THE glory of martyrdom illumines this day with a profusion rarely met with in the cycle; and already we seem to descry the rosy dawn of that brightest day of this month, on which Peter and Paul will consummate in their blood their own splendid confession. Italy and Gaul, Rome and Lyons concur in forming a legion of heroes in the service of heaven. For to-day Lyons, the illustrious daughter of Rome, is keeping the special festival of a whole phalanx of warriors, headed by the veteran chief, St Pothinus, disciple of St Polycarp, who, in the second century, levied the brave recruits of his battalion on the banks of the Rhone.[1] But to the mother Church are due the first honours. Let us, then, hail Marcellinus, together with the numerous progeny begotten by his fruitful priesthood, and rendered worthy by the Holy Ghost to share in his triumph. Let us hail, likewise, the exorcist, Peter, leading to the sacred font a long line of pagans whom he won over to Christ by proving to them the weakness of the demons.
When Christianity appeared on earth, Satan was visibly the prince of this world. To him was every altar reared; to his empire were all laws and customs subservient. From the depths of their famous temples, the demon chiefs directed the political affairs of the cities that came to consult their oracles; under divers names the lowest of the fallen angels found honour and influence at the domestic hearth; others had functions assigned to them, in forests, on mountains, at fountains, or on sea, occupying, in opposition to God, this world that had been created by him for his glory, but which Satan, through man’s connivance, had conquered. Four thousand years of abandonment on the part of heaven permitted the usurper to consolidate his conquest; and a strong defence had been planned in preparation for the day on which the lawful King should offer to re-enter on his rights.
The coming of the Word made Flesh was the signal for the assertion of the divine claim. The prince of this world, personally vanquished by the Son of God, understood well enough that he must needs return to the depths of hell. But the countless powers of darkness constituted by him would maintain the struggle through the length of ages, and dispute their position inch by inch. Driven from towns by the abjurations of holy Church and the triumph of martyrs, the infernal legions would fain marshal their ranks in the wilderness; there, under the leadership of an Anthony or a Pachomius, the soldiers of Christ must wage against them ceaseless and terrific battle. In the west, Benedict, the patriarch of monks, finds altars to the demons, and even demons themselves, on the heights of Cassino as late as the sixth century. Even in the seventh, they are found contending against St Gall for possession of the woods, lakes and rocks of what we now call Switzerland; and at last they are heard uttering mournful complaint, because, driven from the haunts of men, even such desolate spots as these are denied them. Verily, in the divine mind, the vocation of a monk to the desert has for itsend, not only flight from the world and its concerns, but likewise the pursuit of demons into their last entrenchments.
We have dwelt upon these considerations because their importance is extreme, and because this subject is now systematically ignored. True Christians firmly believe, now as formerly, in the spiritual combat which the soul has to sustain against hell, in the secrecy of conscience; but too many have no scruple in rejecting, as if belonging to the domain of the imagination, whatever is related of the public combats maintained by our fathers against the demons. The excuse for such Christians is, no doubt, the fact that they live in a land where this external war was ended centuries ago by the social victory of Christendom. But the Holy Ghost has declared that the old serpent, bound up for a thousand years, is at last to be again unchained for a while.[2] If we be nearing this fatal epoch, it is high time to look about us; we shall be ill prepared for waging the old battles, if we persist in our ignorance, and in branding with the name of legend the best attested facts in the history of our ancestors. After all, what is history, since the revolt of Lucifer, but a picture of the war that is being waged between God and Satan? Now if Satan has, by divine permission, invaded the exterior world as well as that of souls, must not the struggle to cast him out[3] be a hand to hand fight, an exterior and visible encounter?
‘The Word,’ says St Justin, ‘was made Flesh for two ends: to save believers, and to drive away demons.’[4] So also, the expulsion of demons from the places they occupy in this material world, and specially in the noblest part thereof, the bodies of men, appears in the Gospel to have been one of the chief characteristics of our Saviour’s power. Again, when on quitting the earth he sent his apostles to continue his work amidst the nations, this is the very thing he singled out as a primary sign of the mission they were to fulfil.[5] The world of that day made no mistake about it. Soon enough had the pagans to witness the cessation of the ancient oracles in every place;[6] and the cause of a phenomenon of such import to the ancient religion was evident to all: the very demons themselves were not backward in ascribing to the Christians their enforced silence. As regards this power of Christianity against hell, the apologists of the second and third centuries appeal on the subject to public testimony, without fear of contradiction. ‘Before the eyes of everyone,’ says St Justin to the emperors, ‘ the Christians drive out demons in the name of Jesus Christ, not only in Rome, but in the whole universe.᾽[7] The gods of Olympus beheld themselves shamefully unmasked, in the presence of their confused adorers, and Tertullian might well challenge the magistrates of the empire thus: ‘Let one of those men who declare themselves to be under the power of the gods, be brought before your tribunals: at the command of the first comer amongst us, the spirit whereby they are possessed will be constrained to confess what he is; if he avow not himself a demon and no god, fearing to lie to a Christian, at once shed the blood of this Christian blasphemer. But no; it is the terror they have of Christ that forces them to take flight at the mere touch or even the breath of one of his servants.᾽[8]
Baptism sufficed to give man such power as this; and this was the real meaning of our Lord’s promise, when speaking not only of the heads of the Church, but of all who would believe in him, he said: ‘In my name they shall cast out devils.᾽[9] At an early date, however, the Church, organizing the holy war, constituted among her sons one special Order having for its direct mission the pursuit of Satan on every point of this visible world. The exorcists were, by this delegation, invested with a power that accelerates the downfall of the prince of this world; and to render this defeat more odious and humiliating the Church raised no higher than to the rank of inferior clergy an Order so terrible to hell. Lucifer had aimed at being equal to the Most High;[10]hurled down from heaven, he flattered himself in his folly that he would be able to supplant God upon the earth: and lo! the charge of defeating him here is confided not to angels, his equals by nature, but to men, and even to the least of this credulous race which for long ages he had seen prostrate before him! Their hand of flesh constrains him, spirit though he be, to come off his throne; at their word he must needs cast away his vain adornments, he must unmask himself; the water they bless rekindles within him his eternal tortures; of the prince of this world and his pomps nought remains but mere Satan, the ugly-faced apostate, the condemned criminal wincing in the dust at the feet of the sons of men, or fleeing like a dry leaf before the breath of their mouth.
The archangel Michael recognizes, in these sons of Adam, the worthy allies of the faithful angels he led forward to victory. But amid those who continue the mighty battle begun on the heights of heaven,[11] the exorcist Peter comes before us to-day radiant with matchless splendour. The triumph of martyrdom has been added to his victories won over Satan's cohorts. None better than he drove hell back; for, chasing the demons out of men’s bodies, he moreover made conquest of their souls. The priest Marcellinus, the companion of his victories and martyrdom, is likewise his associate in glory. The Church wishes that these two names, so formidable to the spirits of darkness, should shine in one same aureole here below as in heaven. Daily does she render them the most solemn homage in her power by naming them both, on the diptych of the holy Sacrifice, together with the apostles and her first sons. Such was the importance of the mission they fulfilled and the renown of their final combat, that their bodies, translated to the Via Latina, became the nucleus of an illustrious cemetery. In the age of peace, that came soon after their glorious confession, the Christians vied with one another in obtaining sepulture near these soldiers of Christ, whose protection they craved. Constantine the Great, the vanquisher of idolatry, deposited at their sacred feet the remains of his mother, St Helena, who had herself become a terror to the demons by her discovery of the true Cross. A celebrated inscription was composed in their honour by St Damasus, who in childhood had learned the details of their martyrdom from their executioner himself after his conversion; this inscription, near their tomb, completed the monuments of that catacomb wherein Christian art had multiplied its richest teachings.
To the memory of Saints Marcellinus and Peter is joined, in the liturgy of to-day, the name of a holy bishop and martyr, formerly well known to the faithful. If the acts of his life which have reached us are not free from all reproach from a critical point of view, the favours obtained by the intercession of St Erasmus or Elmo wafted his name over the whole of Christendom, as is attested by the numberless forms this name assumed in various countries of the west during the middle ages. He holds a place in the group of saints styled auxiliatores or helpers, whose cultus is widespread particularly in Germany and Italy. Mariners look upon him as their patron, because of a certain miraculous voyage related in his life; one of the tortures to which he was subjected during his martyrdom has caused him to be invoked for colic. Nor should we forget to mention here how great a veneration St Benedict, the patriarch of western monks, had for St Erasmus; when he quitted the Campagna for his solitude on the banks of the Anio, he marked his principal station between Subiaco and Monte Cassino, by building a church and monastery at Veroli under the invocation of this holy martyr; he dedicated another in Rome itself to St Erasmus.
Let us now read the few lines devoted by the Church to the memory of our three Saints.
Petrus, exorcista, Diocletiano imperatore, Romæ a Sereno judice propter Christianæ fidei confessionem missus in carcerem, Paulinam Artemii, qui carceri præerat, filiam a dæmone agitatam liberavit. Quo facto et parentes puellæ cum tota familia et vicinos, qui ad rei novitatem concurrerant, Jesu Christo conciliatos, ad Marcellinum presbyterum adduxit, a quo omnes baptizati sunt. Quod ubi rescivit Serenus, Petrum et Marcellinum ad se vocatos asperius objurgat et ad verborum acerbitatem minas ac terrores adjungit, nisi Christo renuntient. Cui cum MarcellinusChristiana libertate responderet, pugnis contusum et a Petro sejunctum, nudum includit in carcerem stratum vitri fragmentis, sine cibo ac sine lumine. Petrum item constringi imperat arctissimis vinculis. Sed cum utrique ex tormentis fides et animus cresceret, constanti confessione, et abscisso capite, illustre testimonium Jesu Christo dederunt. Erasmus, episcopus imperatoribus Diocletiano et Maximiano, in Campania plumbatis et fustibus cæsus, resina quoque, sulphure, plumbo liquefacto et ferventi pice, cero oleoque perfusus, inde tamen integer et inviolatus evasit. Quo miraculo multi se ad Christi fidem converterunt. Verum is, iterum detrusus in carcerem, constrictus ferreis gravissimisque vinculis, inde ab angelo mirabiliter ereptus est. Deinde Formiis a Maximiano variis affectus suppliciis, tunicaque ærea candenti indutus, illa etiam tormenta divina virtute superavit. Denique, plurimis et in fide confirmatis et ad fidem conversis, insignem martyrii palmam adeptus est.
Peter, an exorcist, was cast into prison at Rome, under the emperor Diocletian, by the judge Serenus, for confessing the Christian faith. He there set free Paulina, the daughter of Artemius, the keeper of the prison, from an evil spirit which tormented her. Upon this, Artemius and his wife and all their house, with their neighbours who had run together to see the strange thing, were converted to Jesus Christ. Peter therefore brought them to Marcellinus the priest, who baptized them all. When Serenus heard of it, he called Peter and Marcellinus before him, and sharply rebuked them, adding to his bitter words threats and terrors, unless they would deny Christ. Marcellinus answered him with Christian boldness, whereupon he caused him to be buffeted, separated him from Peter, and shut him up naked, in a prison strewn with broken glass, without either food or light. Peter also he straitly confined. But when both of them were found to increase in faith and courage in their bonds, they were beheaded, unshaken in their testimony, and confessing Jesus Christ gloriously by their blood. In Campania the bishop Erasmus was, under the empire of Diocletian and Maximian, beaten with clubs and whips loaded with lead, and afterwards plunged into resin, sulphur, melted lead, boiling pitch, wax, and oil. From all this he came forth whole and sound: which wonder converted many to believe in Christ. He was remanded to prison, and straitly bound in iron fetters. But from these he was wondrously delivered by an angel. At last, being taken to Formi, Maximian caused him to be subjected to divers torments, being clad in a coat of red-hot brass, but the power of God made him more than conqueror in all these things also. Afterwards, having converted many to the faith and confirmed them therein, he obtained the palm of a glorious martyrdom.
Holy martyrs, you all confessed Jesus Christ, in the midst of the most terrific storm ever raised by the demon against the Church. Though all three in different grades of the hierarchy, you were alike guides of the Christian people, drawing them by thousands in your train, into the arena of martyrdom, and, by still more numerous conversions, filling up the void made in earth's chosen band by the departure of your victorious companions to heaven. Wherefore the Church this day joins her grateful homage here below, with the congratulation that rings through the Church triumphant. Be propitious, as of yore, in alleviating the ills that overwhelm mankind in this vale of tears. The excess of man's misery is that he seems to have forgotten how to call on such powerful protectors in his hour of need. Revive your memory, in our midst, by new benefits to our race.
As thou, O Erasmus, wast formerly protected by heaven, do thou now, in thy turn, succour those who are a prey to the tempest-tossed sea. In thy last hour of bitter anguish, thou didst suffer thine executioners to tear thy very bowels; lend a kindly aid to such as call upon thy name when racked by pains which bear some resemblance, though but faint, to what thou didst endure for Christ.
Peter and Marcellinus, linked one to another both in toil and in glory, cast gentle eyes upon us: one glance of yours would make all hell to tremble, and would drive far from us its cohorts. But how much is your aid needed in society at large, in the whole visible world! The foe you so mightily thrust backwards into the fiery pit is once more master. Alas! have we come to the time in which, again taking up war against the saints, it shall be granted him to overcome them?[12] Scarce does he even hide himself nowadays. Societies which formerly worked in secret have now openly surrendered to him a thousand sources of evil; he may be seen trying to push his way into gatherings of all sorts, into the very bosom of homes, as a family guest, as a comrade in diversion or in business, with table-turning and all those processes for divination, such as Tertullian denounced in your early day.[13] The expulsion of demons by Christianity had been so absolute that, up to more recent times, such fatal practices had fallen into utter oblivion amongst us. If at first, in Christian families, the warning voice of the pastors of God's Church has prevailed over the incitements of an unhealthy curiosity, a sect has since been formed, in which Satan is sole guide and oracle. The spiritists, as they are called, in concert with freemasonry, are preparing the way for the final invasion of the exterior world by infernal bands. Antichrist, with his usurped power and vain prestige, will be but the common product of political lodges and of this sect which proposes to bring back, under a new form, the ancient mysteries of paganism. Valiant soldiers of the Church, make us, we beseech you, worthy of our forefathers. If the Christian army must needs decrease in numbers, let its faith wax all the stronger; let its courage neither fail nor go astray; may its ranks be seen facing the foe, at that last hour in which the Lord Jesus will slay, with the breath of his mouth, the man of sin,[14] and plunge once again and for ever the whole of Satan's crew down into the lowest depths of the bottomless pit.
[1] Note of the Translator. SS. Pothinus, Blandina, and companions, martyrs of Lyons, are marked on this day in the Roman Martyrology, but as the feast is kept only in France, we have omitted in our translation the pages devoted to their memory in this place. [2] Apoc. xx 2, 3. [3] St John xii 31. [4] 2 Apol. vi. [5] St Mark xvi 17. [6] Plutarch, De oraculor. defectu. [7] 2 Apol. vi. [8] Apol. xxiii. [9] St Mark xvi 17. [10] Is. xiv 12-15. [11] Apoc. xii 7-9. [12] Apoc. xiii 7. [13] Apolog. xxiii. [14] 2 Thess. ii 8.
The history of the blessed Eucharist is one with that of the Church herself: the liturgical usages, which have varied in the celebration of the most august of all the Sacraments, have followed the great social phases of the Christian world. This was a necessity; for the Eucharist is the vital centre, here below, whither everything in the Church converges; it is the inner bond which unites together that society of which Christ is the Head, the society whereby He is to reign over the nations, which are to be His inheritance.[1] Union with Peter, the Vicar of Christ, must always be the indispensable condition, the external mark, of the union of the members with the invisible Head; but supported, in an ineffable manner, on the rock which bears the Church, the divine mystery wherein Christ gives Himself to each one of His servants must ever be the essential mystery of union; and, as such, the centre, and the bond, of the great Catholic communion. Let us, to-day, get a clear notion of this fundamental truth, on which was based the very formation of the Church, at her commencement; and let us consider the influence it exercised on the forms of eucharistic worship during the first twelve centuries. To-morrow, we will continue the subject, by examining how subsequent loss of fervour, and heresy, and social degeneracy, induced the Church to gradually modify these forms, which, after all, are but accidental: they were admirably adapted to the favoured times they had served, but would scarcely suit the changed circumstances and requirements of later generations of the Church's children.
It was on the eve of His Passion that our Lord instituted the great Memorial, which was to perpetuate; in all places, the one Sacrifice, whereby are perfected for ever they that are sanctified.[2] The cross was 'the altar of the world,’ as St. Leo calls it;[3]and on that cross, says the same holy Doctor, was made, a few hours after the last Supper, 'the oblation of the whole human nature; for the whole human race was united with this last act of infinite adoration and reparation, offered by its Head, to the supreme Majesty of God.’[4] The Church, issuing with the Blood and water from the side of her Saviour, was then but in her infancy; and the mystery of divine union—which Jesus had come upon the earth to produce, by Himself uniting to the Father, in the Holy Ghost, the members of His mystical body—was to have its immediate realization in those members only by its successive application to each. This was the object of the sublime institution of the Eucharist at the last Supper. It was a new Testament, which gave to the future Church the possession of the mystery, whereby each generation would be linked on to its predecessors by the unity of the one Sacrifice, and would find in that same unity the mutual bond of its members.
Immediately after instituting this new Passover, Jesus said to His disciples: ‘A new commandment I give unto you: that ye love one another, as I have loved you: and, by this shall all men know that ye are My disciples.’[5] This was Jesus’ first injunction to His disciples after giving Himself to them in the Eucharist; this love of, and union with, each other, was to be the mark of the Covenant, which He then, through His apostles, contracted with all those who were to believe in Him through the word of their preaching.[6] His very first prayer, after that first giving of His Body and Blood under the eucharistic species, is for that same union of His faithful one with another; a union admirable as is the mystery which produces and maintains it; a union so intimate, that its model is the union existing between Jesus and His eternal Father: May they all be one, as Thou, Father, in Me, and I in Thee; that they may be made perfect in one.[7]
Under the direction of the holy Spirit, the Church understood, from the very first, the intentions of her divine Master. The three thousand, who were converted on the day of Pentecost, are described, in the Acts, as persevering in the doctrine of the apostles, in the communication of the breaking of bread, and in prayers.[8] And so great is the power of union derived from their all partaking of the heavenly Bread, that they were remarked by the Jews as a class of men forming a society distinct from every other, which won the esteem of all that beheld them, and drew others daily to join them.[9]
A few years later the Church, led on by the same holy Spirit, passed beyond the narrow limits of Judea, and carried her treasures to the Gentiles. It was a world of corruption, where all was discord between man and man, and where the only remedy for the outrages of individual egotism was the tyranny of a Cæsar. Into such a world the Christians came, and showed it, from east to west, the marvel of a new people, which, by the sole influence of its virtues, recruited its members from every class of society, and from every dime, and was stronger and more united than any nation that had ever appeared on earth. The pagans were in admiration at this strange and inexplicable novelty; without knowing what they were doing, without troubling themselves with any further inquiry, they bore testimony to the perfection wherewith these Christians fulfilled the dying wishes of their Founder; they thus spoke of them: ‘See how they love one another!’
It was, indeed, a mystery; but the faithful, the initiated, understood it; for it had been thus explained to them by the apostle: ‘We, being many, are one bread, one body, all that partake of one Bread.’[10]
This text is admirably commented by St. Augustine in a sermon he preached to the neophytes, a few hours after their Baptism: ‘I remember,’ he says, 'the promise I made, of explaining to you, who have been baptized, the mystery of the Lord’s Table, which you now see, and of which you were made partakers in the night just past. . . That Bread which you see on the altar, that Bread which has been sanctified by the word of God, is the Body of Christ: that chalice, or, rather, what that chalice contains, which has been sanctified by the word of God, is the Blood of Christ. By these did Christ our Lord will to give us His Body and His Blood, which He shed for us, unto the remission of our sins. If you have properly received them, you are what you have received, for the apostle says: “We, being many, are one bread, one body.” It is thus that he expounded the Sacrament of the Table of the Lord: We, being many, are one bread, one body. We are, by this Bread, instructed how we are to love unity. Was this Bread made out of one grain P Were there not many grains of wheat P But, before they came to be bread, they were separated one from the other; they became joined by means of water, and by a certain bruising: for, unless the wheat be ground, and be moistened with water, it could never take the form we call bread. It was the same with you, until you were, so to say, ground by the humiliation of fasting, and by the sacrament of exorcism. Baptism and water came to you; you were moistened, that so you might come to the state of bread. But, even so, there is no bread without fire. What, then, does fire signify P It is the chrism; for the oil which makes our fire is the Sacrament of the Holy Ghost. . . The Holy Ghost, therefore, comes; after water, comes fire; and you are made Bread, which is the Body of Christ. . . Christ willed that we should be His Sacrifice—the Sacrifice of God. . . Great, very great are these mysteries! . . Do you so receive them, as to take care that you have unity in your hearts.[11] Be one, by loving one another, by holding one faith, one hope, and undivided charity. When the heretics receive this Bread, they receive testimony against themselves; for they are seeking to make division, whereas this Bread is the sign of unity.’[12] The Scripture, speaking of the first Christians, says that they had but one heart and one soul;[13] and it is the unity which is signified by the wine in the holy mysteries. ‘For,’ continues St. Augustine, ‘the wine was once in so many bunches of grapes; but now it is all one, one in the sweetness of the chalice; for it has gone through the crushing of the wine-press. So you, after those fastings, and labours, and humility, and contrition, have come, in the name of Christ, to the chalice of the Lord; and you are there on that table, and there in that chalice. You are there together with us, for we have eaten together, and drunk together, and that because we live together.[14]Thus did Christ our Lord (by the wine made one out of many grapes) signify us, and He wished us to be one with Him, and, by His Table, consecrated the mystery of our peace and unity.’[15] These admirable expressions of St. Augustine are but the substance of the doctrine regarding the holy Eucharist, held by the Church in the fourth century. They give us the very essence of that doctrine, in all its fulness and in all the clearness of its literal truth; no other could have been given to neophytes, who, up to that time, had been kept in complete ignorance of the august mysteries, of which they were henceforth to partake. Of the discipline of that secrecy we shall have to speak a little further on. The doctrine of the Eucharist here laid down by the great bishop of Hippo, is identical with that given by all the fathers. In Gaul, St. Hilary of Poitiers,[16] and Saint Cesarius of Arles;[17]in Italy, Saint Gaudentius of Brescia:[18] at Antioch and Constantinople, St. John Chrysostom;[19] at Alexandria, St. Cyril:[20]all had the same way of putting this dogma of faith before their people. Christ is not divided: the Head and the members, the Word and His Church are inseparably one in the unity of the mystery instituted for the very purpose of producing that unity. And this unanimous teaching of the fathers, who lived in the golden age of Christian eloquence, was reproduced by Paschasius Radbert, in the ninth century,[21] by Rupert in the twelfth,[22] and by William of Auvergne in the beginning of the thirteenth.[23]
It would be too long to give the names, and still more to quote passages, in testimony of how all the Churches, for the first twelve centuries, looked upon the holy Eucharist in this same way, that is, as instituted for the purpose of union. If we follow this traditional teaching back to the apostolic source whence it originated, we shall find St. Cyprian, in the age of persecution, speaking to his people upon the union between the divine Head and His members, which is the necessary result of the holy Sacrament; he shows this, not only by the nature of bread and wine, the essential elements for the consecration of the mysteries, but likewise by the mingling of water with the wine in the eucharistic cup: the water, he says, signifies the faithful people; the wine denotes the Blood of Christ; their union in the chalice—union necessary for the integrity of the Sacrifice, union the most complete and inseparable—expresses the indissoluble alliance between Christ and His Church, which consummates the Sacrament.[24] The same St. Cyprian shows that the unity of the Church by the Chair of Peter, which is the subject of one of his finest treatises, is divinely established on the sacred mysteries; he speaks enthusiastically of the multitude of believers, the 'Christian unanimity’ being held together, in the hoods of a firm and indivisible charity, by the Sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ.[25] Christ in His Sacrament, and Christ in His Vicar, is, in reality, but the one same Rock that bears the building which is erected upon it; the one sole Head, visible in His representative, His Vicar, and invisible in His own substance in the Sacrament.
This sentiment of union, as the result of the Eucharist, was rooted in the soul of the early Church; her very mission was to bring about the union of all the children of God, that were dispersed throughout the world;[26] and when the violence of her enemies obliged her to provide her children with some secret sign, whereby they might recognize each other, and not be recognized by pagans or persecutors or blasphemers, she gave them the mysterious icthus, the fish,which was the sacred symbol of the Eucharist. The letters which form the Greek word for fish (icthus) are the initials of a formula in the same language, which gives this sentence: Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour. The fish is shown to us in the Book of Tobias[27] as a figure of Christ, who is the food of the wayfarer, casts out the devil by His virtues, and gives light to the world grown old in iniquity. Again: it is not without a prophetic and mysterious purpose, that the fish is mentioned in Genesis, as being blessed by the Creator, at the commencement of the world, just as man himself was.[28] It is found with the bread miraculously multiplied in the Gospel, when our Lord prefigures the marvels of the Eucharist. It is brought again to our notice, after the Resurrection; it is found lying on hot coals, and is offered by Jesus, together with bread, as a repast to seven of His disciples, on the banks of lake Tiberias.[29] Now, what is this fish, this bread? The fathers answer: Christ is the Bread of that mysterious repast; He is the Fish taken from the living water, and is roasted on the altar of the cross by the fire of His love, and feeds the disciples on His own substance, and offers Himself to the entire world as the true icthus.[30]No wonder, then, that we find this sacred symbol on almost everything that the Christians of the first three centuries possessed; on precious stones, rings, lamps, inscriptions, paintings, there was the fish, in some shape or other. It was the watchword, the tessera of the Christians, in those days of persecution. An inscription of the second century, discovered in modern times at Autun, thus speaks of the Christians: ‘This divine race of the heavenly icthus,this noble-hearted race, receive from the Saviour of the saints the nourishment which is sweet as honey, and drink long draughts of the divine fount, holding icthusin their hands.’[31] A holy bishop of Asia Minor of that same early period, by name Aberoius of Hierapolis, who was divinely led into various lands, everywhere recognizes the disciples of Christ by the holy fish, which makes all, however separated by distance, to be one. ‘I have,’ says he, shortly before the close of his life of travel, ‘I have seen Rome: I have beheld the queen city, in her robes and sandals of gold; I have made acquaintance with the people decked with bright rings. I have visited the country of Syria, and all her cities. Passing the Euphrates, I have seen Nisibis; and all people in the east were in union with me, for we all formed but one body; everywhere, faith presented to all, and gave as nourishment to all, the glorious and holy icthUs, which came from the only fount, and was taken by the most pure Virgin.’[32]
This, then, was the bond of that mighty union between Christians, which was such a puzzle to the pagan world; and the more the real cause of that unity was kept concealed from its eyes, so much the more violent was the fury wherewith it attacked the Church. Our Lord had said: ‘Give not that which is holy to dogs; neither cast ye your pearls before swine.’[33] These words contained, in principle, the discipline of secrecy, which was observed in the Church till the conversion of the western world was completed. The holiness of the Sacraments, the sublimity of the Christian doctrines, necessitated an extreme reserve on the part of the faithful, living amongst people whose moral degradation and brutal corruption were such as our Saviour had foretold. But it was most of all imperative to hide from the stare and sacrilege of pagans the most holy Eucharist, that ‘great pearl of the sacred Body of the Lamb,’ as Venantius Fortunatus calls it.[34] Hence the Christian assemblies, when they met for divine worship, were divided into two classes, the initiated and the uninitiated, i.e. the faithful and the catechumens. The distinction began with the apostolic age, and was kept up till the eighth century. A few weeks before the solemn administration of Baptism, there took place, as we have elsewhere explained,[35] the giving, or as it was termed, the tradition,, of the Symbol, to the future members of the Church; but the eucharistic mystery, the arcanum by excellence, was, even then, kept back from the fortunate candidates for holy Baptism. This explains the varied precautional expressions, the reticence, the studied obscurity of phraseology, used by the fathers in their discourses to their flock, and this for years after the times of Constantine and Theodosius. The catechumens were admitted while the holy Scriptures were being read, or while the Psalms were being chanted; but as soon as the bishop had given his discourse on the portion which had been read, either of the Gospel or other passages of the sacred Volume, these catechumens were dismissed by the deacon; and this missa, or missio, gave its name to that first portion of the liturgy; it was called the Mass of the catechumens; just as the second part, from the oblation to the final dismissal, was called the Mass of the faithful.
And yet, though holy mother Church kept so jealous an eye on her treasure as not to let it be fully known except to her true children, made such by Baptism, with what delight did she, at the feasts of Easter and Pentecost, reveal to her new-born children, as soon as they came from the font, the ineffable secret hitherto kept in her heart as bride, the full mystery of the icthus! Having incorporated them into Christ by the saving waters, enrolled them in His army, and marked them with the sign of His soldiers by the anointing conferred by the bishop, with what maternal fondness did she lead them, from the baptistery first, and then from the chrismarium, to the hallowed precinct of the mysteries instituted by the Word Incarnate! There Jesus, their Head, was awaiting His new members, that He might draw all the more closely the bonds which already knit them to His mystic body, and unite them to Himself in the infinite homage of that one great Sacrifice, which He Himself was offering to the eternal Father.
This wondrous unity of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, which included in one oblation both Head and members; this unity of Sacrifice, which kept alive and strengthened the union of each Christian community and of the whole Church, was admirably expressed by the magnificent forms of the primitive liturgy. After the catechumens had been dismissed and the unworthy expelled, all the faithful, without exception, from the emperor and his court down to the poorest cottager whether man or woman, advanced towards the altar, each one offering bis share of bread and wine for the sacred mysteries. Themselves a kingly priesthood, as St. Peter calls them,[36] a living victim figured by the gifts they brought, they assisted, standing, at the immolation of the divine Victim, whose members they truly were; then united in the kiss of peace, the external sign of their union of heart, they received in their hands, and still standing, the sacred Body, their spiritual nourishment; the deacons offered them the chalice, and they drank of the precious Blood. Even babes in their mothers’ arms were eager for the divine drink, and received some drops, at least, into their innocent mouths. The sick, who could not leave their rooms, and prisoners, were not deprived of being united with their brethren in the sacred banquet; they received the precious Gifts at the hands of ministers, who were sent to them for the purpose by the bishop. The anchorets in their deserts, Christians living in the country, and all such as could not be present at the next assembly, took the Body of our Lord with them, that thus they might not, because of distance, be deprived of uniting in the coming celebration of the mysteries of salvation. Those were ages when unity was continually being attacked by persecution, schism, and heresy, all three at once; and the Church, to counteract the danger, had no hesitation in facilitating, by every lawful means, the use and application of the venerable Sacrament, which is the sign of unity, and the innermost centre, and the strongest tie, of the Christian community.
It was from the same principle of unity, that, although there were generally several churches or centres in each city for the assemblies of the faithful, and a greater or less number of clergy, yet all the faithful and clergy came together for the collect orsynaxis, into some one place, fixed upon by the bishop. ‘Where the bishop shall show himself,' says St. Ignatius of Antioch, ‘there let the multitude be; just as, where Christ Jesus is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful, either to baptize, or to celebrate the agape (the Eucharist) without the bishop.[37] Do all of you assemble, for prayer, in the one same place; let there be unity of common prayer, unity of mind, unity of hope. . . Do all of you come together, as though you were one man, into the temple of God, as to one altar, as to one Christ Jesus, the great high-priest of the unborn God.[38] Let us enjoy the one Eucharist; for one is the Flesh of our Lord Jesus, and one His Blood which was shed for us; one also is the Bread which was broken to us all, and one the Cup which was distributed to all; one altar to the whole Church, and one bishop surrounded by the presbyterium and the deacons.’[39]
The presbyterium was the college of priests of each city; they kept near the bishop, were his council, and celebrated the sacred functions together with him. It would seem that, at the beginning, they were twelve in number, the more closely to represent the apostles; but in the great cities that number was soon doubled. We find that, towards the close of the first century, there were, in Rome, five and twenty priests, who were respectively set over twenty-five titles, that is, churches, of the metropolis. The pontiff took first one, and then another, of these titles, for the celebration of the mysteries. The twentyfour priests of the other titles united with the pontiff in the solemnity of one and the same Sacrifice, and concelebrated at one and the same altar. In their respective places, the seven deacons, and all the inferior clerics, each according to his rank, co-operated in the thrice holy mysteries. We have already seen the active part taken in the same by the faithful people.
It was the very time when the eagle of Patmos, St. John the Evangelist, was being favoured with his inspiration and vision of the gorgeous ritual of heaven. He beheld the Lamb that was slain, yet standing in the midst of the four and twenty Elders who were seated on thrones encircling the throne of God, which is also the throne of the eternal High Priest. Clad in white garments, and wearing golden crowns, these four and twenty Elders held harps in their hands, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints. Then came the seven spirits, who were before the throne of God, like so many burning lamps; and then, thousands of thousands of angels, who were round about the throne, singing praise to the Sacrifice and triumph of the Lamb; and then, every creature, which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, all cried out, giving benediction, and honour, and glory, and power, to Him that liveth for ever and ever.[40] This admirable vision represented the fullness and unity of the Sacrifice, which was offered once, but to last for ever, end was offered by Him who is the Head of all created beings. The Church on earth, the exiled bride of Jesus, did her best, when offering that same Sacrifice, to repeat the sublime ritual of heaven. And as in heaven the divine Lamb, the eternal High Priest, drew after Him the celestial hierarchy, so likewise on earth all the Churches came round the officiating pontiff, and united with him in the holy Sacrifice, each one according to the sacred Order he held.
It was impossible for the universal Church, subject as she is to the conditions of place and time, to meet here below at one altar; but the unity of the Sacrifice, which was everywhere offered, was, like the unity of the Church herself, expressed by the mutual transmission, between the various bishops, of the sacred Species that had been consecrated by them; and these, each one put into the chalice from which he received the precious Blood. St. Irenæus,[41] who lived in the second century, tells us that the supreme hierarch, the Pontiff of Rome, used to send these sacred gifts, not only to Churches in the west, but even into Asia, as emblems of the unity existing between the Churches there, and the Church, the mistress and mother of all others. So, too, when the number of the faithful became so great as to induce the Church to allow individual priests to celebrate the holy mysteries privately, the priests of the town where a bishop resided never thought of exercising this isolated function, until they had received from the bishop a fragment of the Bread he had consecrated, and which they mingled with their own Sacrifice. It was the fermentum, the sacred leaven of Catholic communion.
As an appropriate conclusion to the above subject, we append the following beautiful liturgical formula taken from the Apostolic Constitutions,[42] a writing admitted by critics to have been completed in the third century.
Thanksgiving for the Mysteries
Gratias agimus tibi, Pater noster, pro vita quam manifestasti nobis per Jesum Filium tuum; per quem tum omnia creasti, tum universis provides; quem et misisti, ut ad salutem nostram homo fieret; quem etiam permisisti pati et mori; quem et resuscitans glorificare voluisti, et sedere fecisti ad dexteram tuam; per quem et promisisti nobis resurrectionem mortuorum.
Tu, Domine omnipotens, Deus æterne: quemadmodum hoc erat dispersum, et quum fuit congregatum, factum est unus panis, ita congrega Ecclesiam tuam a finibus terræ in regnum tuum.
Adhuc gratias agimus, Pater noster, pro pretioso sanguine Jesu Christi effuso nostra causa: et pro pretioso corpore: cujus et hæc antitypa celebramus, quum ipse nobis constituent mortem illius annuntiare: per ipsum enim tibi gloria in sæcula.
Amen.
We give thanks unto thee, O Father, for the life thou hast manifested unto us by thy Son Jesus; by whom thou hast both created all things, and providest for all; whom thou also sendedst, that, for our salvation, he might be made Man; whom thou also permittedest to suffer and to die; whom also, raising him up again, thou willedst to glorify, and madest him to sit at thy right hand; by whom also thou didst promise us the resurrection of the dead.
O almighty Lord, eternal God! as this (element), which was once disunited, being united hath become one Bread, so do thou assemble together thy Church from the ends of the earth into thy kingdom.
We also give thanks to thee, our Father, for the precious Blood of Jesus Christ, which was shed for our sake; and for his precious Body; of which we are now celebrating the antitypes (the mysteries); for he himself did appoint that we should announce his death; for, by him, is glory (given) to thee for ever.
Amen.
[1] Ps. ii. 8. [2] Heb. x. 14. [3] Serm, viii. de Pass. [4] Ibid. iv. ds Pass. [5] St. John xiii. 34, 35. [6] Ibid. xvii. 20. [7] Ibid. 21-23. [8] Acts ii. 42. [9] Acts ii. 47. [10] 1 Cor. x. 17. [11] Serm, ccxxvii. In die Paschæ. Ad Infantes, de Sacramentis. [12] Serm. ccxxix. Fer. ii. Paschæ, de Sacramentis fidelium. [13] Acts iy. 32. [14] Serm. ccxxix. [15] Ibid. cclxxii. In die Pentecost. Ad Infantes, de Sacramentis. [16] Lib. viii. de Trinit. [17] Hom. vii. [18] Serm. ii. ad Neoph. [19] In cp. i, ad Cor. Hom xxiv. [20] Lib. x. in Johan. [21] De corp. et sang. Domini., cap. x. [22] De div. Off., lib. ii., c. 2. [23] De Sacrament. Euchar. cap iv. [24] Ep. lxiii. [25] Ep. lxxvi. [26] St. John xi. 52. [27] Tob. vi. [28] Gen. i. 22, 28. [29] St. John xxi. 9. [30] St. Paulin. Ep. xiii; St. Aug. Confess, xiii. 23: St. Ambr. Hymn. Pasch; Proep. African. De promission. [31] Inscript. Augustod. Spicileg. Solesm. i. [32] Titul. Abercii. Spicileg Solesm. iii. [33] St. Matt. vii. 6. [34] Vernant. Fortun. lib. ii. carm. 25. [35] Volume for Lent; Wednesday of the fourth week. [36] 1 St. Pet. ii. 9. [37] Ad Smyrn. viii. [38] Ad Magnes. vii. [39] Ad Philadelph. iv. [40] Apoc. iv, v. [41] Ap. Euseb. Hist. Eccles. lib. v. cap. 14. [42] Lib. vii. cap. 25.
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