GOSPEL, FIRST READING & PSALM TRANSCRIPT (Subscribe or Login for Full Transcript):
One of the things — you’ve probably had this experience — if you’ve ever read the lives of the Saints is the astounding spiri- tual strength of the Saints. Not just of their ability to fast, or to pray for hours on end, to establish monasteries and convents, to travel to the ends of the earth to make disciples of Jesus like the missionary orders, but their spiritual strength in the power of their holiness. The power of their ability to convert souls to Christ, to draw people to Jesus, flows out of the fact that they’ve been engaged in spiritual exercises, right. There not just lounging about; they’re not just laying about. They’re trying to grow every single day in holiness, in prayer, in fasting, in reading the word of God, in teaching and preaching. And so I don’t know about you, but whenever I read the lives of the Saints I feel like a spiritual wimp, right. Maybe you’ve had this experience: you buy one of these exercise videos and you start to watch these people who have been training and exercising every day and then you try to do what they do and you can’t. Why? Well because you’re not strong enough. The same thing is true in the life of holiness, right. We have to perform spiritual exercises if we want to be strong, if we want to grow in strength. We can’t just assume that because we’re baptized we’re going to be strong. No, baptism makes us a child of God but it doesn't make us an adult; it doesn't bring us into spiritual adulthood. In order to be an adult we have to learn, we have to grow, but we also have to exercise. We have to exercise our spiritual faculties.
So, I think this is fascinating and real important that at the very beginning of the liturgical year the church places before us the exhortation to grow in strength. To pray, to keep vigil, and to prepare ourselves for the coming of Jesus through spiri- tual exercises. And that should set a tone for our Advent season that may be some- what different than the popular secular tone set by the Christmas season and prepa- ration for Christmas. So if you look at the Advent season you'll notice the liturgical colors for the Advent season are purple — I’m wearing a purple shirt right now be- cause it’s the first Sunday of Advent. Well, purple is always in the church a color of penance; it’s a penitential season. And although Advent is of course not as solemn a penitential season as Lent is, for example, at the same time the very colors that we use tell us that it should be a time of intensified spiritual exercises. Whether it be prayer, whether it be fasting, whether it be vigils like spending time staying awake waiting for Christ, reading his word, whatever it might be, however, what- ever exercises, praying the rosary. Whatever exercises you’re going to do to pre- pare there should be a difference between your spiritual exercises in Ordinary Time and your spiritual exercises in the Advent season. Because the Church is calling us to prepare for the coming of Jesus. Both his coming in the Feast of Christmas but also, in a sense, even more for his second coming at the end of time, for the final judgment, to get ready for the judgment.
And the reality, and you might be thinking while I’m saying this, well Dr. Pitre it's been 2000 years, he’s probably not coming back this year, right. Well you know he might not come back this Advent, but you might die this Advent. There are going to be people who die during this Advent season, who are going to encounter Christ, who are going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ in their particular judg- ment if not the final judgment. And no one of us Christians knows the day or hour of that encounter of our particular judgment. So it's prudent, it's wise for the church every year to call us to pray, to keep vigil, and to get ready to meet Jesus. That's what we’re doing during the Advent season.
SECOND READING TRANSCRIPT (Subscribe or Login for Full Transcript):
So let me back up; we’ll kind of walk through here, make a few points about the reading for today.
First, the first thing you want to notice here is … notice in the opening verses that when Paul is exhorting his audience, he speaks about the fact that they can increase in love. This is very important — the idea that after Baptism, after coming to faith, the Thessalonians can increase in charity, that charity can grow, that salvation is a process. That’s point number one.
Point number two — that the purpose of justification or salvation that Paul talks about so frequently is so that:
… he may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness…
So the Greek word here for holiness,
hagiosynē, comes from the word in Greek
hagios. It means the same thing as the Hebrew word for holy — means to be set apart. And it has the same connotations that the Hebrew word has — set apart from sin and set apart for God. It’s both of those things.
So in context, what Paul is saying is that the Thessalonians’ hearts need to be established unblamable in holiness — why? In preparation for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Greek word there for “coming” is
parousia. You’ll sometimes hear people about the
parousia of Jesus. That’s a reference to the second coming.
Sometimes people will say the pooh-roo-schuh — that’s not quite the correct pronunciation. But the Latin translation is
adventus, and here you see the link. Why in the Roman Church do we take 1 Thessalonians 3 and read it on the first Sunday of Advent? It’s because Paul is exhorting his readers to grow in charity and to prepare themselves to be found blameless in holiness at the advent of Jesus Christ, at the
parousia of Jesus Christ.
And so he continues to exhort them and beseech them and saying that the way they’re going to do this is to follow what he taught them about how to live and how to please God and to keep doing that more and more so that they might grow in holiness.
So remember here, when Paul is writing to the Thessalonians, the Thessalonians are a young congregation of pagans who have become Christians through Paul’s apostolic ministry and evangelization of them. Thessalonica is a thoroughly Greek city, so the people to whom this letter is addressed — like many of Paul’s letters — are pagans. They’ve lived the lives among the Gentiles, following Gentile customs, following Gentile morality. And they have some questions for Paul about how to get ready for the second coming and what’s going to happen at the second coming.
And in this section of the reading for today, Paul is telling them: the way to prepare for the second coming of Christ, the final advent, is to grow in charity, to seek after holiness, and to live according to the instructions that we gave you through the Lord Jesus. So here Paul is alluding to the fact that he’s already visited the congregation, he likely founded the congregation, but he’s no longer with them. So he’s reminding them of the initial instructions that he gave to them when he had first evangelized them in the city of Thessalonica.
Now, unfortunately, the lectionary stops there, so you don’t actually get the content, the kind of details of what those instructions were and how the Thessalonians might follow them. So that’s why I read the next few verses, because in those verses, Paul says a couple things that are really important. He says:
For this is the will of God, your sanctification…
He’s saying the reason I even came to you, the reason you heard the Gospel, is because God wants you to be sanctified. God wants you to be holy, to be set apart from sin and set apart for Him. So, what’s the first step on the road to sanctification? According to St. Paul:
… that you abstain from unchastity …
And the Greek word there is
porneia. You’ll see translations often translate this as unchastity or sexual immorality. And the reason that’s important to highlight is because for converts from paganism, beginning to live a life of morality that follows the standards of Judaism and the standards of the Old Testament is going to be one of the more difficult transitions they have to make, and it’s going to be one of the first steps on the path to holiness for them. To be holy means to be set apart from sin, especially the sin of
porneia, of unchastity.
That’s why Paul goes on to say that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness, that the body is sacred, that the body should be set apart from sin and set apart for God… or in the case of married couples, that a husband and wife’s bodies are set apart for one another and not for anyone else.
So he contrasts that with the passion of lust, like the heathen who don’t know God. Now what’s fascinating about this point is that when he uses the word heathen, it’s just the word for Gentile. But he’s writing to Gentiles in 1 Thessalonians. But he treats them as if they’re no longer Gentiles, because now they belong to Christ. They’re no longer pagans, even though they’re ethnically Gentile. Now the challenge becomes living not according to Gentile culture and Gentile morality, but according to holiness, the universal call to holiness — which remember, is something that God made to the Jews, first and foremost… or to the people of Israel, the twelve tribes in Exodus 19, where He calls them to be a kingdom of priests and a
holy nation.
So I bring that up because in context, the reading for today in the lectionary is very powerful and also very consequential. Paul is telling the Thessalonians, “You need to get ready for advent” — not the season of Advent like we celebrate but for the final advent, for the second advent. And the way you get ready for the second advent is to grow in charity and to walk in holiness. And the first step on the path of holiness in a Gentile culture, in a pagan culture, in a culture saturated with sexual immorality — the first step is to live a life of chastity, to avoid
porneia, to avoid unchastity, and to seek after holiness.
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