RBWords

     The great Dominican "Master of the Order," Bl.  Hyacinth Cormier, once said that the purpose of his official visitations to the provinces of our Order was "to encourage, to encourage, to encourage!"  St. Paul is trying to do the same for the community in Thessalonika that he had founded in his first missionary journey.  The challenge of living the new life of Christ in a pagan environment where the lifestyle could be "anything goes," was considerable.  There was also the challenge of teachers who were promoting ideas at odds with what Paul had taught!  Some of these ideas concerned the second coming of Jesus and when it would occur and whether or not those living at the time would be better off than those who died before it happened!   I find myself thinking that those challenges remain with us in our own time!  

     Although we euphemistically use the word "secularism" to describe much of our cultural ethos now, the word "paganism" would fit quite nicely and accurately.  We have a lot in common with the Thessalonians in this matter!  We also witness, almost every year, someone who writes or preaches about the second coming of Jesus as being something subject to our calculation and prediction!  It's amazing how these folks ignore Jesus' own words and Paul's to the effect that we don't know when that is going to happen.  Paul is trying to keep the community from being misled.  He is trying " to encourage, to encourage, to encourage!"  I find those words to be almost a motto for my parish mission and retreat ministry.  The secularism [paganism] of contemporary American consumerist culture is hard to work against, and the amount of ignorance and misinformation about our faith can be discouraging.  We all need encouragement, but, just as importantly, we need to GIVE IT TO ONE ANOTHER!  AMEN