Understanding our Faith

Mass in the fourth Century

In the fourth century (300’s), very significant changes began to occur in the Church. From the 320’s on, the Church was fully recognised as having legitimacy and legal rights in the Roman Empire. Gradually this meant that more and more people became Christians. This happened sometimes out of conviction and at other times because it was the way the wind was blowing. The institutions of society and its culture were gradually being Christianised. 

One of the more immediate effects of this was that church buildings had to be large enough to accommodate much larger assemblies of people. Up to this time, Christians had gathered in the church-houses mentioned in this series last week. The fourth century saw the beginning of the building of the great church buildings like St John Lateran, St Peter’s and St Paul’s in Rome. The model used for these new buildings was the Roman Basilica which were the meeting places used for public gatherings in the Roman Empire. It is significant that it was these gathering spaces that were used as the model for Christians and not Roman temples. It placed the emphasis on the gathered people and what they did together as the most fundamental dwelling place of the Lord.

The increase in numbers also meant that the liturgy had to be reshaped. We began to get Introductory and Concluding rites, processions of the clergy entering and leaving the assembly and of the people bringing up gifts and going to communion. Arrangements had to be made for places from which those preaching could be heard (lecterns). And gradually fixed altars appeared as the main point of the building.

It was also a period when more and more standard formulas for the prayers of the liturgy were formulated, handed on and written down in volumes, some of which are still extant.

One of the most profound changes was that the earlier catechumenate, by means of which people became Christian, was no longer workable with such large numbers of people. So that rather intensive form of initiation was replaced by a new pastoral strategy which was to create a thoroughly Christian society which would form its members as Christians. The success of this new strategy was probably rather piecemeal. The institutions of society were to be based on Christian principles but the penetration of those principles into individuals was more or less effective. 

This issued in a centuries long interplay between the Christian faith, the inherited attitudes of the peoples involved and the determined influence of the rulers of the time. Much was achieved and much was unable to be achieved. 

By Fr Frank O’Loughlin