The significance of the Table in Christian liturgy (original) (raw)
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The Liturgical Development of the Eucharist in the tradition of the Roman Catholic Church
This paper seeks to outline the historical development of the Liturgy, and in particular, the Eucharist from its Institution at the Last Supper until its present form. The authors examine the context of the Last Supper in some detail, noting the Jewish influence of Passover and the Roman persecution on the fledgling sect as it grappled during the first few centuries of its existence to maintain an identity and to flourish in spite of such persecution. The influence on the liturgy in ‘peace-time’ is seen through the diversification of rites. The establishment of the Roman Canon and the eventual standardization at the Council of Trent is explained. This paper concludes with the further reforms after Trent at Vatican II and discusses how they have been received. It is of course completely impossible to do justice to any of these topics in such a short and cursory overview as this paper must attempt. What the authors hope to achieve through this paper, apart from a broadening of their own understanding through the various readings in preparation for this paper, is to show how at each stage of the development of the Liturgy there will be differences, it is hoped that one can also see the similarities. The paper describes how the Mass moved from a communal meal to a sacred one; how at different stages the human and divine aspects of the Liturgy became important; and how because of this importance further fights ensued and were expressed externally through public disagreement over such major issues as transubstantiation, or internally within the Church between rites and Mass translations. To put it simply: The Mass Matters – and it is necessary to understand what it is in the Mass that led Catholics to be prepared to be martyred, to travel as missionaries in foreign lands, to baptise and to preach to converts, so that they might fulfil the Lord’s command to do this in memory of Him.
The Daily Eucharist at the Council as Stimulus and Test Case for Liturgical Reform
Questions Liturgiques / Studies in Liturgy 95 (2014) 28-51, 2014
In order to study the contribution of Vatican II to liturgical reform, most scholars spontaneously will turn to the redaction history of Sacrosanctum Concilium. In this paper I am more interested in the question of how the daily Eucharist celebrated at the beginning of each of the General Congregations was experienced by those present. Were these celebrations experienced as an illustration of the reforms proposed in the Constitution on the Liturgy, or rather as a counter-witness to the sorely needed liturgical reform? My major sources are council diaries, at least those that are attentive to this aspect of the Council’s life. I especially rely on accounts of their liturgical experiences offered by two Latin rite Catholic “observers” of the Council liturgies, the French Dominican Yves Congar and the Irish journalist and Redemptorist Xavier Rynne; one Oriental rite Catholic Council father, the Melkite archbishop Neophytos Edelby; and two “real” observers: the United Church of Christ representative Douglas Horton and the Presbyterian minister Robert McAfee Brown. It will soon become clear that two types of Eucharistic celebrations received most attention in their diaries and chronicles: the divine liturgies celebrated in rites other than the Latin one and the opening and concluding ceremonies of each session. Especially in the first session the exposure of the mostly Latin-rite Council fathers to liturgies celebrated by Byzantine and Oriental Catholic Council fathers may have cured them from some of their prejudices concerning important issues of liturgical debate such as concelebration, the vernacular and communion under both species. The opening and concluding liturgies of the Council also received many comments, since as of the second session these liturgies apparently functioned as an occasion to put certain aspects of the liturgical reform of Sacrosanctum Concilium into practice and to draw lessons from this.
Doctrine and Life, 2013
The significance of the table - that around which the baptised gather for their eucharistic meal - is the aspect of the liturgy most apt to be ignored in discussions of the eucharist.
We would like to observe the link or the connection between the Eucharist and the Church, very specially the tradition and the evolution and the importance and the role of the Eucharist in the life of the Church. St. John Paul II in his apostolic letter, “The mystery and worship of the Holy Eucharist” clearly mentioned that the Church makes the Eucharist. So, the Eucharist builds up the Church. So, say that they are inseparably linked and closely bound up with the paschal mystery of Jesus Christ. Thus, let us try to elucidate the role of the Eucharist in the life of the Church as a whole.
Bogoslovni vestnik, 2020
Both the Catholic Church and Evangelical Churches celebrate the Eucharist; however, they differ extensively in theology and practice. What both traditions have in common is the fact that the Eucharist is removed from the context of a meal. The purpose of this article is to explore how these two traditions comprehend the connection between the table and the cross, the meal and the sacrifice, in the light of the fact that today our celebration of the Eucharist comes after the event of Jesus’ cross. In other words, we want to detect the Jewish roots of the Eucharist and in a comparative analysis see how Christian and Jewish traditions have interpreted this relationship between the meal and the sacrifice, between the table and the altar. In the second section, we explore the relationship between the altar and the table in the Catholic Church, and in the third section, we do the same thing for Evangelical Churches. In the fourth section, we compare the Eucharistic theology and ecclesial ...