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Origins of the Roman Liturgy - Mass

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Origins of the Roman Liturgy - Mass 1 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 2 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 3 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 4 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.
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