This week’s readings are laden with the spirit of anticipating arrival, new birth and the associated
fears and anxieties that accompany the unknown. I want to reflect on the Saint Paul’s, 1
Thessalonians 5:16-24, reading specifically. Paul’s message goes beyond God entering our world
through Jesus, to what is expected of us because God entered our world through Jesus.

The reading is a brief list of admonitions about some very important expectations in dealing with
the good and evil we encounter. The admonitions are profound yet very practical and, I believe,
very contemporary. Paul directs us:

“Test everything; retain what is good.
Refrain from every kind of evil.”

I believe what he’s telling us here is just because we now have knowledge of the one true and
living God and His promise of eternal life, our lives have not gotten any easier. We have a new
type of work to do. “Test everything”, means we’re expected to use our highest faculties and
sensibilities to question everything. God wants us to ask questions so we can enter into a
dialogue with Him. Don’t be afraid to ask, don’t be afraid to question, but do so with the
goodness, the truth and the beauty revealed to us by Jesus Christ. Derive your conclusion
through reasoning and be open to the power of Spirit to direct your labor. And regardless of your
conclusion, “Refrain from every kind of evil.” How liberating an admonition!

As a disciple Paul is echoing Jesus words which he often uttered when encountering people of all
walks, “Be not afraid” of the truth being revealed to you.

Late Pope Saint John Paul II, leading the Church almost two thousand later, made “Be not
afraid” one the central themes of his ministry in the modern world. “Have no fear of that which
you yourselves have created, have no fear of all that man has produced, and that every day is
becoming more dangerous for him! Finally, have no fear of yourselves! Why should we have no
fear? Because man has been redeemed by God.”
1
Anticipating and celebrating the birth of Jesus this Christmas let us also celebrate the liberation
of ourselves from fear of our own questioning and our own creation. Let us be grateful for our
faculties, made in the image of God, and the Holy Spirit sent to us by God, so that we can labor
to reveal the truth, the goodness, and the beauty of our world. To love as Jesus taught us and
refrain from every kind of evil.


1 John Paul II (Wojtyła, Karol Józef), Crossing the Threshold of Hope, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., Translation Copyright