Welcome to the Pauline Family's "Year of the Bible"! We've been reading the Bible clear through this year. We are finishing the New Testament, so read along with me. But first, let us pray:
Father,
When the fullness of time had come, you sent your Word in the One who said, “Whoever sees me, sees the Father.” No revelation can surpass this until Jesus comes again. By your gift, the Church continues to receive unfathomable riches from the inheritance handed on from the Apostles and guaranteed by the Holy Spirit.
Let the Spirit who inspired the writing of today's pages "guide me in the truth and teach me" to follow Jesus ever more closely, until he calls me to follow him to the Kingdom where he lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever. Amen.
Today's chapters are 1 Thessalonians 5 and 2 Thessalonians 1-2.
As he closes his first letter, Paul's exhortation sounds very much like what we read in the Gospel:
"Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life, and that day catch you by surprise like a trap.... Be vigilant at all times and pray that you have the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent and to stand before the Son of Man" (Lk 21:34-36).
Paul is not making up new things as he goes, but only handing on what he himself received (see 1 Cor 11:23). This will be important for the next letter to the same community, because it seems that some novelties are being introduced, causing agitation and inappropriate behavior.
The second letter to the Thessalonians begins, as usual, with an outpouring of affection for the far-off community, still suffering persecution for their newfound faith. Paul uses apocalyptic language to encourage them, though he realizes that he will have to clarify what that typically Jewish languages does and does not mean as he goes ahead.
One of the most tantalizing aspects of 2 Thessalonians is Paul's reference to "the lawless one," "doomed to perdition," "whose coming springs from the power of Satan" (2:3,9). Is it the Antichrist of 1 John 2:22? Paul doesn't use the Johannine term, but he does say that this "mystery of lawlessness" (2:7) is somehow being restrained (for now). He even indicates that there is no need to say more on the subject, since the Thessalonians will, of course, remember his teaching them about it. To which 2,000 years of Christian thinkers respond with a collective sigh of disappointment.
Because there is no really unbroken tradition to guide the interpretation of this section of 2 Thessalonians, it has nourished many a fertile imagination. We are best off holding to the solid interpretation given in the light of the whole deposit of faith and expressed in the wise words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
"The Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgement" (CCC 676).
N.T. Wright's Paul: A Biography is the book I would recommend to someone who wanted to read one (only one) book that combined the life and letters of St Paul. Written by a noted Scripture, this is a flowing narrative that is scripturally enlightening and historically sound. Wright gives the reader a way of following Paul through the Acts of the Apostles and the writing of his letters, making Paul the person that much more approachable, and the letters themselves more readable as a result of having a social and historical context.
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