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4:11 To “live a tranquil life” and to “work with your hands” are blessings indeed! “It is through free, creative, and participatory and mutually supportive labor that human beings express and enhance the dignity of their lives” (Pope Francis, The Joy of the Gospel, 192). What happens when people are deprived of the blessing of work?
4:13 The early Christians lived with a keen sense of the imminence of Christ’s return. Paul vividly describes the second coming, the sound of God’s trumpet and the meeting of the living and the dead “in the air” (4:17). How often do you think about the second coming of Christ? Does it make a di erence in the way you live your life?
The second coming will be sudden and inescapable, like the onset of labor pains as a new world comes to birth.
CHAPTER 4
a. [4:5] Ps 79:6; Jer 10:25; 2 Thes 1:8; 1 Pt 3:7.
b. [4:8] Lk 10:16.
c. [4:9] Jn 6:45; 13:34; 1 Jn 2:20–21,
27; 4:7.
d. [4:10] 2 Thes 3:6–12.
e. [4:14] 1 Cor 15:3–4, 12, 20.
f. [4:15] 1 Cor 15:51; Rev 14:13;
20:4–6.
g. [4:16] Mt 24:31; 1 Cor 15:23, 52.
CHAPTER 5
a. [5:1] Mt 24:36–45.
b. [5:2] 2 Pt 3:10.
c. [5:4] Eph 5:8–9.
d. [5:6] Mt 24:42; Rom 13:12–13;
1 Pt 5:8.
e. [5:8] Is 59:17; Rom 13:11–14;
Eph 6:11, 14–17.
f. [5:11] Rom 15:2; 1 Cor 8:1;
14:12, 26; Eph 4:29.
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 THESSALONIANS -
Mutual Charity. 9On the subject of mutual charity you have no need for anyone to write you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another.c 10Indeed, you do this for all the brothers throughout Macedonia. Nevertheless we urge you, brothers, to progress even more,d 11and to aspire to live a tranquil life, to mind your own a airs, and to work with your [own] hands, as we instructed you, 12that you may conduct yourselves properly toward outsiders and not depend on anyone.
Hope for the Christian Dead. 13We do not want you to be unaware, brothers, about those who have fallen asleep, so that you may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope. 14For if we believe that Jesus died and rose, so too will God, through Jesus, bring with him those who have fallen asleep.e 15Indeed, we tell you this, on the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord,* will surely not precede those who have fallen asleep.f 16For the Lord himself, with a word of command, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, will come down from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise rst.g 17Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together* with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Thus we shall always be with the Lord. 18Therefore, console one another with these words.
5Vigilance.
1Concerning times and seasons, brothers, you have no need for
a2
anything to be written to you. For you yourselves know very
well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief at night.b 3When people are saying, “Peace and security,” then sudden disaster comes upon them, like labor pains upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.
4But you, brothers, are not in darkness, for that day to overtake you like a thief.c 5For all of you are children of the light* and children of the day. We are not of the night or of darkness. 6Therefore, let us not sleep as the rest do, but let us stay alert and sober.d 7Those who sleep go to sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night. 8But since we are of the day, let us be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love and the helmet that is hope for salvation.e 9For God did not destine us for wrath, but to gain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, 10who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live together with him.* 11Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up, as indeed you do.f
* [4:15] Coming of the Lord: Paul here assumes that the second coming, or parousia, will occur within his own lifetime but insists that the time or season is unknown (1 Thes 5:1–2). Nevertheless, the most important aspect of the parousia for him was the ful llment of union with Christ. His pastoral exhortation focuses rst on hope for the departed faithful, then (1 Thes 5:1–3) on the need of preparedness for those who have to achieve their goal.
* [4:17] Will be caught up together: literally, snatched up, carried o ; cf. 2 Cor 12:2; Rev 12:5. From the Latin verb here used, rapiemur, has come the idea of “the rapture,” when believers will be transported away from the woes of the world; this construction combines this verse with Mt 24:40–41 (see note there) // Lk 17:34–35 and passages from Revelation in a scheme of millennial dispensationalism.
* [5:5] Children of the light: that is, belonging to the daylight of God’s personal revelation and expected to achieve it (an analogous development of imagery that appears in Jn 12:36).
* [5:10] Characteristically, Paul plays on words suggesting ultimate and anticipated death and life. Union with the cruci ed and risen Lord at his parousia is anticipated in some measure in contrasted states of our temporal life. The essential element he urges is our indestructible personal union in Christ’s own life (see Rom 5:1–10).