Post-feast of the Transfiguration; Holy Confessor Emilian, Bishop of Cyzicus (815)
Romans 15:30-33; Matthew 17:24-18:4
Dormition Fast.
Read Romans 15:30-33
The appeal of the Holy Apostle Paul in today’s epistle is a model for all of us as Christians. We should continually seek the prayers of our brothers and sisters in Christ and likewise, pray for them. This form of prayer, petitionary prayer, is central to our lives as Christians. Our individual prayers for the Church along with our communal prayer in the church, liturgical prayer, unite us as the one Mystical Body of Christ. But let us also draw from the Holy Apostle’s words another important aspect of our Christian life and that is to be with one another and to find joy in each other’s company. There is a wonderful Latin word that expresses this coming together: convivium, which is literally the act of living together. We get our English word conviviality from this root. It expresses not simply a coming together but a joyful coming together in which we find comfort and are “refreshed” as St. Paul says.
In these last months, we have all felt a bit starved of convivium; we have missed our times together as friends, family, or co-workers. Just as God is a community of persons bound together by infinite love, it should not surprise us that being made in His image and likeness that we too desire communion with one another. In George Weigel’s book Letters to a Young Catholic (which I highly recommend for all Catholics both young and old) Weigel situates our Catholic faith in a number of contexts linked to a number of places or locations that reveal that context. In his chapter about a pub in London, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, Weigel recounts how the great Catholic man of letters G.K. Chesterton would spend time there with his Catholic friends and enjoy each other’s company over ales and a pub meal. This, Weigel, argues is also part of being a Catholic along with our devotional lives because we delight in the company of others and in this convivium we are refreshed. Let us pray that we might again find ourselves more fully in the company of others for times of convivial fellowship and the joy that it brings.