Daily Synaxis: A Sustaining Meal

I BEGIN with a confession. Though Erin is my dear friend and I would do anything to support him and his family, I don’t go to the Hall of Men, rarely attend seminars, and don’t read EDI emails beyond opening them. There is nothing intentional in any of those. With five kids, all of their many activities, church, and my job at the Emergency department, I am just too busy and the material seems too far away from my day-to-day obligations. 

Life before COVID-19 was fragmented and frenetic. I wanted to read the Scriptures daily. I wanted to talk about literature and history. I wanted to learn more about theology and read the Church Fathers and lives of the Saints. But each one of these spheres was competing with each other so that I did none of them regularly.

In a strange twist of events, COVID-19 has stripped down my life. All the activities are now gone—sleepovers, play dates, parties, and events. Additionally, because of the nature of my job right now, I live in quarantine—a separate part of the house, no TV, radio, or human contact. Under this “pathological monasticism,” I read the Daily Synaxis for the first time.

Synaxis, quite literally, has been the singular thing that has kept me feeling whole. It is a purse string that pulls together all those pieces I tried to juggle and kept dropping. Its design is so easy for me to use and the format does not overwhelm me. It is like a sample platter of all the things I love. Clicking on the scripture for the day has made it so much more accessible to me. And the quality of the pictures and print is top grade—like being served the best cheesecake of your life on a fine china plate at a drive-thru (which is also available from Erin’s house). And I can’t tell you the number of friends in just the past 3 weeks that I have begged to begin to make this a part of their lives.

The proof of course will be if I maintain this pattern when the locomotive of American life pulls back into the station. I believe, now that I have read it, that I cannot neglect it again. It offers something unique that sets it apart from all the other activities that EDI offers—it is not an activity. It is an offering of a prepackaged private devotional. It is collapsible and expandable, a DIY self-reflection. It has become and will continue to be both an appetizer and a meal that sustains me, and one that I desire to share with others.