Link to today’s Mass Readings: Monday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time | USCCB

Today in our First Reading we start making our way through St Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians. 1^st Thessalonians is the earliest text we have in the New Testament, written around 49-51c.e. In Paul’s later writings, e.g., Romans, Corinthians, we find a much more developed theology, but here we find Paul being more pastoral or personal in style and language. It is written at a time only 15-16 yrs after the death and resurrection of Jesus, when there still would have been members of Christian communities alive who actually accompanied Jesus on his journeys, who mourned his death as the death of someone they had sat at table with, and who celebrated his resurrection as the return of one with whom they had walked the roads of Israel.

While, as I mentioned, the majority of the letter is pastoral or personal in nature, we do find in its final chapters some ‘theologizing’. In 1Thess 4:13-18 we find Paul speaking to the community at Thessalonica about those ‘who have fallen asleep’; this was a Greek euphemism for those who had died. The early Church, as we do, waited in hope for the Second Coming of Jesus, but where we are more resigned to it possible being ‘some way off yet’, for the early Church it was unclear. He – Jesus – said he would return, but was it meant to be next week, next month, next year…the community was unclear. At the time of this letter’s writing, people (including those who had known the early Jesus) had started to die, and so the community was left with the question: What happens to these people, will they too be gathered up by the Lord? In Paul’s response we have an example of the early Church ‘doing’ theology, that is, applying the experience of the Christ-Event to their present-day life. I love reading or listening to this passage from 1^st Thessalonians as it is such a powerful example of the dynamic of reality of the Christ-Event in dialogue with the questions of our lives. (NB: Keep your ‘eyes open’ and your ‘ears peeled’ on Monday of next week, as 1 Thess 4:13-18 is the First Reading that day!)

In today’s First Reading we find this lovely greeting to the people of Thessalonica: ‘We give thanks to God always for all of you, remembering you in our prayers, unceasingly calling to mind your work of faith and labour 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.’ Imagine if this was the spirit with which we all greeted each other as we gathered for the celebration of the Eucharist^[1], or as a family as we sat down to enjoy a meal together, or if this is how schools started their day. Do our faces actually radiate some joy as we greet the brothers and sisters we have, by virtue of baptism, in the Lord.

^[1] Whenever it is that we can start gathering again.