Lizette Larson-Miller

Justin Martyr: The First Apology

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Justin Martyr was a Christian catechist living in Rome who was martyred, along with several of his students, in the mid-second century. His First Apology, written in the style of a classical speech of defense, was addressed to the household of the non-Christian Emperor Antoninus Pius, defending the new faith and arguing for their conversion to Christianity.

Introduction

In Chapters 61–67, Justin described aspects of Christian worship, primarily to clarify for non-Christians that the worship services were neither orgies nor cannibalistic rites, two accusations leveled against early Christians. Justin carefully avoided words that carried connotations of pagan worship, such as priest, and strived to convince his readers that the Christians who gathered in the liturgy were morally upright and responsible citizens. In the course of his description, Justin preserved a picture of second-century worship among his Greek-speaking community in Rome. His weekly liturgy was composed of a reading service together with a Eucharist, the first clear indication of such a worship form.

Text: And on the day called Sunday there is a meeting in one place of those who live in cities or the country …

Commentary: The community of believers that gathered in the home of Justin the teacher was one of several small Christian communities spread throughout the city of Rome. Each small community may have known of the others, but they worshiped in individual groups based on familial connections, language, and nationality, or their relationship to the teacher who may have first communicated to them the gospel of Jesus the Christ. Most of those gathering on this Sunday evening spoke Greek, and many of them were recent immigrants from the regions of Cappadocia, Palestine, and Samaria like their teacher Justin.

The choice of Sunday for a meeting day was no accident; Justin himself wrote that Sunday had a double significance: It was the “first day, on which God transformed darkness and made the universe,” and it was also the day on which “Jesus Christ our Saviour rose from the dead.” These Christians gathered to celebrate both divine events, remembering the blessings of creation, as they had done in their Jewish childhood, and the weekly remembrance of the death and resurrection of Jesus, which made all creation new.

As the workday ended for the Christians, they gathered quietly at the home of Justin, who lived above a shopkeeper named Martinus, in a typical Roman apartment building. With living quarters as close as they were in Rome, the comings and goings of the students of Justin, as well as the weekly gatherings for liturgy, were certainly not a secret to the neighbors, and the very act of gathering was risking arrest and possibly death.

Text: … And the memoirs of the apostles (which are called Gospels) or the writings of the prophets are read as long as time permits. When the reader has finished, the president in a discourse urges and invites [us] to the imitation of these noble things.

Commentary: The worship began with readings from Scripture—the Law and prophets of the Hebrew Bible—or from the recently circulated accounts of Jesus’ death and resurrection, passed on through the followers of Jesus’ disciples. Listening to the same stories from Scripture with which they had grown up, many in the community remembered their Jewish roots and felt at home. For the Greek members who had grown up with stories of Greek and Roman gods, however, the stories of Scripture were new and unusual, and the explanation which always followed was helpful to their understanding.

One of Justin’s jobs as the teacher of the community was to keep the rolls on which the Scriptures were written and to gather the stories of Jesus and the letters between Christian communities. Part of the reason that this Sunday gathering was in his house was because he was the keeper of the books and had the room to store them. The reader chosen for the day read from this collection of Justin’s, standing at an upright table with an assistant who helped with the rolls of Scripture. When the readings were done (they were done when the president signaled that he had heard enough!), the president—one of the elders of the community—began an explanation of the readings, first interpreting the readings from the Hebrew Scripture with regard to the prophecies of Christ and the fulfillment in Jesus, and then applying this interpretation and the stories of Jesus to the lives of the gathered Christians.

The president did not have the training and education that a catechist like Justin had. What he could share was the experience of being a Christian for much of his life, surviving persecution and imprisonment while sharing the wisdom of living a life in imitation of Christ.

Text: Then we all stand up together and offer prayers.

Commentary: In response to the inspiring words of the president who had urged the imitation of the acts of Jesus in each person’s life, the community rose up from the floor, which was spread with rugs, to offer prayers. Standing with uplifted hands, they prayed as a baptized community, confident that their prayers for the world and for the wider church would be heard by the gracious God remembered in the readings. In the prayers, they remembered especially those of their own community who were sick or dying and the two members who had been arrested for professing Christ, handed over by non-Christian family members.

Text: On finishing the prayers we greet each other with a kiss.

Commentary: After the prayers were completed, all of the baptized Christians acknowledged the presence of the Spirit in each other by sharing a kiss, the sign of the presence of the Spirit of God in each person. It was this kiss—exchanged on the lips because of its identification with the breath of God in the creation stories—which had so scandalized the critics of Christianity and had led to stories of Christian gatherings being no more than excuses for orgies. For the gathered Christians, however, the kiss was not a scandal but a sign of the pure love of God and a physical reminder of the unity of the community as it moved towards sharing communion.

Text: When we have finished … bread is brought, and wine and water, and the president similarly sends up prayers and thanksgivings to the best of his ability, and the congregation assents, saying the Amen.

Commentary: Certain members of the community had brought the bread and wine for the Eucharist, and as the exchange of the kiss of peace was completed, the freshly baked bread and homemade wine were brought to the table standing in the front of the room. A pitcher of water was brought from the back so that the strong red wine of the Roman countryside could be softened a bit by the addition of some water.

After the plate and cup had been arranged on the table, the same leader who had related the lives of the gathered community to the readings proclaimed in their midst, offered a prayer of thanksgiving to God for the gifts which had been given to all those present. Chanting in the style associated with the telling of epic poems, the president recounted the works of God for which God was being blessed, including the central act of the sending of the Son of God for the salvation of all. Following a structure inherited from Jewish tradition, the president thanked God in his own words and asked that the Spirit of God come down on all those gathered in the room. At the conclusion of his chanting, the community added their assent to all that had been said by singing “Amen,” or “so be it,” one of several Hebrew words directly borrowed by these Greek-speaking Christians.

Text: The distribution and reception of the consecrated (eucharistized) [elements] by each one takes place, and they are sent to the absent by the deacons.

Commentary: At the end of the prayer of thanksgiving, all the people came forward to receive the consecrated bread and wine, gathering around the deacons who supervised the distribution. After all, had received a small chunk of bread and drunk from the single large cup, the remaining bread and wine were given to the two deacons who would bring it to the sick members of the community and to the two who were in prison, awaiting martyrdom. The very act of gathering the remaining bread and wine and watching the president blessing the two deacons as they went on their way reminded all those present how very close the threat of arrest was to them and how precious this time together had been.

Text: Those who prosper, and who so wish, contribute, each one as much as he or she chooses to. What is collected is deposited with the president, and he takes care of orphans and widows, and those who are in want on account of sickness or any other cause, and those who are in bonds, and the strangers who are sojourners among [us], and, briefly, he is the protector of all those in need.

Commentary: As the members of this small community prepared to leave, those who had extra clothing, food, or money left it with the president to distribute where he thought it would be needed. They knew that in a society where there were few nets to catch those unable to feed themselves, these gifts were a matter of life and death for some. As the gifts were brought up to the president, he gently acknowledged each person, proud that the prayer offered by the community bore fruit in such tangible ways.

After bidding farewell to each other, the members of the community returned to their own homes: some to servants’ quarters in elaborate palaces, some to family homes filled with non-believers, and others to humble dwellings on the outskirts of Rome. But all left praying that everyone would remain safe until the next Sunday when they would gather once again with their new family, born in baptism and sustained by Word and Eucharist.

The Didache

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The Didache probably represents the type of small Christian group that met in the region of Syria, perhaps outside of the city of Antioch. By the fifth century, this hilly countryside was dotted with small churches and baptistries, but in the late first century, there were probably no buildings specifically designated as churches. Christianity was still a proscribed religion, and the Christians of a village or rural area gathered after work. Although they did not necessarily meet in secret, they certainly did not publicize their gathering loudly.

Introduction

Sunday was a workday, and the Christians gathered after work for a potluck meal, known throughout the Mediterranean world as the agape, and for the Eucharist (literally, the thanksgiving), which was the ongoing celebration of the command of Jesus to break the bread and drink the cup in remembrance of him (1 Cor. 11:26). While the Agape-meal and the Eucharist were celebrated together, as early as the time of the Didache, Christian communities were distinguishing between the agape and the Eucharist, which was only for the baptized.

The description that follows is an imaginative reconstruction of what a first-century Christian service might have looked like. Many details of such a service remain unknown.

Text: We give you thanks, our Father for the holy vine of David your servant, which you have made known to us through Jesus, your servant. Unto you be glory forevermore.

Commentary: After a full day of work on Sunday, the Christians of a small Syrian village gather for their weekly meeting in the house of their wealthiest member. The generosity of this elder in their community has made it possible to fit all forty members of the community together in the large courtyard and adjoining great room, built like all Syrian houses with a long, walled courtyard running along the south side of the home. Individually and in family groups, the community arrives at the locked gate leading from the dirt road into the paved courtyard, being admitted after knocking at the door by one of the local elders who receive their contribution of food and wine for the meal to come. Each person stops first at the fountain in the courtyard, where they wash their hands, face, and feet, assisting those who are too young or too old to reach the water themselves. Making their way to the large room, the newcomers greet the other members of the community as they anxiously draw closer to meet the visiting teacher, an apostle visiting from the city of Antioch. Eventually, everyone crowds into the large room or along the covered portico, finding a cushion or rug on which to sit. Each group of eight or ten people is gathered around common pots of food, with baskets of flatbread which will serve as the dishes. At one end of the room, the visiting teacher sits on a cushion at a low table, talking with the host of the gathering.

Eventually one of the leaders calls the people to silence by intoning a psalm, which is sung alternating between the people and the leader. The words are known by heart to the gathered community. As the psalm draws to a close, the people rise, standing in prayer with their arms raised up.

Text: As this broken bread was scattered over the hills and then, when gathered, became one, so may your church be gathered from the ends of the earth into your kingdom. For yours is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ forevermore.

Commentary: After everyone has risen and stands attentive in prayer, the visiting prophet raises a large cup filled with wine and begins a prayer of thanks to God for the goodness of the earth and the gifts which come from God. The singsong chant, which provides the vehicle for the spontaneous prayer of the visiting teacher, is sung in the same way as the Jewish chants of meal blessings. He praises God for vines and vineyards and for the church, which is the vine grown since the time of David and revealed through Jesus. As he draws to a close, he hands the cup to the host standing next to him, resting his tired arms and signaling to the people to conclude the prayer with their sung consent to what has been done. Led once again by the same leader who began the psalm, the community sings the acclamation: “To you be the glory forevermore,” praising God with their own voices.

Text: Let no one eat and drink of your Eucharist but those baptized in the name of the Lord; to this, too, the saying of the Lord is applicable: Do not give what is sacred to the dogs.

Commentary: After the cup is returned to the low table, the visiting leader picks up a large loaf of bread and begins to chant a prayer over it, praising God for the goodness of the fields and the bounty represented by the loaf of bread. The single loaf of bread becomes a representation of the community gathered to pray on this Sunday evening. Like the grain which had once grown over the hillsides around their village and was then brought to a common threshing mill, they also have gathered in this meeting from various places and professions to become one worshiping community. The temptation to look around the room at this point in the prayer is always too great—it is easy to see in the variety of faces around the room the very image of the gathered church now being formed into a single entity. The prayer also calls the community to focus on the future; on that time when the church will be gathered together at the second coming for which everyone prays three times a day: “your kingdom come, your will be done.”

As the prophet lowers the bread to the table, the community again sings their consent to the prayer by acclaiming: “For yours is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ forevermore.”

Text: We give you thanks, O holy Father, for your holy name which you have enshrined in our hearts, and for the knowledge and faith and immortality which you have made know to us through Jesus, your servant. To you be the glory forevermore.

Commentary: The members of the community standing near the visiting teacher bring cups and plates to the low table and begin to pour the wine from the large cup into the smaller ones. Others break the loaf of bread into smaller pieces to fit on the plates. In later centuries, the presider would proclaim “holy things for holy people” at this point, but even in this ancient church, all those present are reminded by their very presence and participation that they are the baptized, perhaps remembering their own baptismal experience, which was most likely celebrated as an adult.

After preparing the bread and cup of wine, the leaders of the local community, men and women chosen to serve because of their faith, wisdom, and perhaps because of their suffering for the name of Jesus, begin to move among the gathered Christians, distributing the bread and the wine to everyone present.

After everyone present has finished the bread and wine, people begin to return to their cushions and rugs, gathering around the common food pots and bread baskets. When the leader invites all to eat, everyone begins with great gusto—it is getting late and those who have had very little to eat this day, especially the poor who depend on these potluck meals for sustenance, rush into the food. The business of eating and drinking quiets the talk for a while, but as the food disappears and everyone feels comfortably full, the noise level rises and the people share the problems and joys of the past week with each other. Gradually, the dishes are cleared and cleaned in the fountain outdoors, the crumbs are shaken from the rugs and cushions, and the attention of the community members focuses once more on the visiting prophet, who has been regaling those within hearing distance during the meal with tales of the Christian heroes of Antioch in the face of sporadic persecutions by civil authorities.

Text: Lord almighty, you have created all things for the sake of your name, and have given food and drink to all to enjoy that they may thank you. But to us you have given spiritual food and drink and eternal life through Jesus, your servant [or “child”].

Commentary: As the last of the dishes are cleaned and the last drop of wine is drunk (whether a specific “psalm leader” existed in the time of the Didachē is doubtful), someone signals to the people to stand, and the prayer stance of outstretched arms is again adopted.

Text: Above all, we give you thanks because you are mighty. To you be glory forevermore.

Commentary: The teacher continues the prayer of thanksgiving, focusing more particularly on God, revealed through the work and person of Jesus the Christ. Again, the gathered Christians are reminded of their own baptism, recalling the anointing with oil which “Christed” them, giving them the name of their adopted family. The response of the people, “to you be the glory forever,” rings through the room.

Text: Remember, O Lord, your church: Deliver it from all evil, perfect it in your love. Make it holy, and gather it together from the four winds into your kingdom which you have made ready for it. For yours is the power and the glory forevermore.

Commentary: The prayer continues, acknowledging the divine creation of all things, in contrast to the Gnostic groups who deny the goodness of creation and claim another god created the material realm. But the high point of the prayer is coming: In addition to all created goodness, God is now to be praised for providing the means to eternal life through Jesus. The spiritual food and drink which is the center of the Eucharist would be called the “medicine of immortality” by the bishop of Antioch, Ignatius, fifty years later. The seeds of his expression are already here in this gathering and in the prayer chanted by the leader.

Text: May grace come and this world pass away! Hosanna to the God of David.

Commentary: As this long prayer reaches its culmination, recalling the chants of great feasts in the Jewish calendar, God is proclaimed as mighty, and the confident acclamation of the people gives them courage and strength to meet the challenges of the coming week. If God is truly the Lord of all and they are part of God’s family, then surely they will be able to trust in God’s continuing presence regardless of what confronts them.

Text: If anyone is holy, let him come; if anyone is not, let him be converted.

Commentary: The prayer turns to petition for the church and for the return of Jesus. The prayer is expressive of the people’s identity as the church—not a building, but a gathered group of the baptized, formed into one body like the one loaf of bread. This part of the prayer also reminds people that the church is larger than their small community; it is all the small communities of Christians scattered in the four winds who are united in prayer on this day and will be drawn together on the last day.

This last part of the longer prayer of thanksgiving ends with the same acclamation, sung with more elaboration than before. As this acclamation ends, a series of acclamations are sung back and forth between the visiting apostle and the people, expressing the belief of all Jewish Christians that the promised Messiah had indeed come. The leader in turn sings, reminding all present that not only is peace among themselves necessary, but that the gift of faith is given to people when they least expect it, and that the gift of faith demands a response to God.

Text: Maranatha. Amen.

Commentary: The dialogue ends with the acclamation, “Come, Lord (Jesus), let it be so!” Even today in this congregation there were people who had known the disciples of Jesus, and one old woman who had even heard Jesus himself speak. Because of her intimate connection with God, she is revered as highly as any elder, and her prayer of “Maranatha” has special poignancy: She longed to see Jesus once again, just as she had as a young woman.

Text: But permit the prophets to give thanks as much as they wish. On the day of the Lord, come together, break bread, and give thanks, having first confessed your sins, that your sacrifice may be pure. But let none who has a quarrel with his companion join with you until they have been reconciled, that your sacrifice may not be defiled. For this is that which was spoken by the Lord: “In every place and at every time offer me a pure sacrifice; for I am a great king, says the Lord, and my name is wonderful among the nations.”

Commentary: At the ending of the prayer, the visiting teacher from Antioch begins to greet the members of the community individually, moving among the gathering, blessing babies, congratulating new parents, and especially welcoming the newly baptized. The local leaders of the community—those who gathered the food, saw to it that the widows and orphans were fed, and organized the weekly agape and Eucharist—move with the Antiochene apostle through the crowd, introducing him to the members. Some of the Christians embrace his scarred hands and arms, injuries received when he was imprisoned and tortured for refusing to deny Christ. His witness to the Messiah and his knowledge of Scripture, what later generations would call the Old Testament, make him a revered leader. When he leads the community in prayer, his spontaneous words, proclaimed within the structure of prayers inherited from Judaism, are recognized to be prophetic and true, representative of his faith and his personal experience of the Lord.

As evening turns into dark night, the members of the church begin to gather their children and belongings and prepare to go home. Tomorrow is another work day and it is getting late. The visiting apostle will stay the night at the home of the host, spending the next morning sharing news of the church in Antioch, such as the letters being read in Sunday gatherings in Antioch along with readings from Scripture, before moving on to a neighboring village where another group of Christians lives.

The cool of the night is filled with the quiet sounds of people whispering good night, and a single voice humming the melody of acclamation proclaiming that eternal power and glory belongs to God alone.

An Introduction to Daily Prayer

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Ancient sources reveal that a tradition of daily prayer at stated hours developed quite early in the history of the church. The practice of assembling for these times of daily prayer was derived in part from Jewish custom and is mentioned in the New Testament. Christian daily prayer evolved into two forms: monastic prayer, practiced by members of separated communities (originally of laypeople), and cathedral prayer, for which members of the local congregations would assemble with their bishop and other leaders. Daily prayer included the recitation of psalms and hymns, with congregational responses. Some elements in historic Christian liturgies seem to have originated in the practice of daily prayer.

The Tradition of Daily Prayer

Prayer has always belonged to all Christians but has been perceived in some historical periods as the possession of the clergy. In the last decade, rising interest in such prayer forms as meditation and chanting has been paralleled by a growing interest in “historical” Christian prayer forms. Christian spirituality, spiritual direction, contemplative prayer, and prayer groups are no longer the domain of only religious and clergy, but of all the people of God.

In no case is this more true than that of the Liturgy of the Hours (Daily Prayer or the Daily Office), the name given to the communal celebration of particular times of the day in order to mark them with a Christian meaning by prayer. Its complicated history was misunderstood at some key points in liturgical renovation, resulting in prayer books better suited for private prayer than liturgy, which is always the corporate prayer of the people of God.

The liturgical tradition upon which the restored books drew was a mixture of two different types of liturgy: one monastic and one popular (known as the “cathedral” form). In order to begin the restoration of the Daily Prayer in parishes, it may be helpful to understand these two different traditions of prayer services and separate them from each other.

The primary hours of Daily Prayer are morning prayer and evening prayer. Morning prayer is a prayer of thanks and praise for the new day and for salvation in Jesus, symbolized by the rising sun. Evening prayer is the Christian way of closing the day, a reflection on the good of the day, and reconciliation for the wrongs done. The symbol of Jesus at evening prayer is again light, here the light of the candle that symbolizes the light of Christ dispelling all darkness.

Morning and evening prayer (also known as matins and vespers, or evensong) were part of the prayer environment of early Christians. The charge to “pray without ceasing” in the New Testament was observed in different ways among early Christians. First, and foremost, was the weekly celebration of the Eucharist on the Lord’s Day, Sunday. Second was the prayer of the “domestic church,” the family gathered to pray at meals and at sunset and sunrise.

The early Christians inherited this tradition of praying at the turn of the day from Judaism, adding their own Christological meanings to it. By the second century, Christians were gathering together to observe morning and evening prayer in some form. The form was elaborated in the third century and written down in great detail for us by the fourth.

What we can see is a liturgy intended in every way to be “popular”—in other words, to be celebrated by the whole church on a daily basis. The key to the celebration was to make it relevant to the time of the day (morning prayer should celebrate morning, evening prayer, evening) and to the season (Easter morning prayer should be somewhat different than Advent).

One major witness to much of the prayer detail is a woman named Egeria, a pilgrim in the late fourth century to Jerusalem and the Holy Land. She wrote back to her friends (believed to be in northern Spain or southern France):

What I found most impressive about all this was that the psalms and antiphons they use are always appropriate, whether at night, in the early morning, at the daily prayers at midday or three o’clock, or at Lucernare (evening prayer). Everything is suitable, appropriate, and relevant to what is being done (Egeria’s Travels, ed. John Wilkinson, [Jerusalem: Ariel Publishing House, 1981], ch. 25).

The other important part of these popular prayer services was the use of standard hymns and psalms. These were repeatable components of the liturgy designed to enable all laypeople to participate in them. This, along with the use of incense, candles, and processions made for a colorful, celebrative event in which anyone could participate.

Developing in the same historical period (fourth century) was another kind of daily prayer, monastic prayer. In the deserts of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, the growing monastic movement gave rise to another type of morning and evening celebration. Monastic prayer can be more properly thought of as a service of prayer and meditation on Scripture than as liturgy. The primary reason is that liturgy implies the whole church of God gathered together to pray (including clergy), and the monastic movement in its beginnings was a lay movement.

The monastic service was designed for a stable community in which there were fewer distinct roles, and in which silence played a major part. The use of the Psalms was not so much a means to praise God (as in the popular office) but a way of listening to the voice of God. The Psalms were therefore recited by one person while everyone listened in silence. There was no concern for specific times of the day. The Psalter was simply read from beginning to end in the course of a week. There was also little regard for the liturgical year; this was not the focus of the monastic course of prayer.

Eventually, it was the general history of the church that determined how these two types of prayer evolved. The monastic movement became urban when many monks moved into the cities from the desert. Many city churches became monastic centers where the cathedral or popular office became a combination of monastic and popular elements. The outcome of this merging of ideas was the dominance of the monastic style. Along with this, the rise of clergy in the monastic movement made this dominant style the domain primarily of clergy and monks. The final step in this de-evolution of popular daily prayer was the trend toward private recitation, originally a spoken or non-choral celebration of morning and evening prayer that became solo—truly private.