This commentary on St. Paul’s Epistles to the Thessalonians, to Timothy and to Titus is not meant to be read. It is intended for one thing only: prayerful meditation, and is suitable for this end alone. Its purpose is to offer those who pray helps to adore God’s Word more deeply, to love it more humbly, and to live by it more resolutely. Holy Scripture is a work and word of the Holy Spirit; he is the real author thinking and speaking in and above the human authors. The meaning that really counts, then, is a divine, eternal, and infinite one; it is the meaning in God’s own mind, so far as he deigns to communicate it to us. At the same time, Scripture is the Spirit’s testimony to God’s Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, a testimony that includes the preparation of his coming in the Old Testament and the extension of his presence in the Apostolic period. Nowhere else do we encounter the Son-as-Word more immediately than here, where the Spirit takes from what is his, the Son’s, in order to lead us into all his truth. The truth about the triune God himself, the truth about creation and human life, the truth about every individual, the truth about each human being’s most personal, unique relation to God.

From the foreword