what a difference a little time makes.

Pope george.

Peace

__________________
Mary Pray for us, now and at the hour of our death.

Amen

love the look on the face of Ratzinger at the end... priceless.

__________________
do not question us. Do not challenge us. We are the authority. Accept it, or leave.

The topic that this thread has gotten around to (the nature of & treatment for the sin of false humility) is a fascinating one, but if anybody's still interested in the OP, I have some info to offer.

It began, as I recall, with these observations:

• that christians at one time worshipped in ordinary street clothes, but then later began to wear stylized vestments (at least for the clergy);
• that christians at one time celebrated their union with one another & with Christ by sharing a full meal, but then later the meal became stylized into a small bite of bread & sip of wine (or only the bread, for the laity, or the bread and wine comingled and then a bit of the mixture given to each person); and
• that christians at one time worshipped in each other's houses, but then later purchased or built special buildings to worship in.

I spend an awful lot of my day studying the history of the pre-reformation church (gettin' ready for the dreaded Comprehensive Examinations) so if y'all would like me to, I could give sort of a capsule-version of the history of those three developments.

If not, I don't want to bother you in the middle of what looks like an interesting conversaion about spiritual growth.

the Orthodox still eat ,

but after the Liturgy
(at my last Parish, there was food at practically every event and meeting too)

__________________

To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

that would be most appreciated.

__________________
do not question us. Do not challenge us. We are the authority. Accept it, or leave.

1. Vestments

The clothes are really quite easy to explain. We ended up with them due to the conservatism of the clergy.

The formal eucharistic vestments of both the Eastern & the Western churches: the alb, dalmatic, chausable, sticharion, epitrachelion, phelonion, all of it is the formal, dress-up, go-to-town clothing of a gentleman of the 5th or 6th century Byzantine Empire.

What happened was that the lay people changed their clothes over time (silly, fashion-conscious laypeople) and we clergy just kept on wearing our same old clothes year after year after year, at least for doing our mystical signifying.

Eventually enough years went by that the clothes quit being charmingly old-fashioned and became outright strange looking to folks who weren't used to seeing them every Sunday. (Much the same phenomenon that has overtaken the Amish, who started out just trying to be "plain": unpretentious, and now find themselves quaint and conspicuous.

2. The Meal

The meal changed from a full-on potluck dinner into a token or symbolic meal sometime in the 3rd century.

The neato-cool discipline of textual comparison is what enables us to narrow the change down accurately. You see, in the 2nd century book commonly called Apostolic Tradition (which is neither Apostolic, nor traditional: discuss) we see blessings to be said over the oil, olives & cheese written right alongside the blessings over the bread and the wine.
That book was used as a major source for a book written in the 3rd century, commonly called Didascalia Apostolorum and a book written in the 4th century, commonly called Apostolic Constitutions. In both of those books, the blessings over oil, olives & cheese have disappeared, and new instructions are included about how to make sure that you don't have a lot of leftovers of bread & wine after the eucharist.

There are two theories about why the shift from actual meal to token meal took place:

Theory 1: Christianity went through periods of great popularity, even before the Edict of Milan. When there got to be lots & lots of Christians showing up at church on Sunday, it simply became impractical to serve a full meal to all comers - especially since the food was generally provided by the more affluent members of the congregation, and Christianity has always been way way more popular among the poor than among the rich (at least until the rise of the "prosperity gospel" preachers) Some post-apostolic Church Lady just got sick & tired of making ham loaf and cheesy potato cassarole for all those people every week!

Theory 2: As the church developed its theology of the eucharist over time, the fellowship-meal aspect became less and less important, and the mystical-presence-of-Christ aspect became more and more important. When the point of the meal is fellowship, then sitting around popping tidbits into the babies mouths and perhaps wiping a bit of gravy off of one's chin is all to the good. When the point of the meal is that Jesus Himself is actually present in the food & drink then it's natural that people would start being loads & loads more careful about the whole operation.

3. The building

The transition from having church in somebody's house, to having church in a specially set-aside building probably was the first of these three phenomena to take place, and once you think about it, it really makes sense.

First, start with the understanding that once the gospel has begun to spread even a little bit in a given city, you're going to have problems gathering the church together in the home of anybody who isn't at least a little bit well-off financially. There just isn't room in your average plebian hovel.

Now, the patrician class didn't own a house. They owned houses - plural. Aaaaaand once you realize that it's way more convenient to just quit collecting rent on one of your houses so that the church can use it than it is to move all of the furniture in the house you actually live in out of the way each Lord's Day to accommodate the crowd, you can see how some buildings began to be set aside for Christian Worship. Add to that the probability that, when Br. Gaius (the owner of the house) was near death, his Bishop might just casually suggest that the house be deeded over to the community in his will, and voila! A Church!

4. A few caveats:

Of course none of this happend everywhere all at the same time. It happened piecemeal, in different cities at different times. (Those three books I mentioned before, they only tell us what was happening in Antioch, not in Rome or Alexandria or Carthage or Milan or Gaul or anywhere else)

There was certainly some degree of grandiosity being aimed at in some places at some times. What started out as "It's Jesus' dinner, let's use the good china" eventually became "Let's get a really great jewel-encrusted gold chalice - the people love a good show", but hey - that's evangelism! A stirring sermon, a nice building, a well-trained choir, whatever it takes to get 'em in the door to hear the good news of the gospel!

Well - thanks for listening. I'm hoping to teach History of Christian Worship in a seminary some day. It's good to have the chance to try out my act.

Grace & Peace to you.