Work Play Love

“Christians make the Mass, and the Mass makes Christians.” So said the Martyrs of Abitina, North Africa, in A.D. 304. The Mass was the reality most essential to the life of believers, and it deeply affected everything they did. In Work Play Love popular author Mike Aquilina shows how the Eucharist shaped three basic dimensions of life for the early Christians. ​Work. Christians brought the fruits of their labor to the altar—not only bread and wine, but also cheese, olives, honey, dried fish, and freshly pressed oil. As they worshiped, they consecrated the world itself to God. In turn, this affected the way they approached their work. It was not just toil. It was an act of love, undertaken for the Father. They labored in imitation of Jesus the laborer. Made one with Christians in the Eucharist, Jesus worked through them and in them. ​Play. The Mass was a leisurely, contemplative act, but it was celebrated on a normal workday in the Roman world. It was useless by the standards of the cit