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Origins of the Roman Liturgy - Mass

Through the centuries the Mass of the Roman Rite has come to be divided into 4 major sections. These are:

 The Introductory Rites - the congregation is called to prayer.

 The Liturgy of the Word - also known as the Mass of the Catechumens in the patristic & early Medieval period.
 The Liturgy of the Eucharist - known as the Mass of the Faithful in the patristic
& early Medieval period.
 The Concluding Rites - the congregation is sent forth to proclaim the Word & put it into practice in addition to the lessons learned in the liturgy.

How it all began - NT Origins of the Roman Liturgy

It began on the same Thursday night on which Jesus was betrayed. Jesus came with his closest disciples to the upper room in Jerusalem where he had instructed two of them to prepare the Passover meal. Judas, one of the Twelve chosen Apostles, had already privately agreed to lead the authorities to where Jesus would be praying in a garden in secret after the meal, knowing there would be no one but these few closest disciples around him to defend him.

During the Passover meal, Jesus as the central figure took some bread & blessed it & broke it ready to hand around. That was customary enough. But then he said, for

all to hear: “take, eat; this is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me” (Mt 26:26; Mk 14:22; Lk 22:19). This was something totally

new. Another memory of the occasion, related by Paul but as old in origin as the first, has Jesus say: “This is my body which is broken for you. Do this in

remembrance of me” (1 Cor 11:24).

Then at the end of the meal, Jesus put some water into a cup of wine, took the cup,

gave thanks & gave it to his disciples, saying: “Take this, all of you, & drink of it;

for this is my blood of the new & everlasting covenant, which is poured out for

many for the forgiveness of sins” (Mt 26:27f; Mk 14:23f; Lk 22:20 – the word “everlasting” is not in the Gospel accounts, but was understood from the start,

since the prophesied new covenant was to be everlasting cf Is 55:1-3; Jer 31:31-34; Ezek 16:59-63; 37:26). The version given to Paul when he became a follower 3

years later was: “this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me” (1 Cor 11:25).

The link with the Passover will become clearer as we go through the story of the Mass, since the Passion & death of Jesus is seen as his Passover, & here Jesus is

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saying: “Do not do this in memory of Moses & his Passover & his covenant any more, but do this in memory of me & of my Passover & my new covenant.”

When did the disciples start fulfilling Jesus’ request?

From the time when the disciples, women & men, saw Jesus risen on the third day from his death, until the day they saw him ascended into heaven, the disciples

probably made no attempt to repeat Jesus’ actions at the Last Supper. One of the

accounts of these days, the story of the two disciples returning to Emmaus, has Jesus breaking bread with the two, & their recognising him by that (Lk 24:30-31).

“the breaking of the bread” is the earliest name given by Jesus’ disciples to what we would call the Mass, or the Eucharist, or the Lord’s Supper or Holy

Communion, or the Divine Service. The title is a technical term & implies that not only was the bread broken, but it was blessed & handed around once the sacred words had been spoken over it; & then the cup followed as Jesus had named & blessed & distributed it before. Perhaps we can see in the Emmaus incident a gentle reminder to the disciples to start doing as Jesus had told them to, on the night he was betrayed. Here was the first celebration after the suffering of Jesus, & it took place on Easter Sunday.

Where?

The next reference to the breaking of the bread is in the account of the Holy Spirit coming at Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4). Lk claims that about 3000 people were baptised

as a result of the preaching of Peter & the others (Acts 2:41). Then what? “They devoted themselves to the Apostles’ teaching & fellowship, to the breaking of bread & prayers” (Acts 2:42). The question arises: where did the apostles fit all the

new people in? There is no indication of massed meetings for the celebration of the breaking of the bread, so how was it managed?

Acts 2:46 describes the routine of the early followers of Jesus. Each day they:  Met together in the Temple area. The community members did not see any contradiction in continuing to practice their Judaism – praying in the Temple &

in the synagogue. Acts tells us, “they did [these actions] with one accord”. The

synagogue service was centred on the Hebrew Scriptures which were proclaimed & commented on during the service. The structure of the synagogue service became the rough structure of our liturgy of the Word. Acts goes on to say that:
 They devoted themselves to breaking bread in their homes. This was a reference to the command given in Lk & in 1 Cor at the Last Supper. As Jesus broke bread with his disciples, so the early community gathers to do what he did, breaking

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bread with each other. This would be making present once again the presence of the Risen Lord through the proclamation of the institution narrative found in the Gospel accounts of the Last Supper. In this way there is a link to the Jewish Passover meal through the Last Supper. The basic structure of the Passover meal became the structure for what we call the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

Based on Acts, we can say that the early developing liturgy of the Mass was a synagogue service joined to a Passover meal celebrated at home. Thus the

Eucharistic liturgy developed from the early Church’s Jewish roots.

We need to remember that most of the 3000 people would be pilgrims up for the Jewish feast of Pentecost from all around the Holy Land & from all over the Mediterranean. Within days most of them would have dispersed to their homes.

But this coming of the Holy Spirit didn’t result in a wild storm of shallow

emotions: the early Followers of the Way, as they were known, were well

organised & didn’t return to their homes leaderless, but with chosen leaders. In

particular, the thousands who had been fed by Jesus on the hillsides now had the courage to group themselves, as they had been grouped on the hillside, & to manage without the synagogues if & when they were not welcome there.

There seems to have grown up fairly quickly in Jerusalem & elsewhere a series of friendship groups or groups by locality, rather than any public gathering of Followers of the Way of Jesus. The synagogues were gradually closed to them. The Temple was still there for prayer, & the disciples seem to have continued to go to the Temple until it was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD (Acts 3:1); but they

didn’t gather there to do as Jesus had told them at the Last Supper. They went up at

the regular hours of prayer, if they were in the vicinity.

What time of day?

In the beginning, the normal time of day for meeting was the evening, matching the original supper time of the Thursday in Holy Week. There seems to have been a custom of arranging a special evening meal, during which the Eucharist was celebrated, perhaps with the breaking of the bread somewhere in the middle of the proceedings & the consecration of the final cup of wine (mixed with water) at the end. In the setting of a Jewish community meal, there would have been the

recalling of God’s past goodness. Along with the story of the Jewish people, there

would now be for Christians the memories of the Apostles & of the women who followed Jesus, & others who had been among the 72 disciples sent out by Jesus. By 57 AD we have Paul asking quite firmly that the Christians in Corinth should separate the secular from the sacred at these meals & keep the Eucharist as a

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separate entity, whether inside or outside the supper. It wasn’t fitting to have rich people eating too much & getting drunk while others who were supposed to be their brothers & sisters in Christ were going hungry (1 Cor 11:20ff). That sort of

thing had no place mixed in with “the Lord’s Supper.”

The question seems to have resolved itself once persecutions of Christian communities began. The first wave of persecution was simply the opposition to Jesus himself & his teaching, which carried on after his death & resurrection, when it became clear that killing Jesus had not destroyed his message of forgiveness

(Acts 4:1f). The official Pharisee policy varied between “Let’s wait & see: if this is from God we will not be able to stop it” (Acts 5:38f), & at the other end of the

scale the kind of vehemence Paul showed when as Saul, the practising Pharisee, was ready to kill Christians (Acts 8:1). King Herod Agrippa climbed on the bandwagon & had James, the brother of John, beheaded (Acts 12:2) around 42 AD. The persecutions & expulsions from the synagogue worship followed the new doctrine round the Mediterranean as the Apostles spread their nets, first bringing trouble from worried Jews & then from worried Romans.

The Romans began to find Christians who would not admit the Emperor was a god, in effect the real God, & this was bad for civil order & peace in their eyes. There were persecutions from the Romans on & off until Constantine became emperor nearly three centuries later. Before Constantine the Christians had sometimes started to meet for the Eucharist on what we call weekdays, as well as on Sundays, when it was the anniversary of the martyrdom of one of their number. This was the

beginning of Christian feast days & saints’ days. The day of the death of a martyr

was the fitting day for the link with the suffering & death of Jesus. Holy Week, too, would have had more than just a Sunday Eucharist.

There is a gradual separation of the Eucharist from “supper time” & a change of

time, often to a very early start before dawn (cf Pliny the Younger, Epistles to Emperor Trajan – from Bithynia in Northern Turkey 111 AD). The reasons must have been partly to make sure it happened before a working day started, & also to keep it to a quiet time when a meeting would attract less notice.

Developing Offices

The developing threefold office that we see in the Pastoral Epistles & further developed in the letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch, also has significant roots in Judaism. The Pastoral Letters give evidence for the development of two offices:  episcopos or bishop who is the leader of a church &  deacon who is an assistant to the episcopos.

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Later Ignatius of Antioch speaks of a third office, the presbuteros or elder, also known as priest, who takes on some of the tasks of the episcopoi as the Church grows. All three officers have their origins in the Jewish synagogue structure.  The episcopos is equivalent to the archisynagogos or the leader/head of the synagogue.
 The deacon or the assistant is equivalent to the Hazzan who was the assistant in the synagogue service, helping the others in the day to day running of the synagogue.
 The presbuteroi or elders are equivalent to the gerousia or the Council of Elders who handled the working of the synagogue & its community.

Thus in personnel & ritual, the developing Christian liturgy has its older sibling Judaism to thank.

How Often?

The next question for the Apostles was, were they meant to do as Jesus had told them with the wine (& water) & bread just every Passover time, or more often, & if so, how often? What happened was that they chose to celebrate the memory Jesus had given them every week, & on the first day of the week, the day Jesus

rose again. From Mk’s Gospel we see how the week of the death & resurrection of

Jesus became what we now know as Holy week. The sacred week-pattern of the Jews started as it still does at sunset on Saturday & ended at the close of the Sabbath, which ran from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday. For Christians, because of Holy Week, every week now starts from Sunday & ends when Sunday ends, the day Jesus rose. Mk indicates each day of the week (Sunday evening 11:11; Monday morning 11:12; Monday evening 11:19; Tuesday morning 11:20; Tuesday evening 13:35ff; Wednesday morning 14:1; Wednesday evening 14:3; Thursday morning 14:12; Thursday evening 14:17; Friday morning 15:1; Friday evening 15:42; Saturday morning & evening passes 16:1; Easter morning 16:2). Mk makes a poetic link about the sun being already risen on the first day of the

week when the women came to Jesus’ tomb & found it empty. The sun was risen,

Jesus was risen, the light of all our days was risen. This was the week of recreation, & Sunday is now for Christians a holier day than the Sabbath.

There is a wistful comment in the Letter to the Hebrews, written between 60-90 AD, reproaching some of the readers for neglecting the regular meetings of the

community: “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he

who promised is faithful; & let us consider how to stir up one another to love & good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but

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encouraging one another, & all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Heb

10:23f).

Language

In the very early days, Aramaic was the normal language used by Jesus’ disciples, as long as the converts were of Jewish extraction. Once the pagans began to be accepted for baptism, the language would have mostly changed to Greek, as that was the common language all around the Mediterranean & it was the language in which the NT was written. The OT too already had a Greek version in general use. There was great freedom in the beginning, both in choice of language & in the format of the Eucharist. Latin did not come into anything like regular use until the end of the 2^nd cent. Even the famous Eucharistic Prayer of the Roman priest Hippolytus (known to us as EP 2) written c.215 AD was written in Greek. It was so popular it was translated into Coptic, Arabic, Ethiopian & Syrian. Note: we are dealing with the Mass of the Roman Rite – there are & always have been several other orthodox & approved-by-Rome liturgies which have their own perfectly correct ways of celebrating the Eucharist: East Syrian, west Syrian, Abyssian, Coptic, Armenian, Antiochene, Mozarabic, Marionite, Byzantine… These have never felt the need to use Latin. From the time of Latin first being used in Rome (not definitely fixed until the 6^th cent.) the whole ceremony was known there as Missa, a late Latin word meaning mission, & the dismissal at the end became Ite

missa est viz. “Go, you now have your mission.” Hence our word Mass.

Origin of the Name “Mass”

How did our liturgy come to be called the Mass? The earliest names for the liturgy originated in eastern or Greek speaking part of the Roman Empire. Acts 2:42 & 2:46 gives us the earliest name for the liturgy,

“the breaking of the bread”, (κλάσις αρτού [klassis artou] in Greek). From earliest

times a distinction was made between the consecrated elements, the bread & wine, & the whole ritual during which they were consecrated.

At the time of Clement of Rome in the early 2^nd cent., the term Έύχαριστείν (eucharistein) was used in connection with the ritual action or liturgy. Clement

says “seeing therefore that we have all these things from him, we ought in every respect to give him thanks (Έύχαριστείν) to whom be glory for ever & ever. Amen.” (1 Clem 38:4). The giving thanks in every respect includes the ritual action

of breaking bread.

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In other places Clement prefers to refer to that action as Λειτουργία (leiturgia) from which we get the English term “liturgy”, translated as “services” in the First Letter to the Corinthians 42:5 or as Πρόσφορα (prosphera), literally “something that is brought forward”, translated as “offerings”, from Clement’s First Letter to

the Corinthians 2:4.

Justin Martyr speaks in the same sense: “& this food is called among us

Έύχαριστία (Eucharistia) or Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things that we teach are true & who is so living as Christ has enjoined.” This clearly refers to the elements which are consecrated to

become the body & blood of Christ. The term Έύχαριστία is soon transliterated from Greek into Latin “Eucharistia”, as we find in the writings of the Latin Father Tertullian. This term “Eucharist” becomes the normal name for the Sacrament of

the Body & Blood of Christ. By the 3^rd cent. Christians have become a large part of the population of the western Empire, despite the fact that persecutions continued. Many of the Greek terms used to describe the liturgy are now translated rather than transliterated into Latin. thus

 Έύχαριστία becomes gratiarum actio or “the action of giving thanks”.  Εύλογια (eulogia) becomes the benedictio or “blessing”.  It was at this time that the technical term Έύχαριστία in Greek for the ritual

action, was replaced by the Latin term oblation or “offering”.
Thus the key term used in the first centuries of the Church was now transliterated into Latin but also replaced with another Latin term.

In the West another term was beginning to gain popularity. St. Ambrose in writing to his sister, described troubles with the Arians around 385 or 386. In particular,

addressing soldiers sent to break up services in his church, he says: “there I was

told suddenly that they had sent soldiers to the Portiana Basilica, but I remained at my place & began to say Mass (missum facere cepi). While I was offering (dum

offero) I hear that a certain Castellus has been seized by the people.” What’s significant here is that the Latin term “missa” is used to refer to the ritual action. Missum facere cepi that is “I began to say Mass”. This is a totally new use

of the term. From the rest of the letter the term missa refers to what we call the Liturgy of the Eucharist, the catechumens had been dismissed. The Latin term

missa derives from the verb mittere which means “to send”, hence missa refers to

“a sending.” Augustine also used it to refer to a “sending out” of the catechumens before the

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Liturgy of the Eucharist. Post sermonem, he says, fit missa catechumenorum –

translated “after the sermon, the dismissal of the catechumens occurs.”

The Synod of Lerida in Spain in 524 declared that people could be admitted to the

Church usque ad missam catechumenorum i.e. “until the catechumens are

dismissed.”

The term Missa comes to be used in reference to the Eucharistic service or some part of it. By the late 6^th or 7^th cent., the term was being used in the Gelasian Sacramentary in such titles as Missa Chrismatis, the Chrism Mass, or Orationes ad

Missa, orations at Mass. Yet it never loses its sense of “dismissal”. At the end of

the Eucharistic liturgy, the command Ite, Missa est is translated literally “go, the

dismissal is made”.

This was then applied to the two dismissals in the course of the Roman Liturgy:  the Dismissal of the Catechumens after the homily before the action of the sacrament.
 & the Dismissal of the Faithful at the end of the liturgy after the consecration & communion.

Gradually the meaning of missa catechumenorum & missa fidelium changed from

the dismissal action to the entire service, producing the names for the two halves of the Liturgy which were used until the revisions of the Second Vatican Council.  The missa catechumenorum became the Mass of the Catechumens & the  missa fidelium became the Mass of the Faithful. As the catechumenate fell into disuse, the term missa or Mass was used to refer to the whole liturgical action from beginning to end.

“Mass” has been used as a name for the Eucharist Liturgy in the Latin or Western Rites only. It’s never applied to an Eastern Rite Liturgy. The Eastern Rite liturgies are referred to as “the Liturgy” as in “the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.” To speak of an Eastern Liturgy as “a Mass” is incorrect.

Summary

We have looked at:  the development of the Mass from the Jewish synagogue service & the Passover meal.
 We saw how the major ministers of the Mass are related to the leaders of the
Jewish services

 the historical development of the name “Mass” for the Eucharistic Liturgy.