HISTORY OF THE MASS
Chapter 5 of The Christian in the World
(ed. R. Doherty. Dubuque: Priory Press, 1963), pp. 173-180Beginnings (c. 29-300 A.D.)
Christ himself celebrated the first Mass at the Last Supper. The occasion of this banquet of our Lord with his apostles was the feast of the Passover, the most solemn of Jewish feasts, commemorating Yahweh's deliverance of the Jews from their captivity in Egypt. Pharaoh was finally induced to release the Jews when the first-born in Egypt were slain, those alone being "passed over" who sprinkled the blood of a lamb on their doorways before the might of vengeance (cf. Ex. 12:13). The yearly dinner commemorating this event was regulated according to a precise ritual: Hors d'oeuvres of bitter herbs and unleavened bread were served between two preprandial cups of wine. Then the head of the Jewish family began the meal by taking bread, blessing, breaking and distributing it to those in attendance. Our Lord adapted this rite to the Consecration of the bread and the first part of the Communion. After the main course of the sacrificed lamb, the father of the family lifted a cup of wine and spoke the grace after meals. The cup was then passed around for all to drink of it. Our Lord converted this thanksgiving ceremony into the Consecration of the wine and the second part of the Communion. The singing of the greater Hallel (Ps. 113:9-117:29; 135), and another cup and blessing concluded the dinner.
New Testament witness
The brief references in the New Testament to the "breaking of bread" or "the Lord's supper" show that the apostles were carrying out our Lord's command to "do this in commemoration of me" (Acts 2:42,46; 20:7,11; 1 Cor. 11:17-34). The Mass was still usually part of a banquet or agape, the Greek word for "love" or "charity, " The love of the early Christians for Jesus Christ, the Son of God. inspired these community feasts in which they showed their love for one another at the same time as they commemorated the death of the Lord. It was very easy, where the Christians were as yet "men of the flesh and babes in Christ" (I Cor. 3:1) for the agapes to wander from their spiritual purpose. St. Paul was quick to condemn the abuses (cf. 1 Cor. 11:17-34), but he did not altogether prohibit the combination of the Mass with a dinner, this continued for some time. The expansion of the Christian gatherings from house meetings to public assemblies ultimately forced the separation of the Mass from the parish dinner, which by now had become too large an undertaking to be of frequent occurrence.
Continuous evolution
The weekly service, held in the evening, now became known as the Eucharist. Instead of bringing their dinner to Mass, the Christians brought bread and wine for the sacrifice; they also brought other gifts for the poor. St. Irenaeus (C. 190 A.D.) insisted that these offerings should express interior love, and that their offering and Consecration in the Mass merits God's favor in proportion to the faith and charity of the participants. After the presentation of the gifts, which later developed into an offertory procession. the celebrant began the Eucharistic service with a solemn hymn of thanksgiving; this solemn hymn corresponds to our Preface. Extemporizing to suit the occasion, he enumerated God's gifts in order, culminating with the words of Consecration, which recall God's most perfect gift, the death of his son for our salvation. The thanksgiving chant concluded with the people's "Amen." Then the Communion, which the deacons distributed under both species, and the closing prayers. This service was the Christian sacrifice, replacing the Jewish Temple service.
After the example of Christ, the Apostles and disciples continued to meet for worship in the synagogues of the Jews. The synagogue service centered around the pulpit rather than an altar and consisted of prayers and hymns, readings from the Scriptures, and preaching. Beginning as a separate service, very early this "liturgy of the word became a preparatory introduction to the Eucharistic liturgy. St. Justin's description of the two-part liturgy of his time resembles the general pattern of the Mass as we know it. In its details, however, the order of the Mass remained fluid until the end of the third century, and the right to compose one's own Mass formulas lasted in some places until as late as the seventh century.
Divergence and standardization (300-800)
The rapid growth of the Church's membership following the Edict of Milan caused the formation of many local centers of authority. Each of these developed its own liturgical patterns, giving rise to the major rites of the East and West.
Language and liturgy of East and West
In the East the most widespread rite today is the Byzantine (often bearing a local name, e.g. Melkite in Syria), which uses a seventh century liturgy once attributed to St. John Chrysostom (c. 350-404). Yet it retains for certain occasions the longer liturgy of St. Basil (c. 375). The Chaldean rite (Syro-Malabar in India) and the Nestorians use a seventh-century East Syrian liturgy. The Maronite rite (Syro-Malankara in India) and the Monophysite Jacobites: in Syria and Palestine use the fourth-century liturgy of St. James, which originated. in Antioch. The Armenian liturgy arose from Byzantine and Syrian traditions. The Ethiopic liturgy was taking shape in the fourth century, at the same time as the Coptic liturgy in Alexandria.
In the West, in addition to the liturgy of Rome, there developed the still extant Ambrosian liturgy in Milan, the Mozarabic liturgy in Spain, which survives only in the cathedral of Toledo, and the now extinct Celtic and Gallican liturgies.
The language of the liturgy throughout the East was the vernacular. The long and unbroken literary tradition of every part of the Middle East (Sumerian was written in 3500 B.C.!) made translations and original compositions possible. But in the West the only literary languages were Greek, which after aborted earlier attempts became a written language only in the seventh century B.C., and Latin, which replaced Greek as the lingua franca of the Mediterranean world around the fourth century A.D. At this time the liturgy of Rome adopted the vernacular Latin. But in the rest of Europe Latin was used instead of the vernacular, because it was the only literary language until the Middle Ages. And by that time people no longer felt the need of the vernacular, because the idea of following what was said in the sanctuary and in the choir had become foreign to them. Neither did the educated clerics want the vernacular, because of their extreme respect for the traditional formulas.
The Roman liturgy
The Roman liturgy achieved its classical form during the fourth to the eighth centuries largely through the work of Popes Gelasius 1 (492-96 A.D.) and Gregory the Great (590-604 A.D.). During this time the word "Mass," taken from the formula of dismissal ("Ite Missa est"), came into common use. Our knowledge of this period comes largely from Mass books, the earliest of which date back to the seventh century A.D. As yet there were no missals; the celebrant either memorized or used an altar card for what was invariable, and read the orations and Prefaces of the various feasts from a book called the sacramentary. The deacons chanted the Epistles and Gospels directly from the Bible or from books containing the appointed selections (which had been determined early in this period). The choir chants were contained in still other books.
Several attempts were made in this period to provide a fixed place in the Mass for special petitions. At first it was after the Gospel. Then it was changed to the beginning of Mass, after the entrance hymn (Introit), and consisted of a litany with the response "Kyrie eleison," concluding with the Collect, in which the celebrant succinctly summarized the petitions of the litany. On greater feasts the litany included the Gloria. Later, the desire to locate one's petitions as close as possible to the act of oblation caused the abbreviation of the Kyrie-litany to what we have now; prayers for the Church together with remembrances of the living, of the dead and of the saints were then inserted into the canon.
From the fourth century the Pater Noster became fixed as the preparatory prayer before Communion. Unfortunately, however, this period marked a decline of frequent Communion, which resulted from emphasizing the divinity and tremendous majesty of Christ in reaction to the Arian heresy. Carolingian countermeasures were unsuccessful, and to the deterrent of fear and a sense of unworthiness. Middle Age legislation added strict conditions which made frequent reception all but impossible. The efforts of the Council of Trent to change the situation failed, and infrequent Communion prevailed until the time of Pius X.
Although before the ninth century the Roman Mass was not without its shortcomings, it was marked by a simplicity, sobriety, and symmetry which disappeared in the following period.
The Franco-Roman Mass and decline (800-1500)
Evolution of the Roman liturgy
Is the year 754, Pepin decreed the adoption of the Roman liturgy in France. The Gallican liturgy, however, was slow in giving way; it did not die without leaving its stamp on the imported Roman Mass. Some of the new Gallican features, which have since been modified, were a predilection for the dramatic and a delight in endlessly long prayers, including many silent prayers which were said while the choir was singing. We can recognize many of the Gallican prayers still in our Mass by their being addressed to Christ (e.g., the priest's prayer before his Communion), by their use of "I" instead of "we," or by their avowals of unworthiness. This sentiment of reverential fear led to the adoption of unleavened bread for the hosts to lessen the danger of losing crumbs. Moreover the hosts were placed in a ciborium instead of on a large platter. This platter evolved into the paten which today the priest uses to cover the chalice. The same motive inspired the receiving of Communion kneeling instead of standing, and on one's tongue instead of in one's hand.
By the end of the eighth century only the educated could understand Latin. The Mass became a distant mystery for the people; its most important prayers were now said in silence at an altar which was removed to the back of the sanctuary, the approach to which was guarded by a Communion rail or a screen. Emphasis was laid on the role of the priest in offering the drama of Redemption, while the people's outward participation was reduced to mere watching. To make what they saw more meaningful each element of the Mass was allegorized to represent some event in the life of Christ or the history of salvation. For example, the priest turns and says "Dominus vobiscum" five times to signify the five apparitions of our Lord after his resurrection.
The Middle Ages
The Gallicized Roman liturgy spread quickly, and in the tenth century replaced the older liturgy in Rome. There was no uniformity in the Gallican accretions, and their varied evolution, together with increasingly wild allegorical interpretations, continued through the Middle Ages. The reaction to the Albigensian heresy of the twelfth century stimulated a much greater consciousness of th( real presence of our Lord in the Eucharist. This consciousness an( the desire to gaze upon the host led to elevating the host in Mass: and, in the fourteenth century, to genuflecting before it, and to solemn exposition.
The close of the Middle Ages saw the birth of an excessive and often superstitious desire to have Masses said for special intentions. Private Masses, usually requiem or votive Masses, were then disproportionately multiplied. The full missal now replaced the sacramentary, because the celebrant had absorbed into his monologue at the altar parts of the Mass which formerly were th property of the deacon, the choir, or the congregation. Moreover for his support the priest now began to depend more upon stipends than upon the offerings of the whole congregation at a Mass said for all the people.
Reactions (1500-1900)
Protestants reacted against the commercialism, superstition, ai mystification encumbering the Mass by denying its sacrificial character. Where they did not reject a Eucharistic service altogether, they at least decidedly subordinated it to a liturgy of the word whose focus was the pulpit, whose meaning the people could understand, and in whose performance they could take a part.
The Counter Reformation
The Catholic Counter Reformation cuh-ninated with the Council of Trent, which, while reaffirming the sacrificial value of the Mass against the heretics, corrected the most serious abuses. Furthermore, to remedy the bewildering and chaotic variety of accretions in the Mass, in 1570 Pope St. Pius V, overruling the desire of some bishops to retain some territorial diversity under their control, with but few exceptions imposed a uniform missal on the whole Western Church. The wall was now up against any further arbitrary embellishing of the Mass by devotional fancy, but at the price of also blocking educated progress.
The Counter Reformation left unsolved the problem of how the people should participate in the Mass. The bizarre medieval allegories, which St. Albert the Great long ago scoffed at, were unacceptable to the modern mentality. In their place conservative liturgicists at first offered the princely pageantry of the baroque, and later the more prayerful and artistically purer solemnity of monastic ritual, Gregorian chant, and classical polyphony, these types of music having been the highest expression of the genius of Christian art up to this time. The conservative liturgicists made it possible for the people really to "hear" Mass, but not to play their own part in it.
The liberal liturgicists, on the contrary, advocated a low Mass, during which the people recited the rosary or other prayers in common, or sang vernacular hymns. This arrangement gave the people a part to play, but it bad nothing to do with the action of the Mass.
Reform (1900-1963)
Previous efforts to give the people an active part in the Mass were sometimes led by men whose allegiance to the Church was questionable, and met with frowns from the authorities. Alexander VII in 1661 even forbade all translations of the missal. The signal for change came with Leo XIII's removal of this prohibition in 1899 and Pius X's decree on frequent Communion in 1905. Frequent Communion is now the rule. People follow the Mass in the missal and even recite or sing the parts which belong to them, while choirs have achieved higher standards in performing their parts-
Since Pius XII's monumental encyclical on the liturgy, Mediator Dei (1947), a program of legislative reform has been inaugurated. The Communion fast has been eased. And while Protestantism has been experiencing a movement to rediscover the altar as the center of worship, Catholic reform, converging in the Second Vatican Council, is moving toward a revitalizing of the instructive part of the Mass and to eliminating the duplication at the altar of what is sung in the choir or read at the pulpit. Other changes, including the use of the vernacular, are also under consideration, all with the aim of enabling the faithful to worship as perfectly as possible and to derive the fullest spiritual benefit from it.
FACTS TO BE REMEMBERED
1. What is the Jewish background of the two principal parts of our Mass?
2. How did different rites originate?
3. Why has Latin continued to be the language of our Mass?
4. Give three unsuccessful solutions to the problem of congregational participation.
5. In what direction are Catholic and Protestant liturgical reforms tending?