Week 21 Tuesday (Year 1)

Readings: 1 Thessalonians 2.1-8; Psalm 139; Matthew 23.23-26

Paul is at his most tender in how he writes to the Thessalonians, one of his favourite congregations. It was not for any ulterior motive that I preached to you, he says, and he continues by listing many inadequate reasons for preaching the gospel.

It is important for preachers and would be evangelizers to meditate on this text of Paul. It is important for them to examine their motives for preaching. Are they deluded? Is their interest in others immoral in some way? Are they deceiving people? Are they seeking popularity and fame? Are they seeking money or power? Are they seeking to be flattered and to please human beings? Am I really doing it for others or for myself? Paul presents all of these motives and assures the Thessalonians that his motivation is not to be found among them.

It is a veritable examination of conscience. Instead, Paul says, 'I was gentle among you, like a nursing mother caring for her children'. He wanted, he says, to give himself completely to them. He is a man in love.

It is how we think of Jesus himself very often, as gentle and tender, a kind and good shepherd. Though this is not how he is in today's gospel reading. We are in the middle of Matthew 23, the woes against the scribes and Pharisees, in which Jesus lacerates them for their legalism and hypocrisy. They do not measure up against the examination of conscience Paul proposes.

Because they are teachers of the law, presenting themselves as guides for living and purveyors of wisdom, the criticisms of Jesus are all the fiercer. 'They should have known', seems to be the reason for Jesus's anger, 'if anybody should have known, they should'.

The law of God, his way, is truly taught only by those who stand in the light of God's truth and love, whose motivation for what they do originates in that light. It is the only light which allows a true valuation of ourselves and of our motives. The same light - always truth and love together in God - establishes in us a disposition of tender and sincere love.

Who can claim that his motives are totally pure and absolutely uncontaminated? At least we have these guidelines from Paul and these warnings from Jesus which call us back to reflect on our motives. They should encourage us to persevere in the journey of the Christian life and to seek to do that more and more completely, every day, by living in the light of God's truth and God's love. So our motivations will be revealed and purified, and where necessary replaced with those which belong to the mind of Christ himself. It is a transformation we see in the life of Saint Paul and it is offered to us also.