BANGOR – A Moravian love feast will be held during the 10 a.m. Sunday worship service at Hammond Street Congregational Church.

A love feast isn’t quite a feast. It celebrates love of humanity. The congregation says it will be a service dedicated to agape, the spiritual love of one Christian for another.

The modern love feast seeks to remove social barriers and strengthen the spirit of unity and goodwill among all people.

Although a love feast is not the sacrament of Communion, it is styled after the common meal partaken by the early church before celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Sunday’s event at Hammond Street Congregational will include sweetened buns made with a potato base and mugs of tea and coffee, according to the Rev. Mark Doty, pastor.

The service will be from the 1880s and will end with the lighting of hand-dipped beeswax candles congregants made last year especially for the service. Beeswax, considered the purest of all animal or vegetable waxes, suggests the purity of Christ, and the candle, giving its life as it burned, suggests the sacrifice of Christ for humanity.