literal turning away from idols, the pagan gods of
Greece, to serve the one and only God. A
lot of our contemporaries commit themselves to different sorts of idols,
different false gods, that they serve ambitiously and enthusiastically. Those gods include money, power, fame, and
pleasure in many, many forms. A lot of
Christians serve those gods, too, and all of us pay them homage from time to
time—those moments that we call “sin.”
Following Jesus means giving ourselves wholeheartedly—ambitiously and
enthusiastically—to serving God alone; exactly as Jesus says in the gospel
today (Matt 22:34-40). Our conversion
into Jesus’ disciples is an unending process of learning to do that, repenting
of our slip-ups, starting again, doing our best to “love the Lord our God with
all our heart” and to practice love of our neighbor.
All of which we do because we believe Jesus
is risen, and we await his return, when he’ll lead his followers into eternal
life, “delivering us from the coming wrath” of God’s judgment on unrepentant
sinners (judgment that was illustrated in Jesus’ parable 2 weeks ago when a
guest who refused to clothe himself in the repentance that opens up for us the
banquet of heaven was thrown out of the feast).
That’s also why, like the Thessalonians, we evangelize, live the Gospel
publicly—so that we may be models and our joyful good example may lead others
toward eternal life with our Savior Jesus Christ.
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