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Esther
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| Joined: | Fri Sep 29th, 2006 |
| Location: | Kansas City, Kansas USA |
| Posts: | 144 |
| First Name: | Esther | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | Southern Baptist to Roman Catholic 11/26/06 |
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Posted: Fri Jan 18th, 2008 02:20 am |
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Bare with me on this question, I am not completely sure how to express what I am thinking, but I am going to give it a whirl.
I was reading "The Faith of the Early Fathers" by William A Jurgens and I came across this passage from Didache or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles [ ca. A.D. 140]
{speaking about the Eucharist} [10,1]
"After you have eaten you fill, give thanks thus: [2] We thank you, holy Father, for your holy name, which you have caused to dwell in our hearts; and for the knowledge and faith and immortality which you have made known to us through Jesus your Son. Glory be to you forever."
[Emphasis added]
Which took me back to a passage I recall from 1 Corinthians 11 that has puzzled me for a while.
17In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. 18In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. 19No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God's approval. 20When you come together, it is not the Lord's Supper you eat, 21for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry, another gets drunk. 22Don't you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? Certainly not!
When I did a bible study on this book (when I was protestant), the pastor was telling us the context of the society and about the Church in Corinthine (sp?). How when they came together everyone would bring their own food and that is what the poor would have nothing. Ok now I realize this could be a protestant prespective, he could be wrong, or I could just be taking it wrong. But what I get from this is it seem more like an actual meal.
So my questions is this, what was communion like in the early Church? I understand the Church is 2000 yrs old and She grows and evolves. I am just trying to have a better understand of what it was like or am I totally off base and was it like it is today?
Sorry if this doesn't make much sense, I am having some trouble articulating myself this evening. Any insight provided would be very welcome!
God's peace!
Esther
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David W. Emery
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| Joined: | Fri Sep 29th, 2006 |
| Location: | Brownsville, Texas USA |
| Posts: | 2034 |
| First Name: | David | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Catholic |
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Posted: Fri Jan 18th, 2008 03:13 am |
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Esther wrote:What I get from this is it seems more like an actual meal.
Yes, Esther, this was the “agape” meal which was associated in the early Church with the Eucharist.
The agape was an imitation, among the early Christians, of the Jewish Seder, the formal meal practiced by the Jews at Passover. You will recall that Jesus’ Last Supper was the Passover meal.
It is believed by some scholars that the Didache was written in the first century in the context of Jewish Christians. Therefore, it would be natural to include the Seder. Gentile Christians, as I say, copied this custom. But because they did not have the background of the Exodus and the traditions of the Jews, their understanding and practice of this ritual was imperfect, and abuses such as those St. Paul describes with regard to the Corinthians crept in. The eventual result was that the agape was a rather short-lived phenomenon. By the middle of the second century, it seems to have been suppressed among Gentile Christians (cf. St. Justin Martyr). Meanwhile, Jewish Christianity was all but exterminated by persecution. So the custom simply died out.
But the principle did not die out. Traces of it are found in both liturgy and theology. Thus we have the offering of the bread and the cup before the consecration, and the Eucharist itself is seen as a sacred meal as well as a sacrament. St. Irenaeus (end of the 2nd century) in his Against the Heresies (refuting the Gnostics, who despised matter as evil) attributed bodily health and the resurrection of the dead to the Eucharist, the Body of Christ and the Bread of Life.
David
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