Today is August 30, Saturday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time.
We read at today’s Mass, “We urge you, brothers and sisters, to progress even more, and to aspire to live a tranquil life, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your own hands, as we instructed you” (1 Thes 4:10-12).
At first glance, Paul’s exhortation to “aspire to live a tranquil life” might sound like a call to passivity, a quietism that withdraws from the world. But that is not what Paul intends. The tranquility he describes is not emptiness or disengagement; it is ordered peace, a life structured in God.
Such tranquility frees the heart from distraction and anxiety so that it can be filled with love of God. It is not the absence of activity but the harmony of prayer and work, of fidelity and trust. Paul tells us that part of this peace is “minding your own affairs.” That means refusing the temptation to meddle in the lives of others or to compare ourselves with them.
A path to santification
How often we waste our energy in comparisons, wishing we had someone else’s vocation, gifts or circumstances! Instead, we are called to embrace faithfully what God has entrusted to us — loving our families, serving in our communities and being present to the responsibilities right in front of us.
Paul also highlights the dignity of daily work: “to work with your own hands.” Here, we hear an echo of the Benedictine motto, ora et labora — prayer and work. Our labor, even in the most ordinary tasks, becomes a path of sanctification when joined to prayer.
The secret to holiness, then, is not extraordinary feats but ordinary fidelity. To live a tranquil life means to live in peace with God’s providence, doing what is ours to do and trusting that in our daily work and love, we will find his abiding presence.
Let us pray,
O God, who cause the minds of the faithful to unite in a single purpose, grant your people to love what you command and to desire what you promise, that, amid the uncertainties of this world, our hearts may be fixed on that place where true gladness is found. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.
