How did the celebrations of the sacraments in the early Church differ from how they are celebrated now?

Question

I really searched by textbook but i really can find anything. Please give me 3-5 sentences.

Best answer = 10 points

THANKS A LOT

Answer 1

    There is a book that I highly recommend for anyone interested in the Catholic Church or the Papacy. The name of the book is “Vicars of Christ – The Dark Side of the Papacy”. by Peter De Rosa

  Most people think that the Popes were pretty nice people. Wrong!! The Popes down through history have been very evil men capable of murder at the drop of a hat. There have been married Popes, there have been 13 year old Popes, there have been perverted Popes. Some Popes were caught having s*x with another man’s wife so the men killed the Popes involved. Popes have even owned w***e houses to make money for the church.

  For several hundred years there were 2 and then 3 Popes at the same time. Nobody knew who the real Pope was. There was even a time when the church didn't even have a Pope. And then there is the Pope who everyone still thinks was a woman. She had a baby on the way back to the Vatican.

  This book by Peter De Rosa is so interesting and you’ll be glad you read it. Call your local library and ask them for it. If they don’t have it then ask them to order it from one of their branches. If they can’t do that then go to YAHOO and type in “Vicars of Christ” and find someone who will sell it to you. I know Amazon has it. But remember, it’s called  ÃƒÂ¢Ã‚€ÂœVicars of Christ -The Darkside of the Papacy”. There are several other Vicars of Christ out there but this is the one you want. Goooood book!!!

Answer 2

I believe the Lord's Supper in the beginning of Christianity resembled more of the Passover meal.  It seems from Corinthians that they celebrated in a love feast where everyone brought food to eat.  In addition, Baptism was probably more significant for them as it pictured to them a distinct repentance to be a part of a renewed Israel.  As for how baptism was performed, I really don't know.

Answer 3

In the opinion of the great majority of scholars the Agape was a meal at which not only bread and wine but all kinds of viands were used, a meal which had the double purpose of satisfying hunger and thirst and giving expression to the sense of Christian brotherhood. At the end of this feast, bread and wine were taken according to the Lord's command, and after thanksgiving to God were eaten and drunk in remembrance of Christ and as a special means of communion with the Lord Himself and through Him with one another. The Agape was thus related to the Eucharist as Christ's last Passover to the Christian rite which He grafted upon it. It preceded and led up to the Eucharist, and was quite distinct from it. In opposition to this view it has been strongly urged by some modern critical scholars that in the apostolic age the Lord's Supper was not distinguished from the Agape, but that the Agape itself from beginning to end was the Lord's Supper which was held in memory of Jesus. It seems fatal to such an idea, however, that while Paul makes it quite evident that bread and wine were the only elements of the memorial rite instituted by Jesus (1Co_11:23-29), the abuses which had come to prevail at the social gatherings of the Corinthian church would have been impossible in the case of a meal consisting only of bread and wine (compare 1Co_11:21, 1Co_11:33) Moreover, unless the Eucharist in the apostolic age had been discriminated from the common meal, it would be difficult to explain how at a later period the two could be found diverging from each other so completely.

4. Separation from the Eucharist

In the Didache (circa 100 ad) there is no sign as yet of any separation. The direction that the second Eucharistic prayer should be offered “after being filled” (x.1) appears to imply that a regular meal had immediately preceded the observance of the sacrament. In the Ignatian Epistles (circa 110 ad) the Lord's Supper and the Agape are still found in combination (Ad Smyrn viii.2). It has sometimes been assumed that Pliny's letter to Trajan (circa 112 ad) proves that the separation had already taken place, for he speaks of two meetings of the Christians in Bithynia, one before the dawn at which they bound themselves by a “sacramentum” or oath to do no kind of crime, and another at a later hour when they partook of food of an ordinary and harmless character (Ep x.96). But as the word “sacramentum” cannot be taken here as necessarily or even probably referring to the Lord's Supper, the evidence of this passage is of little weight. When we come to Justin Martyr (circa 150 ad) we find that in his account of church worship he does not mention the Agape at all, but speaks of the Eucharist as following a service which consisted of the reading of Scripture, prayers and exhortation (Apol, lxvii); so that by his time the separation must have taken place. Tertullian (circa 200 ad) testifies to the continued existence of the Agape (Apol, 39), but shows clearly that in the church of the West the Eucharist was no longer associated with it (De Corona, 3). In the East the connection appears to have been longer maintained (see Bigg, Christian Platonists of Alexandria, 102ff), but by and by the severance became universal; and though the Agape continued for long to maintain itself as a social function of the church, it gradually passed out of existence or was preserved only as a feast of charity for the poor.

5. Reasons for the Separation

Various influences appear to have cooperated in this direction. Trajan's enforcement of the old law against clubs may have had something to do with it (compare Pliny as above), but a stronger influence probably came from the rise of a popular suspicion that the evening meals of the church were scenes of licentious revelry and even of crime. The actual abuses which already meet us in the apostolic age (1Co_11:20; Jud_1:12), and which would tend to multiply as the church grew in numbers and came into closer contact with the heathen world, might suggest the advisability of separating the two observances. But the strongest influence of all would come from the growth of the ceremonial and sacerdotal spirit by which Christ's simple institution was slowly turned into a mysterious priestly sacrifice. To Christ Himself it had seemed natural and fitting to institute the Supper at the close of a social meal. But when this memorial Supper had been transformed into a repetition of the sacrifice of Calvary by the action of the ministering priest, the ascetic idea became natural that the Eucharist ought to be received fasting, and that it would be sacrilegious to link it on to the observances of an ordinary social meal.

Answer 4

I think the mass has stayed pretty much the same, especially the consecration of the mass. Baptism has changed, most of the people in the early church were older when they got baptized and now it is mostly babies and some adults when they are converted. And confirmation way back when was done at the baptism. There is more but you asked us to keep it short. God Bless you.

Answer 5

There's no telling how the early church performed weddings.  Baptisms were usually performed in rivers, lakes, or streams, whereas now they are usually performed in little pools in the church.  The Lord's supper used to be an actual meal, and now for most churches, it's just a small bite of bread, and sip of grape juice or wine, and a lot of ceremony.

Answer 6

I didn't know that the early church celebrated excrements.  Oh, well, live and learn!

Answer 7

The only significant difference I am aware of is in the PRIMARY sacrament of baptism for the remission of sins.  The early Church baptised exclusively in The Name of Jesus Christ.  Todays learned men of the cloth hold that the name doesnt really mean the name, it means by the authority of, which seems to work in some cases and does not in others.

Baptism is the application of the sacraficial blood of Jesus which cleanses away sins.  Rev 1:5 "Unto him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood."  

Confusion caused by Matt 28:19 when it is used as a verbatim formula for baptism instead of a declaration of the extent of the authority of Jesus Christ.

".....condemned because they did not believe in The Name of the only begotten Son of God".

Hope this helps

Answer 8

Not so much with the sacrificial virgins.

Oh wait, did you mean Xianity? Switch chickens for virgins.

These days, they sacrifice tuna noodle casseroles.