NOTES for Th2 1:11-12
These words of the apostle Paul about the calling of Christians contain exceptionally important things that are not fully obvious in the familiar Synodal translation. This is one of those cases when it is necessary to turn to the original and to the Slavonic text. The apostle says that as the Day of the Lord approaches, when Christ comes in glory, he prays for the Christians of Thessalonica (and for all the rest) and asks God that the Lord Himself would make us worthy of the calling, that people would be called by God to life and salvation. The Slavonic text reads here: "...we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of the calling," and "calling" here translates the Greek klesis, meaning "summons" and cognate with Ekklesia, "Church." Thus the matter is not so much a calling as a person's unique path before God, but the call by which the shepherd gathers the sheep in order to save them from destruction. The Slavonic "make worthy" is very precise: God's calling for each of us is an undeserved gift given to us through the Church.
Continuing, the apostle prays that God would fulfill, that is, fill with power, people's good will toward good and the work of faith. For the apostle, calling and the empowering of the good will are inseparably connected, and this is a word of enormous hope for every person. The will toward good and the work of faith - with these words the apostle designates the human answer to God's call. But the person himself has no strength to embody this answer in his life; each of us has considerable experience of defeats on the path of good and faith. And if God Himself did not fill our answer to His call with power, the call itself would prove vain. But the apostle says that, calling us to life, God Himself fills us with this life.
Precisely in this consists the glorification of the name of Christ in people, the glorification about which the apostle speaks so vividly in the letter to the Philippians: "Therefore God has highly exalted Him and given Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil. 2:9-11). The very possibility that we not only hear God's call but also receive the strength to respond to it is the fruit of Christ's sacrifice on the Cross and His Resurrection. In this the Creator's design for the salvation of people is fulfilled, the design that St. John Chrysostom praises in his eucharistic prayer, calling it "the economy concerning us." And the apostle also says that in God's calling and our answer to it not only is this "economy concerning us" fulfilled, but we ourselves in Him receive glory and become participants in His victory.