Monday of the 6th Week of Easter
Acts 16:11-15 | Psalm 149:1-6, 9 | John 15:26 – 16:4
Today’s reflection begins with a photo-journal from my 2013 pilgrimage retracing the footsteps of St. Paul through modern-day Turkey and Greece, specifically on today’s reading about Philippi and Lydia.
Sailing from Troas we made a straight run for Samothrace; the next day for Neapolis, and from there for Philippi, a Roman colony and the principal city of that particular district of Macedonia.
Not much left of it, I’m afraid…
…reclaimed by the sands of time.
After a few days in this city we went along the river outside the gates as it was the sabbath and this was a customary place for prayer.
We celebrated mass at that very spot. No “LYDIA WUZ HERE” graffiti to be found.
We sat down and preached to the women who had come to the meeting. One of these women was called Lydia, a devout woman from the town of Thyatira who was in the purple-dye trade.
St. Lydia of Thyatira, the first European convert.
She listened to us, and the Lord opened her heart to accept what Paul was saying.
The Man himself.
After she and her household had been baptised she sent us an invitation: “If you really think me a true believer in the Lord,” she said, “come and stay with us”; and she would take no refusal.
Not her house, of course, just a Greek Orthodox church built near the river where she was baptized.
✞ ✞ ✞ ✞ ✞
By all accounts, Lydia of Thyatira was a well-to-do woman, purple dye being an incredibly expensive luxury at the time. Even today, to be “born to the purple” is to lead a life of privilege, and to be envied by many.
Yet despite her status, she chose to listen to and believe a short scruffy man called Paul, who preached the good news of salvation.
Despite her earthly riches, she set great store by the grace of baptism, an act probably pooh-poohed by her contemporaries as “a mere dalliance by the river”, and at best “a cleansing bath”.
Yet we today, who possess riches and technologies beyond even the reach of St. Lydia, spend more time on said riches and technologies than on attaining the prize of eternal life. Are we making the right choice here?
Lord, open our eyes to the place in our Father’s heavenly mansion that you have prepared for us, and encourage us to strive towards deserving that place each and every day. Amen.