The First Letter to the Thessalonians

The city. Thessalonica stood at the head of the Thermaic Gulf, founded about 315 BC by Cassander, who gathered nearby villages into one city and named it for his wife Thessalonike, half-sister of Alexander the Great. Under Rome it became one of the chief cities of Macedonia, with a harbour and with the Via Egnatia, the great road between the Adriatic and Byzantium, running through it. It was a busy, mixed city of traders and many cults, and it had a synagogue (Acts 17:1). Today it is Thessaloniki, the second city of Greece.

How the church began. About the year 50, Paul came on from Philippi, where he had been beaten and jailed, with Silas and Timothy (1 Thess 2:2; Acts 17:1). According to Acts he reasoned in the synagogue on three sabbaths, and some Jews, many devout Greeks and a good number of leading women believed (17:2 to 4). The letter itself speaks of people who had turned from idols (1:9), so many converts had been pagans. Paul worked with his own hands night and day so as not to be a burden (2:9), and he stayed long enough to receive help more than once from Philippi (Phil 4:16). Many therefore think that he stayed longer than three weeks, though we cannot say how long.

Driven out. Opposition stirred up a crowd, and Paul's host, Jason, was dragged before the city authorities, with the charge that these people spoke of "another king named Jesus" (Acts 17:5 to 9). Paul had to leave by night for Beroea and then went on to Athens (17:10 to 15). He felt "made orphans", as he puts it, by being separated from them (2:17).

Timothy's journey. He could not stand the silence, and from Athens he sent Timothy back to strengthen them (3:1 to 5). Timothy rejoined him at Corinth, probably in about 51, with the news of their faith and love (3:6 to 8; Acts 18:5). An inscription from Delphi, mentioning the proconsul Gallio (Acts 18:12), allows scholars to date Paul's time in Corinth to about those years. This is one of the firmest dates we have for Paul's life.

The questions. Their fellow citizens made life hard for them (2:14; 3:3 to 4). Some in the city may have been saying that Paul was one more wandering preacher out for money, and so he recalls how he lived (2:1 to 12). They needed teaching about sexual holiness in a pagan city (4:1 to 8), about work (4:11 to 12), and about what had become of the believers who had already died (4:13 to 18).

The Church's tradition, and scholars today. The letter is from "Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy" (1:1). Paul's authorship is hardly doubted by anyone. The writers use "we" for much of it, and "I, Paul" breaks through at the emotional points (2:18; 3:5; 5:27). Silvanus is the Silas of Acts. Since most scholars date every other letter after it, this short letter takes us back to about twenty years after the Resurrection. Before any Gospel was written, these words were being read aloud in a house church (5:27).

Inspiration. Paul's "we" is no less the work of the Holy Spirit. God chose human authors, who wrote as true authors, and what they assert is to be taken as asserted by the Holy Spirit (Dei Verbum 11). The readers themselves took the preaching in this way: "not as a human word but as what it really is, God's word" (2:13).

• Faith, love and hope. Here, in the earliest of the letters, the three stand together (1:3; 5:8). They are not ideas but work, labour and endurance. The Catechism uses the armour of 5:8 on the virtue of hope (1820).
• The word of God is at work. "God's word, which is also at work in you believers" (2:13). The Catechism quotes this to say what the Church finds in Scripture (104).
• A pastor's heart. Paul shared "not only the gospel of God but also our own selves" (2:8). He is mother and father to them (2:7, 11). This remains a picture for anyone who serves the Church.
• Holiness in the body. "This is the will of God, your sanctification" (4:3). Christian chastity is not a side issue: God calls us "in holiness" (4:7), and whoever disregards this disregards God, who gives his Holy Spirit (4:8).
• The dead are not lost. We do not grieve as those who have no hope (4:13). Paul does not forbid tears; he forbids despair. Because Jesus died and rose, God will bring with him those who have died (4:14). The Catechism quotes 4:16 on the resurrection of the dead at Christ's coming (1001), and "we will be with the Lord" stands behind its teaching on heaven (1025).
• The coming of the Lord. The Greek word is parousia, used of a king's arrival. Paul's pictures (the command, the trumpet, the clouds, 4:16 to 17) are the language of Scripture for God's coming. Benedict XVI calls them symbolic imagery with a simple message: we will be with the Lord forever (12 November 2008). He adds that we are already with him in this life. The Church does not read the passage as teaching a secret removal of Christians before a time of trouble, and the passage gives no timetable.
• No dates. Paul says it himself: the day of the Lord comes "like a thief in the night" (5:2). Some think that Paul hoped to be alive at the Lord's coming, since he says "we who are alive" (4:17). He does not teach this as a fact, and he refuses to give times and seasons (5:1). The Church teaches that the coming could be at any moment, and that it is not for us to know the times (Catechism 673). The right response is not fear but wakefulness and comfort: "encourage one another" (4:18; 5:11).
• Daily prayer. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances (5:16 to 18; Catechism 2638, 2742).
• Discernment. Do not quench the Spirit, do not despise prophecy, but "test everything; hold fast to what is good" (5:19 to 21). This is good advice for any report of a spiritual gift.
• The whole person. May your "spirit and soul and body" be kept sound (5:23). The Catechism explains that this does not introduce a duality into the soul: "spirit" means that from creation we are ordered to a supernatural end (367).
• Work and the common good. Work with your hands, so as to depend on no one (4:11 to 12; 2:9).

A hard passage: 2:14 to 16. Paul writes in pain that his Judean fellow believers suffered from "the Jews", and adds strong words. These lines must be read carefully. Paul speaks of particular opposition he knew in Judea in his own time, about twenty years after the crucifixion, and the Thessalonians' own persecutors were their pagan compatriots (2:14). He is himself a Jew, proud of his people, and he has "great sorrow" for them and hopes for all Israel to be saved (Rom 9:1 to 5; 11:1, 26). The New American Bible's note says that his remarks give no grounds for anti-Semitism. The Church teaches that the Jewish people as a whole, then or now, cannot be charged with Jesus's death (Nostra Aetate 4; Catechism 597) and that we sinners bear the gravest responsibility (Catechism 598).

• God's Son, awaited. The Thessalonians turned from idols to serve God and "to wait for his Son from heaven" (1:9 to 10). This little summary is close to the earliest preaching.
• The Risen One. "Whom he raised from the dead" (1:10). "Jesus died and rose again" (4:14). Benedict XVI cites this letter among the places where Paul's hope in the resurrection is rooted in his encounter with the Risen Christ (5 November 2008).
• He who died for us. He "died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him" (5:10). In this earliest letter the whole of the good news is there in a single line.
• The Lord, beside God. Grace comes from "God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" (1:1). Paul prays to Jesus as he prays to the Father (3:11 to 12). Twenty years after the cross, this is how Christians already spoke.
• The one we will be with. The end of the story is not an event but a person: "we will be with the Lord forever" (4:17).

The Catechism. The word of God, 104; body, soul and spirit, 367; the coming of Christ, 673; the resurrection at the Parousia, 1001; being with Christ, 1025; hope, 1820; Jesus's death and the Jewish people, 597 to 598; prayer without ceasing, 2742; thanksgiving, 2638.

The Fathers, in substance. St John Chrysostom, in his eighth homily on this letter, compares being caught up to the way honoured subjects go out to meet a king as he comes to a city, so that they enter with him. He sets the Lord's coming beside Matthew 24 and asks his hearers to live in readiness for judgment.

Benedict XVI. On 12 November 2008 he takes this letter, written about the year 52, as a starting point for Paul's teaching on the Parousia. He says that the expectation does not excuse us from work in this world but increases our responsibility, and he asks whether we can sincerely pray the old cry Maranatha, "Our Lord, come!"

In the liturgy.

• Syro-Malabar. In the calendars we examined, on weekdays: for example 1 Thess 2:13 to 17 and 3:6 to 13 in Annunciation and the Great Fast, 4:1 to 8 and 5:12 to 22 in other seasons, at the Holy Qurbana.
• Syro-Malankara. In the calendars we examined, 1 Thess 4:13 to 18 on Aneede Sunday, the Commemoration of the Departed Faithful; 5:1 to 11 in the Fast of the Ninevites; 4:1 to 8, 4:9 to 12 and 5:12 to 22 on weekdays.
• Latin. The Twenty-ninth to Thirty-third Sundays in Ordinary Time of Year A read the letter in order. 1 Thess 5:16 to 24 is read on the Third Sunday of Advent in Year B. It is read on weekdays in Year I, in the Twenty-first and Twenty-second Weeks. 4:13 to 18 is among the readings offered in Masses for the dead.

It takes about ten minutes. It was meant to be read aloud to everyone (5:27), so read it aloud once. Then over five days:

• Day 1: 1:1 to 2:12. Who gave you the faith, and how did they live?
• Day 2: 2:13 to 3:13. Feel Paul's worry and his relief. Whom do you worry about in this way?
• Day 3: 4:1 to 12. What does holiness ask of you in your body and at work?
• Day 4: 4:13 to 5:11. Remember your own dead by name.
• Day 5: 5:12 to 28. Take one of the commands for the whole week.