THE MASS: Its Beginning

1. THE MASS: Its Beginning Part IIc: The Last Supper-- the First Mass 30 AD 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 1100 1200 1300 1400 1500 1600 1700 1800 1900 2000

2. OBEDIENCE The Father “ . . . not My Will but Thy Will be done . . .” REDEMPTION PERFECT PRAISE AND WORSHIP Calvary, 30 AD . . . thru all time and space . . . LIVE “I desire to eat this meal with you before I die . . .” PERFECT PRAISE AND WORSHIP “ . . . as often as you do this . . .” “. . . we celebrate the death of the Lord . . .” Every Mass, 2011 AD

3. The Eucharist Meal Was Then Called the “Breaking of the Bread” Acts 2:42 They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers. Acts 2:46-47 Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple area and to breaking bread in their homes. They ate their meals with exultation and sincerity of heart, praising God and enjoying favor with all the people. Acts 20:7 On the first day of the week when we gathered to break bread, Paul spoke to them because he was going to leave on the next day, and he kept on speaking until midnight.

4. The Catholic Catechism 1339 Jesus chose the time of Passover to fulfill what he had announced at Capernaum: giving his disciples his Body and his Blood: Then came the day of Unleavened Bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. So Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, "Go and prepare the Passover meal for us, that we may eat it. . . ." They went . . . and prepared the Passover. And when the hour came, he sat at table, and the apostles with him. And he said to them, "I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I tell you I shall not eat it again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.". . . . And he took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me." And likewise the cup after supper, saying, "This cup which is poured out for you is the New Covenant in my blood."

5. 1340 By celebrating the Last Supper with his apostles in the course of the Passover meal, Jesus gave the Jewish Passover its definitive meaning. Jesus' passing over to his Father by his death and Resurrection, the new Passover, is anticipated in the Supper and celebrated in the Eucharist, which fulfills the Jewish Passover and anticipates the final Passover of the Church in the glory of the kingdom.

6. Finally, Christ gave His Apostles and their successors the power to celebrate Eucharist: “Do this in memory of me.” They all sang a psalm and Jesus went forth to his saving death and resurrection. In this event Jesus gave us the sacraments of the Eucharist and Orders, the ordained priesthood.

7. Bread The first element is wheat bread (panis triticeus), without which the "confection of the Sacrament does not take place" (Missale Romanum: De defectibus, sect. 3). Being true bread, the Host must be baked, since mere flour is not bread. The bread required is that formed of wheat flour, not every kind of flour is allowed for validity, such, e.g., as is ground from rye, oats, barley, Indian corn or maize, though these are all botanically classified as grain (frumentum). On the other hand, the different varieties of wheat (as spelt, amel-corn, etc.) are valid, inasmuch as they can be proved botanically to be genuine wheat. The necessity of wheat bread is deduced immediately from the words of Institution: “The Lord took bread” (ton arton), in connection with which it may be remarked, that in Scripture bread (artos), always signifies wheat bread. Jesus adhered unconditionally to the Jewish custom of using only wheat bread in the Passover Supper, and by the words, “Do this for a commemoration of me,” commanded its use for all succeeding times. Uninterrupted tradition, whether it be the testimony of the Fathers or the practice of the Church, shows wheat bread to have played such an essential par.

8. The Church maintains an easier position in the controversy respecting the use of leavened or unleavened bread. By leavened bread (fermentum, zymos) is meant such wheat bread as requires leaven or yeast in its preparation and baking, while unleavened bread (azyma, azymon) is formed from a mixture of wheat flour and water, which has been kneaded to dough and then baked. The Decree of Florence (1439), came to the unanimous dogmatic decision, that the distinction between leavened and unleavened bread did not interfere with the confection of the sacrament, though for just reasons based upon the Church’s discipline and practice, the Latins were obliged to retain unleavened bread, while the Greeks still held on to the use of leavened (cf, D 692). Pope Leo IX (1002 –1054) referred to the Scriptural fact, that according to the three Synoptics the Last Supper was celebrated “on the first day of the unleavened” and so the custom of the Western Church received its solemn sanction from the example of Christ Himself. The Jews, moreover, were accustomed even the day before the fourteenth of Nisan to get rid of all the leaven which chanced to be in their dwellings, that so they might from that time on partake exclusively of the so-called mazzoth as bread.

9. Against the Greeks it suffices to call attention to the historical fact that in the Orient the Maronites and Armenians have used unleavened bread from time immemorial, and that according to Origen (Commentary on Matthew, XII, 6) the people of the East “sometimes,” therefore not as a rule, made use of leavened bread in their Liturgy. There is considerable force in the theological argument that the fermenting process with yeast and other leaven, does not affect the substance of the bread, but merely its quality. St Thomas Aquinas(III:74.4) cited the example of Christ, the aptness of unleavened bread to be regarded as a symbol of the purity of His Sacred Body, free from all corruption of sin, and finally the instruction of St. Paul (1 Corinthians 5:8) to keep the Pasch not with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth".

10. Wine The second Eucharistic element required is fermented wine of the grape (vinum de vite). Hence are excluded as invalid, the juices extracted and prepared from other fruits (as cider ), but also the so-called artificial wines, even if their chemical constitution is identical with the genuine juice of the grape. The necessity of wine of the grape is not so much the result of the authoritative decision of the Church, as it is presupposed by her (Council of Trent, Sess. XIII, cap. iv), and is based upon the example and command of Christ, Who at the Last Supper certainly converted the natural wine of grapes into His Blood, This is deduced partly from the rite of the Passover, which required the head of the family to pass around the “cup of benediction” containing the wine of grapes, partly, and from the words of Jesus, that henceforth He would not drink of the "fruit of the vine" (genimen vitis). The earliest literature on the subject (the Didache, Ignatius, Justin, Irenæus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Hippolytus, Trtullian, and Cyprian), but also of non-Catholic and apocryphal writings, which bear testimony to the use of bread and wine as the only and necessary elements of the Blessed Sacrament.

11. A very ancient law of the Church which, having nothing to do with the validity of the sacrament, prescribes that a little water be added to the wine before the Consecration (Decr. pro Armenis), a practice, whose legitimacy the established under pain of anathema. • Canon 9. If anyone says that the rite of the Roman Church, according to which a part of the canon and the words of consecration are pronounced in a low tone, is to be condemned; or that the mass ought to be celebrated in the vernacular tongue only; or that water ought not to be mixed with the wine that is to be offered in the chalice because it is contrary to the institution of Christ,let him be anathema. • The rigor of this law of the Church may be traced to the ancient custom of the Romans, Greeks and Jews, who mixed water with the strong southern wines (see Proverbs 9:2), to the expression found in Justin (First Apology 86), Irenæus (Against Heresies v.2.3), and Cyprian (Epistle 63, no. 13 sq.), and especially to the deep symbolical meaning contained in the mingling, by which is represented the flowing of blood and water from the side of the Crucified Savior and the intimate union of the faithful with Christ (cf. Council of Trent, Sess. XXII, cap. vii).

12. It should be noted that the wine must be "well-preserved and not soured." Most people don't think about soured wine anymore because about every wine you buy at the store has preservatives added. Again, adding preservatives is mixing substances, so wines with preservatives added can't be used for the Eucharist.There are wineries established by religious sisters, monks and priests that specialize in making Catholic sacramental wines, and they don't sell to the public. Rubrics tell us to make sure of the wine's provenance, to ensure that all the requirements are followed: just because a preservative isn't listed on the wine label doesn't mean it wasn't added at some point.

13. Adding water to your wine is almost as old as wine itself. The Romans and Greeks would have never considered drinking wine without adding water first; in fact, they considered it uneducated behavior. Even in Mediterranean countries today, wine mixed with water is considered a proper beverage for the family's children, with less water being added as the child grows older. Few of us in the U.S. want water in our wine, though. What we don't know is that much of the time, we're getting it anyway. And yet we should probably be thankful that we're getting our wine watered down for us. With four cups of wine prescribed for the Passover meal that the Jews added water to the four cups during the time of Jesus.

14. The End of the Beginning

15. The is the End of The Last Supper--the First Mass Part IIc Go to The Mass of the Early Church Part IIIa