Agape feast

An agape feast or lovefeast is a kind of communal meal shared among Christians. The name comes from the Greek word ἀγάπη (agape), which implies the highest form of love described in the New Testament.

Agape feasts originated in the early Church and were a time of fellowship for believers. The Eucharist used to be also present during the lovefeasts in the earliest times, although at some point, beginning in the latter 1st century AD and 250 AD, the Eucharist was separated from it. Thus, in modern retrievalist celebrations of the agape feasts tradition, terms such as "Lovefeast" refer to meals distinct from the Eucharist. Such lovefeasts, celebrated within the Eastern Orthodox tradition and also in pietistic traditions, seek to strengthen fraternal bonds between parishioners.

The practice of sharing an "agape" meal is mentioned in Jude 1:12 and has been said to be a "common meal of the early church". References to these communal meals are found in 1 Corinthians 11:17–34 and in Saint Ignatius of Antioch's Letter to the Smyrnaeans, where the term agape is used, and in a letter from Pliny the Younger to Trajan, (ca. 111 AD) in which he reported that the Christians, after having met "on a stated day" in the early morning to "address a form of prayer to Christ, as to a divinity", would "reassemble, to eat in common a harmless meal" later in the day. Similar communal meals are also mentioned in the Coptic tradition–often identified as the Apostolic tradition attributed to Hippolytus of Rome, who does not use the term agape–and in works of Tertullian, who does.