These are spots in your love feasts, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, carried about by winds; trees whose fruit withers, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots;
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Aquinas Study Bible
AD 2017
their banquets etc. : We must remark that, at the time of St. Paul, in imitation of Christ, who, after the common meal on the Passover lamb, instituted the Eucharist, the Christians instituted before the Eucharist a meal common to all, rich and poor alike, in token of their mutual Christian charity. This custom lasted in some Churches for several centuries. As late as the time of Sozomen, as he relates (Hist.lib. 7. c. 29), it was the custom in many towns and villages of Egypt, first to take a meal in common, and then, following Christ’s example, celebrate and partake of the Holy Eucharist. The Third Council of Carthage (can. 29) points to the same custom as prevailing in several other Churches. Others, however, think that “the supper taken before” is the agape after the Eucharist. In the primitive Church, in imitation of Christ, the richer members were in the habit of spreading a feast for rich and poor alike after the Holy Communion, in token of love, where it was called the “agape;”...
These are spots in their banquets; (see 2 Peter ii. 13.) in which they commit unheard of abominations, twice dead, which signifies no more than quite dead, clouds without water All these metaphors are to represent the corrupt manners of these heretics. (Witham)
