Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time—1 Thessalonians 1:1-5b

Today begins a five-week cycle in which our second readings will come from Saint Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians. He probably wrote this letter around 51 A.D. during his stay in Corinth, which would make this possibly the oldest writing in the New Testament. 1 Thessalonians is a warmly-written letter filled with praise, advice, and comfort in which Saint Paul fondly recalls his time in Thessalonica, which was the wealthy seaport capital of Macedonia. The letter ends with some instructions about Jesus' return, which makes it ideal reading for these waning weeks of the liturgical year that build up to the Solemnity of Christ the King.

In these opening five verses of the letter, Saint Paul practically gushes over the believers in Thessalonica, describing his prayer for and constant remembrance of them. He does this sort of thing in other letters as well. When I hear this sort of gushing, I am encouraged quite a bit. I am certain not every member of this community was always as good as Saint Paul makes them sound in these verses. They were frail human beings, just like us, trying to live like Jesus in very trying times. I do not always embody what is best about our parish or our diocese, and I would guess that more than a few of the original audience fell short on that account as well.

But I do not doubt Saint Paul when he says that he always thanks God for them. In Greek, he says, “We Eucharist to God always for you all.” He says he unceasingly remembers them in his prayers. These earliest followers of Jesus who first had to work out what it meant to be Christians in their upper-class seaport town were buoyed by the relentless prayers of Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy. The relentless prayers of these saints certainly did not stop when they went home to the Lord. These great pillars of the early Church still Eucharist to God for all of us, most especially when we celebrate the Eucharist today.

I am also challenged by Saint Paul’s gushing and his relentless prayer. I feel like the Spirit is asking me, “Who do you gush over in relentless prayer? And have you ever told them?” I immediately think of my wife and kids. I pray for them each by name every night at our family prayer altar before bed. Many times I will pray for specific blessings for my older daughters who are becoming increasingly aware that the world is not as simple and straightforward as we might like, or for my son who is beginning to emerge from preschool innocence into a more experimental phase. They know that I pray for them, but I doubt they know what I pray for them.

With Saint Paul’s example, perhaps the Spirit is challenging each of us to gush over someone in relentless prayer and let them know about our gushing. There are spiritual benefits to praying for someone even if they do not know about it, but our prayers might be even more helpful if we shared how we pray for someone else.