“We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is fitting, because your
faith grows exceedingly, and the love of every one of you all abounds toward each other, so that we ourselves boast of you among the churches of God” (II Thessalonians 1:3)
Now here’s a challenge to set before our entire parish as an inspiration and an aspiration! It appears in reading the whole epistle that St. Paul may have been exaggerating in ending his second letter to the Church in Thessalonica. He spent much of the contents explaining that they must be vigilant. They must not waver, nor fall prey to false teaching. Rather, he made it clear to them what they might become in Christ. He praised them with great wisdom, letting them know what they could be with the help of the Holy Spirit. He set them a goal. Never be satisfied with your present state—reach for your highest potential. “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” as Robert Browning wrote.
And St. Paul intends his blessing for us also, though he never made it to America. We need not assume the apostle to the Gentiles is not praying for us now, because he is more alive in the Kingdom than while on earth. Not just St. Paul, but all the apostles commanded by Christ to “go forth, preach, teach, etc.” More, like all of the Lord Jesus’ churches, an angel has been assigned to oversee us and to pray for us. In his report to the Holy Trinity about our status, it should include the following:
1. Our faith continually grows and develops. Have we among us some who haven’t made an honest commitment to Jesus Christ? Let us find them not to criticize or humiliate them, God forbid, but to shore up their convictions. When we offer the invitation: “Let us lift up our hearts,” are some of us sunk in despair or fluctuating between service to God and commitment to things of the earth? We can’t go forward to the Kingdom while leaving some of us behind;
2. Our love for one another increases the longer we go on worshipping our loving Lord in the Divine Liturgy. It has to mean something that our being together is not an accident. Everything is part of the Lord’s greater plan. He wants us to know one another and to pass our love through our parish. Maybe we were brought to church by loving parents, and we now come as a duty. Perhaps our spouse is caught up in the Spirit and we tag along. By our love for the lukewarm, we can fire up these souls;
3. And our faith embraced by love goes on and on. There is no end to our commitment. In this time of transition where so many promises fail fulfillment, marriages dissolve, youngsters lose their affection for their parents, and so many think that they can go through life scrapping old obligations like used Kleenex, let us strive to make God’s Church the one stable refuge where His children will go on maturing and developing from one age and stage to another, filled with the awareness that Jesus never fails, nor do His followers.
It’s an overwhelming privilege to be a member of the people of God called Orthodox Christian. May it be not a boast, but a self-evident fact that this spiritual community manifests the faithfulness, affections and constancy which St. Paul proposed to the Church of Thessalonica, and may each member of this congregation take as a personal commitment to make this happen.