Now on the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread … (Acts 20:7)
In the Acts of the Apostles, we see that Christians were already assembling on Sunday (the Jewish first day of the week) to eat, pray and worship together. Sunday was honored both because it was thought to be the first day of creation and also the first day of the new creation – the day the resurrection of Christ was revealed.
St Justin the Martyr (d. 165Ad) provides us with a description of what the Church was practicing in the decades immediately after the Apostles had died in terms of the Eucharistic assembly. The Church continued to follow the practice already mentioned above in the Acts of the Apostles of assembling on Sundays to pray and receive Holy Communion. What follows is Justin’s brief description of why Christians assemble to worship on Sundays and how they worshipped in the mid-2nd Century when they assembled together:
First there is corporate prayer both for those present and for those absent. Then comes the kiss of peace. This is followed by the consecration of the bread, and of the cup of wine mixed with water, in a eucharistic prayer to which the people reply Amen. Then the deacons distribute the ‘eucharistised’ bread and wine, which are ‘the flesh and blood of the incarnate Jesus’… All this is done in obedience to Christ’s own command. This Eucharist is repeated each ‘day of the sun’… when it is preceded by readings from the memoirs of the Apostles and from the writings of the prophets, and then all takes place as on the day of initiation. ‘We hold this common gathering on Sunday, since it is the first day on which God transforming darkness and matter made the universe, and Jesus Christ our Savior rose from the dead…’ (Jean Danielou, GOSPEL MESSAGE AND HELLENISTIC CULTURE, pp 30-31)
Fraternized 