What did the early Church Fathers say about the liturgy?

The Fathers of the Church, beginning in the second century, give us a portrait of Christian worship that is recognizably the Roman Mass — a sacrifice, offered eastward, with explicit consecration prayers, in continuity with what we still pray today.

St. Justin Martyr, writing around 155 A.D., describes the Sunday assembly: the readings, the homily, the offering of bread and wine, the Eucharistic prayer, the people’s “Amen,” the distribution of the consecrated species. He calls the Eucharist “the flesh and blood of Jesus made flesh,” not a symbol or a memorial. The structure he describes is the structure of the Mass.

St. Ambrose of Milan (c. 380s) quotes Eucharistic prayer language nearly identical to the words of the Roman Canon as it stands today. St. Augustine speaks of the Eucharist as “the sacrifice of Christians” offered on altars throughout the world. St. John Chrysostom, preaching in Antioch and Constantinople, calls the priest a “sacrificer.” Tertullian, St. Cyprian, St. Irenaeus all witness the same: a sacrificial liturgy with priestly consecration of bread and wine, prayed eastward, in continuity with the Apostles.

The Fathers do not describe a meal-fellowship gathering with reflective readings. They describe a sacrifice. They describe the Real Presence. They describe the priest as offerer. The Roman Rite preserved this picture; the modern reform tended to soften it. To recover the Fathers is, in many ways, to recover the Mass they assumed.

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