Skills

Begin today by praying the traditional invocation 'Come, Holy Spirit': 'Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love.' Then quickly review from Monday: Who is the Holy Spirit? (The Third Person of the Trinity, true God.) What are some of his seven gifts? (Wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, fear of the Lord.) Which gift did the martyrs especially show? (Fortitude.) This short prayer and review keeps the Spirit at the center of the week.

A complement completes the meaning of a verb. There are four to know. (1) A DIRECT OBJECT receives the action of an action verb; find it by asking 'whom?' or 'what?' after the verb. 'Constantine won the BATTLE.' (Won what? Battle.) (2) An INDIRECT OBJECT tells 'to whom' or 'for whom' the action is done, and always comes before a direct object. 'The emperor gave the CHURCH freedom.' (Gave freedom to whom? The church.) (3) A PREDICATE NOUN follows a linking verb (is, are, was, were, became, seems) and renames the subject. 'Perpetua was a MARTYR.' (Martyr renames Perpetua.) (4) A PREDICATE ADJECTIVE follows a linking verb and describes the subject. 'The martyrs were BRAVE.' (Brave describes the martyrs.) The key test: action verbs take objects; linking verbs take predicate words. Worked examples: 'The Romans feared CHRISTIANS' — feared is an action verb, Christians is a direct object. 'The Holy Spirit is GOD' — is is a linking verb, God is a predicate noun. 'Their courage seemed SUPERNATURAL' — seemed is linking, supernatural is a predicate adjective.

Christianity began in Jerusalem and spread outward along the roads and sea lanes of the Roman Empire, which ringed the Mediterranean Sea. By the 300s, five cities had become the great centers — the 'patriarchates' — of the Christian world. Find them on a map and you can see the shape of the early Church. JERUSALEM (in Judea/Palestine, eastern Mediterranean) — where it all began, the city of Christ's death and resurrection. ANTIOCH (in Syria, just north) — where, the book of Acts tells us, believers were first called 'Christians,' and the base from which St. Paul launched his missionary journeys. ALEXANDRIA (in Egypt, on the Nile delta) — a great center of learning and Christian thought. ROME (in Italy, the western Mediterranean) — the capital of the empire and the see of St. Peter, which gave the Church its central authority. And CONSTANTINOPLE (on the Bosphorus, where Europe meets Asia) — Constantine's new capital, the bridge to the Byzantine future you will study next week. Trace your finger from Jerusalem to Antioch to Rome and you are tracing the journeys of St. Paul. The Roman roads and the common Greek language made this spread astonishingly fast — one of the reasons the faith conquered the empire.

Write the five great early Christian centers from memory (cover your map first), then check your spelling against the map. Under them, copy one of your four grammar example sentences and label its complement.