Rooted and Grounded in Love: Joining God's Feast of Holy Communion in the Global Market Economy

Abstract

God invites us to share in holy communion in the whole of life. Holy communion is the feast of wholly charitable life together through which we participate in the holy nature and work of God’s perfect love. The problem I address is the present participation of the church in the unholy communion of the global market economy, which joins participants from around the world in a social and ecological web of relations marked by the unholy energies of self-interested love. Drawing upon resources from the holiness-communitarian and agrarian-ecological traditions, with a focus upon the agro-economic production, distribution, and consumption of our daily bread and common cup, I argue that Christians are called to join in holy communion in the whole of life by participating in modes of economic life together that are consonant with the gracious, convivial, enfleshed, mutual, and creative love of God.