Mass In The 2nd Century And The Early Church

The Liturgy and Corpus Christi Sunday

Happy Friday.

This Sunday, the Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Jesus—Corpus Christi Sunday.

The Eucharist, the Mass, is the source and the summit of the Catholic faith according to Vatican II. Everything flows to and from the celebration of the Eucharist. It is the perpetual offering of the Body and Blood of the Lord on the altar. This is not only the means of right worship of God, but it is a foretaste of the heavenly banquet.

The Gospel for this Solemnity states:

Jesus spoke to the crowds about the kingdom of God, and he healed those who needed to be cured. As the day was drawing to a close, the Twelve approached him and said, "Dismiss the crowd so that they can go to the surrounding villages and farms and find lodging and provisions; for we are in a deserted place here." He said to them, "Give them some food yourselves." They replied, "Five loaves and two fish are all we have, unless we ourselves go and buy food for all these people."
Now the men there numbered about five thousand. Then he said to his disciples,
"Have them sit down in groups of about fifty." They did so and made them all sit down. Then taking the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing over them, broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. They all ate and were satisfied. And when the leftover fragments were picked up, they filled twelve wicker baskets.

This scene of the multiplication of the loaves in Matthew’s Gospel is a foretaste of the gift of the Eucharist. In this event in the public ministry of Jesus, Our Lord is foreshadowing the Last Supper in which He will once again take bread and bless it; but this time, He will transform the mere symbolism of the multiplication of the loaves into the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into His own Body and Blood.

The gift of the Eucharist is the supreme gift Christ left His Church. It is in the Church that the Eucharist is validly celebrated because it requires valid ordination and authority originating in the Apostles themselves. This undeserved treasure is celebrated at every Mass and it, which we know from various sources, has been celebrated from the beginning of the Church.

The Mass is the place where right worship takes place. It is in the Mass that the Father is worshipped in the way He desires: the sacrifice of His only-begotten Son in the Eucharist. The tradition of the Mass is one of both divine ordination and historical development. In Sacrosanctum Concilium of the Second Vatican Council, the Fathers stated that there are elements in the Liturgy which are “divinely instituted,” and there are “elements subject to change.”¹ For example, the Eucharist is a divinely instituted element in the Liturgy, but the Prayers of the Faithful, for instance, are elements that can be changed and ordered for the benefit of the times.

In what follows, we will look at the Mass of the early Church by using both Sacred Scripture itself, as well as the writings of the early Church Father, St. Justin Martyr.

Sunday Gospel Theology Companion

St. Paul the Apostle

In Sacred Scripture itself, we have an example of the Eucharist in the writings of St. Paul. In 1 Corinthians 10:16-17, St. Paul speaks about the Eucharist. He states that “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.”² Here, St. Paul is giving evidence that the command of Christ at the Last Supper in which Our Lord said to “Do this in remembrance of me” (Lk 22:19) is continuously offered because Paul is referencing “the bread which we break.” This is clearly something the community does as it is not a reference back to a one-time event. This breaking of the bread is done continuously. It is also not merely bread, but it is “a participation (or communion) in the body of Christ.”

In the next chapter of 1 Corinthians, St. Paul mentions the necessity of receiving the Eucharist worthily. He says “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Cor. 11:27). How can you profane something that is not truly the thing itself? If one were to be guilty of profaning the body and blood, they would “eat and drink judgment upon [themselves]” (1 Cor. 11:29). The level of severity attached to the improper reception of the Eucharist emphasizes the seriousness with which the community understood the Eucharist.

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St. Justin Martyr

One of the first views at the celebration of the Liturgy is from the 2nd century Church Father St. Justin Martyr, in The First Apology. From this witness, we see the following elements of the Liturgy:

(1) The Prayers of the Faithful: “in order that we may offer hearty prayers in common for ourselves and for the baptized [illuminated] person, and for all others in every place, that we may be counted worthy, now that we have learned the truth, by our works also to be found good citizens and keepers of the commandments, so that we may be saved with an everlasting salvation.”³