Saints Aquila and Priscilla

Aquila and Priscilla were husband and wife, Jews, and tentmakers. They lived in Rome, and in 49 or 50 they had to leave because of the edict by which Emperor Claudius expelled the Jews from the city. They settled in Corinth. There Paul arrived, a tentmaker by trade himself. They took him in and worked together. From then on their story and his are never apart: we find them again in Ephesus, where Paul leaves them to look after the community, and then again in Rome, where the Church met in their house. In Acts there is an episode that says a lot. Apollos arrives in Ephesus, a Jew from Alexandria, eloquent and very gifted, who however knew only the baptism of John. Aquila and Priscilla take him aside and explain things to him “more accurately.” Two craftspeople correcting an orator, without humiliating him in front of anyone. A detail scholars always point out: in most passages her name comes first, which in ancient texts is never by chance. Priscilla — or Prisca, as Paul always calls her — must have been the more authoritative of the two. Paul writes that they had risked their necks to save his life, and that all the churches of the Gentiles were grateful to them for it. If your name is Aquila or Priscilla, today is your name day.