Open Heart, Open Home - Marcella - The One Year Women in Christian History Devotional

325–410

The New Testament gives us the vivid picture of the church as a body. We are feet and hands, eyes and ears, each part with a different specialty. In one passage, Paul has fun with the idea, imagining how absurd it would be for ears to sulk about not being able to see. Every part of the body—the human body or the church body—is important, and the different parts work together for the good of all and ultimately for God’s glory.

We see that played out in the story of Marcella, a well-to-do Christian widow at the turn of the fifth century. Her gift, we might surmise, was hospitality. After her wealthy husband died, she gave up her high fashion and wore a simple brown dress, without makeup or an elaborate hairstyle. What’s more, she gathered other Christian women who did the same thing. Her home became the headquarters for this “brown dress society” as they worshiped the Lord and served others. She is credited with founding the first convent in the Western church.

Marcella also employed her gift of hospitality with the scholar Jerome. When the pope gave Jerome the task of translating the Scriptures from their original Hebrew and Greek into Latin, it was Marcella who gave him a place to work. Jerome used his gifts of scholarship and language to produce a translation that the church relied on for a millennium and a half. But he was just one part of the body, as was Marcella with her hospitality (and Paula with her own support of the project—see January 31). Jerome was known for a fiery temper, and he made some enemies, but Marcella helped to keep that in check. So again we see different gifts working together.

How has God gifted you? Are you a scholar, a teacher, a helper, an administrator, or, like Marcella, a happy host? How does God knit your abilities together with those of others to accomplish his purposes? Celebrate that today.

The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ.

1 Corinthians 12:12