We bloggers of the Fathers (patristibloggers, to use the proper neologism) must have the fillings in our teeth tuned to the same station. As I was posting about the African Fathers, Father John Zuhlsdorf was putting the same Fathers to work in his analysis of certain prayers of the Mass.
Update: Great stuff on Ambrose, too.
In the United States, Sunday, June 18, is the feast of Corpus Christi, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. It is one of the Church’s two great feasts of the Holy Eucharist. On Holy Thursday, we remember the institution of the sacrament at the Last Supper. On Corpus Christi we celebrate and adore Jesus’ abiding presence in the sacrament. He remains with us in all the tabernacles of the world, everywhere the sacrament is reserved. That is the meaning of the red vigil lamp that burns before the altar of repose. The Word was made flesh, and He has made His dwelling among us. What remains at the end of the liturgy is no longer bread, no longer wine, but the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. Jesus does not vanish with the dismissal. He lives, He abides.
The feast day is medieval in origin, but the Church observed the reality from its earliest days. Around 150 A.D., St. Justin noted that the deacons took the reserved sacrament to the sick and homebound immediately after Mass. A century later in Alexandria, St. Dionysius the Great attests to the same practice of visiting the sick with the sacrament.
In those early centuries, which were times of on-and-off persecution, many Christians received Communion daily. This was the Fathers’ common interpretation of the “daily bread” Jesus instructed us to request in the Lord’s Prayer. But it seems that most Communions were received not in the context of the Mass, but rather in the home, taken from the sacrament reserved from the community’s last Mass. Around 200, Tertullian gives cautious counsel for administering self-Communion and for reserving the sacrament in the home. St. Hippolytus, in the Apostolic Tradition, adds a homey touch, advising the use of a secure container that will keep mice out. It’s easy to see why the Church eventually phased out practices such as private reservation and self-Communion, as they lend themselves easily to profanation and abuse.
We do not know much more about the methods the early Church used to reserve the body of Christ, but the fact of reservation is quite clear. Nowhere do the Fathers instruct Christians to bake fresh bread for the purpose of administering Communion to themselves. Only the consecrated elements will do.
The earliest repositories for the sacrament were called “pastophoria” in Greek. Thus, in the Apostolic Constitutions we read: “After all the faithful of both sexes have received Communion the deacons gather what is left over and carry it to the Pastophorion.” The great biblical scholar St. Jerome wrote: “The sacred place, where the body of Christ is kept, who is the true bridegroom of the Church and of our soul, is called Thalamus or Pastophorion.” What did these early tabernacles look like? The trend back then was to fashion them in the shape of a dove.
In a biography of St. Basil, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia in the latter part of the fourth century, we read that he ordered a dove to be made of pure gold, and in it deposited a part of the body of the Lord, and suspended it above the sacred table, i. e. above the altar. In the lives of several of the early popes contained in the Liber Pontificalis, compiled in the sixth century, mention is made of the manufacture of such doves and of their presentation to several churches in Rome. In the life of Pope Silvester I (314-335) we read that the emperor Constantine (306-337) donated a dove made of pure gold to the basilica of St. Peter.
By the time we get to St. Paulinus in the early fifth century, we find descriptions of niches built into the church to hold the sacrament. There is an oral tradition in Milan that St. Ambrose required new converts to spend the days before their baptism in constant vigil before the reserved Blessed Sacrament. In Spain it is said that Christians have kept vigil before the sacrament for well over a millennium, to make reparation for the fourth-century Priscillian heresy.
I pulled these descriptions from the good online history of eucharistic reservation at Catholic Culture. The Anglican monk Gregory Dix wrote a fascinating book on the subject, A Detection of Aumbries, but it’s long out of print and very hard to find. Fr. Benedict Groeschel and James Monti wrote an excellent history of eucharistic devotion, In the Presence of Our Lord: The History, Theology, and Psychology of Eucharistic Devotion. If you haven’t already read it, you should do so immediately. I wrote a book on the origins of Corpus Christi called Praying In The Presence of Our Lord with St. Thomas Aquinas. If you’d like some background on the Fathers’ teaching on the real presence, check the archives of this blog, especially this little number. My book The Mass of the Early Christians gives you a superabundance of detail, from the very documents of the ancient Church.
Now, go and enjoy the day. My ancestors in Sicily celebrate Corpus Christi with rich desserts. Lots of chocolate. I believe that pleases Our Lord.
My little sister Susie passed through town about a month ago. It’s nice for me to be able to call her my “little sister,” even though I’m the youngest sibling in the family. Susie’s one of the few people in my orbit who are actually shorter than I am. She also looks twenty years younger than the least of her brothers.
Now retired from teaching, she and husband Jim globetrot a bit. Susie announced during this visit that she would, that very week, have a one-day layover in Rome, with a little time for browsing ruins. She had seen St. Peter’s and a few other places. What site would provide the best experience in just a few hours?
Without hesitation, I said “The catacombs.” She took up my suggestion to visit those ancient burial chambers “near the mines.” And I hear through her son, my neighbor-nephew Mark, that she and Jim loved the place.
You will, too, even if all you can take is a virtual tour.
The Vatican website hosts some fine pages from the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archeology. The text is informative — dealing with themes in the development of doctrine as well as art history. Unfortunately, it’s almost all in Italian. Still, the photos are worth the trip, and they speak a universal — that is, catholic — Christian language. See here and here.
For great information and still more great photos, visit “The Christian Catacombs of Rome,” run by the Salesian Institute San Callisto. The site is multilingual, and it includes wonderful essays on the spirituality of the catacombs and on life in the big city circa 250 A.D. — not to mention primary texts from the age of the martyrs, and recent papal statements on Christian archeology. There’s another nice synopsis here.
In April, the Vatican and the University of Bordeaux announced the discovery of a remarkably intact underground mass grave. Last month, the London Telegraph provided further reporting on the find:
The Vatican’s Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology is overseeing the dig. Its chief inspector of catacombs, Raffaella Giuliani, said: “This is the earliest example of such a mass burial. Usually two or three bodies at the most were put into holes dug out of the rock in the catacombs, but in these case we have several rooms filled with skeletons.
“They are placed one on top of the other and not in a disorderly fashion. They have been carefully buried, with dignity, but the puzzle is why so many at a time?”
The skeletons were dressed in fine robes, many containing gold thread, and wrapped in sheets covered with lime, as was common in early Christian burials.
The discovery was made at the Catacomb of SS Peter and Marcellinus on the ancient Via Labicana in south-east Rome.
But none of this is news, really. The Fathers themselves already showed a deep devotion to the catacombs. There they stood on holy ground. Here’s Jerome’s take: “Countless are the graves of saints I have seen in the city of Romulus … You ask for the inscriptions cut on their tombs, and their individual names, but it is hard for me to be able to repeat them. Such great multitudes of the righteous did ungodly rage devour while Trojan Rome still worshipped the gods of her fathers. Many a grave is lettered and tells the martyr’s name or bears some epitaph, but there are mute marbles too, which shut up the tombs in silence and only indicate the number; you may learn what masses of men’s bodies lie gathered together in heaps, but read the name of none of them. I remember finding that the remains of sixty persons were buried there under one massive stone, whose names Christ alone knows, since he has added them to the company of his friends.”
And Prudentius: “Not far outside the wall, near the belt of cultivation just beyond it, yawns a cave which goes deep down in dark pits. Into its hidden depths a downward path shows the way by turning, winding steps, with the help of light from a source unseen; for the light of day enters the first approach as far as the top of the cleft and illumines the entrance; then as you go forward easily you see the dark night of the place fill the mysterious cavern with blackness, but you find openings let into the roof far above, so as to throw bright rays down into the chasm. However doubtful you may feel of this fabric of narrow halls running back on either side in darksome galleries, still through the holes pierced in the vault many a gleam of light makes its way down to the hollow interior of the disembowelled mount, and thus underground it is granted to see the brightness of a sun which is not there, and have the benefit of its light. Such is the place of concealment to which the body of Hippolytus was committed and by it has been set an altar dedicated to God.”
I got the patristic texts here.
And if ever you get to Rome, do drop in. My colleagues at the St. Paul Center and I will likely be taking a group to Rome next May. I’ll be speaking, and so will Scott and Kimberly Hahn, among others. If you’re interested in joining us, please drop me a note with your contact information, and I’ll keep you posted as we complete our plans.
Barnabas was born of Jewish parents in Cyprus about the beginning of the Christian Era. A Levite, he naturally spent much time in Jerusalem, and appears to have settled there where his relatives, the family of Mark the Evangelist, likewise had their homes — Acts 12:12; 4:36-37). Clement of Alexandria and Eusebius say that he was one of the 70 Disciples; but Acts (4:36-37) favors the opinion that he was converted to Christianity shortly after Pentecost (about A.D. 29 or 30).
When Saul the persecutor (later Paul the Apostle) made his first post-conversion visit to Jerusalem, the Church there was understandably suspicious. Barnabas stood up for him and introduced him to the Apostles (Acts 9:27). Barnabas later rejoined Saul in Antioch, where the men worked together for the conversion of the Gentiles.
From Antioch, the two men set out on a missionary journey — to Cyprus, Perge in Pamphylia, Antioch of Pisidia, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, and other cities. At every step they met misunderstanding, opposition, and even persecution. At Lystra, after Paul cured a lame man, a mob proclaimed the Apostles to be the pagan gods Hermes and Jupiter. They wanted to sacrifice a bull to Paul and Baranabas, but, mob-like, they soon turned on them and almost succeeded in killing them. In any event, Paul and Barnabas made many converts on this journey and returned by the same route to Perge, organizing churches, ordaining priests and placing them over the faithful. When they got back to Antioch in Syria, they felt God had “opened a door of faith to the Gentiles” (Acts 13:13-14:27).
Some time afterward, they faced an intra-Church problem. Men came from Jerusalem preaching that circumcision was necessary for salvation, even for the Gentiles. The Apostles went up to Jerusalem to fight back; the older Apostles received them kindly and, at what is called the Council of Jerusalem (c. 50 A.D.), ruled in their favor (Acts 14:27-15:30). The problem arose again when Peter visited Antioch (Gal 2:11-15), and Barnabas joined the Prince of Apostles in holding aloof from the Gentiles. But Paul prevailed and the mission to the Gentiles continued, respecting the Gentiles as Gentiles. Shortly afterward, Paul and Barnabas decided to revisit their missions. Barnabas wanted to take John Mark along, but on account of a previous defection Paul objected. A sharp contention arose, and the Apostles agreed to separate. Barnabas sailed with John Mark to Cyprus.
Little is known of the subsequent career of Barnabas. He was still working as an Apostle in 56 or 57, when Paul wrote his First Letter to the Corinthians (9:5-6). St. Barnabas is credited by Tertullian (probably falsely) with the authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the so-called Epistle of Barnabas is ascribed to him by many Fathers. His authorship of that letter, too, is doubtful.
The Epistle of Barnabas – usually included among the works of the “Apostolic Fathers” – is certainly one of the earliest Christian texts, apart from the New Testament, to have survived to our day. Dating estimates range from 70 A.D. to 200 A.D. The document itself, however, contains no clue about its author or its intended audience. Its aim is to give readers the perfect and exact knowledge (gnosis) of the economy of salvation. It’s made up of two parts. The first part (chapters 1-5) is an exhortation; the end of the world and the judgment are now at hand, so the faithful, freed from the bonds of the Jewish ceremonial law, should practice the virtues and flee from sin. The second part (chapters 5-17) is more speculative, although it tends to draw sharp contrasts between Christianity and the religion of the Old Testament. The author argues that the ordinances of the Law refer allegorically to the Christian virtues and institutions, and he goes on to explain how the Old Testament prefigures Christ, His Passion, His Church, etc. Before concluding (chapter 21) the author incorporates from another document (the Didache or its source) the description of the “two ways,” the way of light and that of darkness (18-20). The epistle is characterized by the extreme use of allegory.
It’s on the web in several translations here. This little profile of the person and the Letter of Barnabas is drawn from the Catholic Encyclopedia, updated with other sources.
Carthage, the cosmopolitan port city of ancient North Africa, had a thriving economy, a lively culture, and no small influence in world affairs. Christianity reached the Roman province of “New Africa” no later than the mid-second century, and possibly much earlier. From that time through the rest of the age of the Fathers, African Christians play prominent roles in Church history. We need mention only a few to make our case: Tertullian, Perpetua and Felicity, Cyprian, the Martyrs of Abitina, Monnica, and Augustine.
Before his conversion, Tertullian had been a prominent citizen, a lawyer and legal scholar. He appears on any short list of the greatest writers of his time (and on the agnostic H.L. Mencken’s list of the best writers of all time). His thought is memorable, quotable, and always provocative. It’s also plentiful, as many of his works have survived the centuries. And in his enormous literary legacy Tertullian left us a vivid record of civic and Church life in second- and third-century Africa. Here’s the summary from the old Catholic Encyclopedia:
In his “Apology”, written at Carthage about 197, Tertullian states that although but of yesterday the Christians “have filled every place among you [the Gentiles] — cities, islands, fortresses, towns, market-places, the very camp, tribes, companies, palaces, senate, forum; we have left nothing to you but the temples of your gods”. If the Christians should be in a body desert the cities of Africa, the governing authorities would be “horror-stricken at the solitude” in which they would find themselves, “at a silence so all pervading”, a stupor as of a dead world. Fifteen years later the same author asks the Proconsul Scapula: “What will you make of so many thousands, of such a multitude of men and women, persons of every age, sex and rank, when they present themselves before you? How many fires, how many swords will be required?” And with regard to the Christians of the African capital he inquires: “What will be the anguish of Carthage itself, which you will have to decimate, as each one recognizes there is relatives and companions; as he sees there, it may be, men of your own order, and noble ladies, and all the leading persons of the city, and either kinsmen or friends of those in your own circle? Spare thyself, if not us poor Christians. Spare Carthage, if not thyself.” It is clear from this that the Christian religion at the beginning of the third century must have had numerous adherents in all ranks of Carthaginian society.
It is impossible to be steeped in the Fathers unless we come to know the particular character of North African Christians. They practiced a tough piety. They tried to keep “standing hours” of prayer throughout the day — and they even arose in the middle of the night to pray some more. They showed an eager willingness to suffer as confessors and die as martyrs. When they fell into heresy, they tended toward the rigorist, unforgiving kind, which would make no room in the Church for mortal sinners, especially repeat offenders. The African sectarians became Montanists, Novatianists, Donatists, and (alas!) Tertullianists, when our hotheaded lawyer himself went off the rails. It took the political and religious genius of an Augustine to restore unity to Christian Africa and snuff out these heresies once and for all.
If all Africa did for the rest of the Church was to give us Augustine, it would be enough to keep us in debt forever. But there’s so much more.
Africa gave us the first Latin-speaking pope, St. Victor I (189-198). A contemporary of St. Irenaeus and fellow kicker of gnostic butt, Victor also managed to establish diplomatic relations between the Church and the imperial household.
Africa gave us the first full-scale treatise on the Eucharist (early third century). African synods put an official stamp on the limits of the New Testament canon (late fourth century). Africa gave us Perpetua and Felicity, who are remembered forever in the Roman Canon of the Mass. Africa gave us Augustine’s mother, St. Monnica, who taught Christians ever afterward to persevere in prayer for their wayward children.
In 429-430, as Augustine lay dying, Carthage was besieged and then taken by the Vandals, who favored the heretical strains of African Christianity. The emperor Justinian briefly restored order. But the final catastrophe came when Carthage fell to Muslim invaders in 698.
You’ll find abundant online resources for the study of African Christianity in the age of the Fathers. The Tertullian Project is a knockout of a site, with all of the master’s works, most available in English translation as well as the original Latin, along with a truckload of secondary scholarship.
At this site, you can walk with an enthusiastic scholar as he retraces the footsteps of Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine.
Old Tertullian famously asked: “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” Bypass the question altogether, as you spend a few days in ancient Carthage.
Chris at GrailCode.com has posted a helpful summary review of all the historical data he’s presented so far. It’s all hyperlinked, so you can use it to browse the evidence of Arthur in history. And, of course, you’re always welcome to skip ahead and just buy the book that he and I co-authored: The Grail Code: Quest for the Real Presence.
Rogue Classicism, a site that observes the old (really, really old) Roman calendar, informs us that today is the anniversary of the imperial Decree of Toleration in 313 A.D. Free at last, free at last — we’re free to serve Him without fear, holy and righteous in His sight. Find a good way to celebrate!
At Christianity Today, Rodney Stark argues that — even in times of persecution, and especially in times of epidemic — Christians tended to live longer than their pagan neighbors. Why? It comes down to lifestyle and love. Hat tip: N.S. Gill at About.com.
Yesterday I blogged on the exciting archeological discovery in the Basque Country. Among the finds was the a third-century rendering of Calvary — the earliest ever found. The crucifixion scene is primitive in technique, but rich in details from the canonical gospels. (Nothing from the Gospel of Judas, though. Was there perhaps … a coverup? Dan Brown, call your agent!) Some folks said they want to see pictures. Others let us know where to find pictures.
Rod Bennett reports the archeological discovery of a patristic-era computer. (I’m not making this up.) The big question is, of course, which operating system the Fathers would use. It’s a question ripe with theological implication, as Umberto Eco pointed out in his 1994 essay “The Holy War: Mac vs. DOS.” Eco echoes my allegiances exactly. Rod’s reporting is delightful as always.
Chris Bailey is really the Woodward and Bernstein of the late patristic era. Now he’s exposed the dark side of King Arthur, drawing from obscure early British sources. After you read this, you might be glad you don’t have Tricky Art to kick around anymore. Chris is also closing in on the historical Merlin.
If you want to know more about history’s records of Arthur, Merlin, and the Holy Grail (though not necessarily in that order), you simply must read our book, The Grail Code: Quest for the Real Presence. (If you prefer to read Canadian French, click here.)
UPDATE: Nice new reviews of The Grail Code from that wild and crazy Texan Happy Catholic and Rome’s most precious commodity (after pasta), Father John Wauck.
Augustine speaks of our duty to pray for our enemies, over at Father Z’s place. Well worth reading in this time of war.
God lives and reigns eternally, a Trinity in unity. As Pope John Paul II put it: “God in His deepest mystery is not a solitude, but a family, since He has in Himself fatherhood, sonship, and the essence of the family, which is love.” God is love, an eternal communion of life-giving love: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The Blessed Trinity is eternal, changeless, undivided, and without beginning or end. The Greek word trias, however, had a beginning in the literary record. It first appears with Theophilus of Antioch about A.D. 180. Tertullian debuts the Latin word Trinitas just a few years later.
The Fathers preached the doctrine, argued for the doctrine — and some died for the doctrine in its purity. Many of the intra-church disputes of the patristic era were bound up with this central dogma of Christian faith.
The Fathers wanted to know God as He is, in His deepest mystery. The mystery could not (and cannot) be dissected and stuffed into a rationalist box, not even by a man as brilliant as Arius. God cannot be comprehended, but He wills to be known. And for the grace of that knowledge the Fathers prayed…
Lead me closer to the tree
Of all life’s eternity;
Which, as I have pondered, is
The knowledge of God’s greatnesses:
Light of One, and shine of Three,
Unto whom all things that be
Flow and tend!
That’s from “Soul and Body,” a long poem by St. Gregory Nazianzen (translated here by Elizabeth Barrett Browning).
And these are the concluding words to St. Hilary of Poitiers’ treatise “On the Trinity.” I broke up the lines, because they read like poetry to me.
I beg You, Father,
keep this my pious faith undefiled,
and even till my spirit departs,
grant that this may be
the utterance of my convictions:
so that I may ever hold fast
that which I professed
in the creed of my regeneration,
when I was baptized
in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Let me, in short, adore You our Father,
and Your Son together with You.
Let me win the favor of Your Holy Spirit,
Who is from You, through Your Only-begotten.
For I have a convincing Witness to my faith, Who says,
“Father, all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine,”
my Lord Jesus Christ, Living in You, and from You, and with You,
forever God:
Who is blessed forever and ever. Amen.
The Trinity is eternal. The revelation of the Trinity came with the incarnation of God the Son. The theological term is just a little late on the scene. The feast day is wonderful, but it came in still later than the period we’re pondering in this blog. Here’s the Catholic Encyclopedia):
In the early Church no special Office or day was assigned for the Holy Trinity. When the Arian heresy was spreading the Fathers prepared an Office with canticles, responses, a Preface, and hymns, to be recited on Sundays. In the Sacramentary of St. Gregory the Great there are prayers and the Preface of the Trinity.
We’d be remiss not to mention the great legend of St. Augustine, walking the beach in North Africa, pondering the Trinity. Along the way, he saw a child hauling buckets of ocean water and pouring them into a hole in the sand. Augustine said to him “You can never succeed in emptying the ocean into that little hole.” The child replied: “I’ll empty the ocean into that little hole before you understand the mystery of the Trinity with your little mind.”
What we cannot comprehend, we can love, and by grace we may come to know, ever more deeply, as did our Fathers before us.
Talk about paydirt. Archeologists in the Basque Country announced this week that they have have discovered 270 third-century Roman inscriptions, many of them Christian in character. This epigraphic set is “among the most important of the Roman world” and includes an image of Calvary — “the most ancient known up to this moment.”
The site seems to represent a transitional phase, when Christianity was emerging in a pagan religious landscape that included cults of Egyptian deities as well as the more familiar local gods.
The managers of the archaeological site, located near the Alavan town of Nanclares de Oca, have officially unveiled these findings, identified and analysed last summer.
The tools with the inscriptions and drawings, most of them ceramics, were found in a room of the “Domus de pompeia valentina,” one of the urban residences of the old city of Veleia, built up in the last quarter of the first century and inhabited until the fifth century.
A 57-square metre room was found in that town, sealed as in a “time capsule with its contents untouched,” and inside there were feeding remains and fragments of different recipients and other tools that had been used for writing …
In the findings, the “early and extraordinary testimonies of Christianisation” stand out. For instance, the presentation of a Calvary, “the most ancient known up to this moment,” a small piece “between eight and ten square centimetres.”
Archaeologists also highlighted that “this is one of the most important epigraphic sets in the Roman world,” as important as those in Pompeii, Rome or Vindolanda (northern England).