Fr Ben Garren

Lydia of Thyatira 

Dear Siblings in Christ,

My thought is that it was a church always decked out in purple. Not because of any association with our connecting purple with penitential but because they had all variety of shades of purple cloth available. Seconds from the owner of the house’s business, for this church was a house church. The first church planted on the European continent.

If this house church followed the general pattern, it would probably surprise us. We think of house churches as a home where a dining room or living room is momentarily rearranged for worship or a bible study.

In the early years of Christianity a House Church was a house that was slowly converted over to be a church in full. Where the nicest bathing room was changed into a baptistry, the largest room transformed into a worship space, where the owner of the house converted the master bedroom into a hostel for pilgrims and the weary. And in this house, I imagine that every weary pilgrim was, for the first time, surrounded by the most royal of purple.

This is my meditation whenever I encounter the story of Lydia of Thyatira, the business woman who traded in purple cloth and provided a home to Paul as he evangelized the area.

A meditation on what it means to first give the seconds one has from one’s work to God but then finds oneself converting one’s house, one’s entire life, to be in service to the worship of God and the community around one.

I hope this meditation will be fruitful for you this day as we celebrate the Lydia and the church she and the women of her household founded.

Pax,

—Ben