As awesome as that is, I wonder what first century church assemblies were like in comparison.
Actually, we know they were very similiar because we have in a 1st century book of church order, the
Didache, a basic outline of a Sunday service.
Things get more exciting than that, however: the Byzantine Rite Divine Liturgy of St. Mark, which is used on rare occasions, and the Coptic Divine Liturgy of St. Cyril, which is frequently used in Lent, are based on a liturgical text commonly called the Anaphora of St. Mark, which is attested to in the second century Strasbourg Papyrus and the fourth century Euchologion of St. Serapion of Thmuis, which is the oldest complete liturgical service book.
And another liturgy that dates to at least the second century, the Liturgy of Saints Addai and Mari, is the principle liturgy in the East Syriac Rite, used by the Assyrian Church of the East, the Ancient Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholic Church, all three of which are primarily located in Iraq, with the Church of the East mainly in the Nineveh Plains, and the Chaldean church centered around Baghdad, and in Malankara, India, the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church*.
The Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox Church meanwhile uses a liturgy of third century attestation, the Anaphora of the Apostles, which is the same liturgy which appears in the Apostolic Tradition of the third century pope St. Hippolytus. This liturgy does not follow the Roman style, however, but rather the Antiochene form, which makes sense, because when Ethiopia converted to Christianity in the fourth century, the locals were taught liturgics and worship services by a group of Syrian missionaries, who were of course familiar with the liturgical style of Antioch (this is why the Ethiopian liturgy is closer to the Byzantine and West Syriac Rite in structure than the Alexandrian Rite).
The second and third century attestation of these two liturgies confounded some scholars who were of the opinion that the early church always improvised liturgies based on a set of conventions until the fourth century, when for some reason they decided to start writing them down (the reason usually given being the rapid growth of the church under Constantine, however, that ignores the fact that the Christian Church was flourishing in the open in India, Mesopotamia, Persia and Eastern Syria long before the Roman Empire converted, and before Christianity was legalized in Rome, it was first legalized in the city state of Edessa, and then in Armenia. And it also ignores the fact that when the Romans would arrest church leaders, they would often offer to spare them if they revealed the location of the church books, of which there were usually several. And there is no evidence to suggest that the Euchologion of St. Serapion was a new thing when it was composed, on the contrary, the content in the 3rd century Apostolic Traditions, the 4th century Apostolic Constitutions, and the 1st century Didache and Didascalia is of the same nature.
I strongly believe, based on the striking resemblance of both the liturgies of St. Mark and Saints Addai and Mari to a type of Jewish blessing known as a
Berakhot, that these two liturgies date from the first century, as they correspond with the Didache and with contemporary descriptions of first and early second century Christian worship (for example, that of St. Justin Martyr).
We also know that from time immemorial, Christian priests have worn chasubles in honor of St. Paul, who requested one be sent to him during his captivity in Rome, in 2 Timothy 3:14 (specifically, he asked for a Phelonion, which is the Greek word for a chasuble), which was the last epistle he wrote before his martyrdom under Nero.
Now, interestingly, since you have been to Roman Catholic masses, there is a good chance you experienced the Anaphora of the Apostles, or rather a modified minimalist version of it, since it forms the basis of Eucharistic Prayer no. 2 in the Novus Ordo Missae of 1969. A slightly more faithful version of it is Eucharistic Prayer B in the 1979 Episcopalian Book of Common Prayer.
*This is one of several churches serving the ancient community of Christians in India, who were converted by St. Thomas the Apostle, who received the crown of martyrdom when an enraged Hindu rajah impaled him with a javelin in 53 AD; St. Thomas was able to evangelize in India because there was an Aramaic speaking Jewish community in Kerala since the second century BC, a few members of which still live there, and their beautiful synagogue is still intact - although so many of their people have moved to Israel they seldom have a minyan. Some of the Nasranis, or St. Thomas Christians, are of purely Jewish descent, survivors of a shipwreck who marry amongst themselves, whereas others are descended from Jews and Hindu converts. Christianity has been in India for about 1500 years longer than the Sikh religion, and there are more Christians in India than Sikhs and Jains combined. Unfortunately the BJP government has been on occasion hostile to Christian interests, and in New Delhi a few years back an elderly nun was raped by some Hindu nationalists, and in general there is a disturbing increase in Hindu attacks on Indian Christians.
