BENEDICT XVI
GENERAL AUDIENCE
Wednesday, 7 February 2007
Priscilla and Aquila
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
[snip- please read the document in its entirety.]
The couple in question are Priscilla and Aquila, who take their place, as we already mentioned briefly last Wednesday, in the sphere of numerous collaborators who gravitated around the Apostle Paul. Based on the information in our possession, this married couple played a very active role in the post-Paschal origins of the Church.
[snip]
However, it was from Rome that they reached Corinth, where Paul met them at the beginning of the 50s. There he became associated with them, as Luke tells us, practicing the same trade of making tents or large draperies for domestic use, and he was even welcomed into their home (cf. Acts 18: 3).
The reason they came to Corinth was the decision taken by the Emperor Claudius to expel from Rome the city’s Jewish residents. Concerning this event the Roman historian Suetonius tells us that the Hebrews were expelled because “they were rioting due to someone named Chrestus” (cf. “The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Claudius”, n. 25).
One sees that he did not know the name well - instead of Christ he wrote “Chrestus” - and he had only a very confused idea of what had happened. In any case, there were internal discords within the Jewish community about the question if Jesus was the Christ. And for the Emperor these problems were the reason to simply expel all Jews from Rome.
One can deduce that the couple had already embraced the Christian faith in the 40s, and now they had found in Paul someone who not only shared with them this faith - that Jesus is the Christ - but who was also an Apostle, personally called by the Risen Lord.
Therefore, their first encounter is at Corinth, where they welcomed him into their house and worked together making tents.
In a second moment they transferred to Ephesus in Asia Minor. There they had a decisive role in completing the Christian formation of the Alexandrian Jew Apollo, who we spoke about last Wednesday.
Since he only knew the faith superficially, “Priscilla and Aquila… took him and expounded to him the way of God more accurately” (Acts 18: 26).
When Paul wrote the First Letter to the Corinthians from Ephesus, together with his own greeting he explicitly sent those of “Aquila and Prisca, together with the church in their house” (16: 19).
Hence, we come to know the most important role that this couple played in the environment of the primitive Church: that of welcoming in their own house the group of local Christians when they gathered to listen to the Word of God and to celebrate the Eucharist. It is exactly this type of gathering that in Greek is called “ekklesìa” - the Latin word is “ecclesia”, the Italian “chiesa” - which means convocation, assembly, gathering.
In the house of Aquila and Priscilla, therefore, the Church gathered, the convocation of Christ, which celebrates here the Sacred Mysteries.
Thus, we can see the very birth of the reality of the Church in the homes of believers. Christians, in fact, from the first part of the third century did not have their own places of worship. Initially it was the Jewish Synagogue, until the original symbiosis between the Old and New Testaments dissolved and the Church of the Gentiles was forced to give itself its own identity, always profoundly rooted in the Old Testament.
Then, after this “break”, they gathered in the homes of Christians that thus become “Church”. And finally, in the third century, true and proper buildings for Christian worship were born.
But here, in the first half of the first century and in the second century, the homes of Christians become a true and proper “Church”. As I said, together they read the Sacred Scripture and celebrate the Eucharist.
That was what used to happen, for example, at Corinth, where Paul mentioned a certain “Gaius, who is host to me and to the whole church” (Rom 16: 23), or at Laodicea, where the community gathered in the home of a certain Nympha (cf. Col 4: 15), or at Colossae, where the meeting took place in the house of a certain Archippus (cf. Phlm 2).
[snip]
In this way, the memory of a woman who has certainly been an active person and of great value in the history of Roman Christianity is perpetuated. One thing is sure: together with the gratitude of the early Church, of which St Paul speaks, we must also add our own, since thanks to the faith and apostolic commitment of the lay faithful, of families, of spouses like Priscilla and Aquila, Christianity has reached our generation.
It could grow not only thanks to the Apostles who announced it. . . .
vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20070207_en.html
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/b...007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20070207_en.html
I luv Jesus!
