6th Pope St. Pope Alexander I, Why the Catholic mass has it's structure, St. Ignatius of Antioch, 1st time Catholic is used

0:16 Hey, Hello, I'm Jeff and welcome to fundamentally Catholic. We are not here to discuss or teach doctrine. We just want to educate you on the Catholic history and why the Church is the way it is today. Today we are in the early one hundreds. The Church is still small enough to fit into a handful of Roman houses, but stubborn enough to survive in an empire that would prefer that it didn't exist. Right in the middle stands a sixth pope, Pope Saint Alexander the First. Now he's not flashy, he doesn't leave behind long letters like Pope Clement did. He doesn't have a dramatic story like Peter or Paul. He does represent something the early Church desperately needed. Stability, quiet, steady, stubborn stability in a world that is not rooting for Christianity to succeed. If you picture Rome around the year one one, Emperor Trajan was in charge. He was a brilliant general, a pretty good administrator. He had absolutely no desire to legalize Christianity. Under Trajon, Christians they were not hunted daily, but they were always vulnerable. Yeah, if someone accused you of being a Christian. You would be interrogated, then you'd be pressured to sacrifice to the Roman gods and executed if you didn't. The church he was living under a weird tension. Not a full scale persecution, but a constant, low grade threat. It had no buildings, no legal protections, and no public worship. Yeah, just a small community meeting in homes, praying quietly and hoping the neighbors didn't ask many questions. Then in steps Alexander, a young Roman only around thirty years old. He was chosen to lead a church that was still figuring out how to be the church. The historical record from that time is really thin, but we do know a couple things for certain.

1:49 Alexander he reigned from about one oh five to one fifteen, right after pote Everistus. He lived during a time of increasing Roman suspicions of Christians, especially as the faith spread beyond Jewish communities associated with early eucharistic prayers, especially the narrative of the Last Supper. That's important. It tells us something that's true. About that time. The church was beginning to formalize how it prayed. This is a generation after the Apostles. The church was moving from we remember what the apostles did and said, we need a stable and recognizable pattern of worship. Some things the Church remembers about Alexander the First, even if we can't actually footnote him with certainty. First, adding water to eucharistic wine. This is still one of the oldest liturgical actions that we still do today. Tradition says Alexander emphasized it or even introduced it.

2:34 Whether he personally did it or not, it just reflects on how early Christians understood the Eucharist, not just as a meal, but as a mystery with layers of meaning. Alexander, he institute is certain blessings. He is linked to the use of holy water mixed with assault for blessing houses. Again, maybe he personally introduced it or it developed organically, but the tradition shows that the Church was beginning sacramental daily life. So why does a pope with barely any surviving documents matter? Because Alexander represents the church learning how to endure. He shows us the church didn't collapse after the Apostles died. He shows us the Church didn't need political power to survive. It shows us that even in subscurity, the Church was developing a recognizable liturgy, identity, and sacramental life. Alexander shows us that leadership in the early Church wasn't about charisma, it was about faithfulness. He's the pope who knew how to keep the church steady while an empire watched suspiciously from the outside. Alexander's death is believe he was martyred by Treyjon, but it's details from it. Yeah, it's lost to history. Do you ever wonder why the Catholic Mass looks the way it does? Why it has this structure, Why these prayers? Why on Sunday? Why word and then Eucharist?

3:44 If you've grown up with the Mass, it might feel ancient, like it just dropped out of the sky, fully formed. The truth is more interesting. The Mass is the product of memory, inheritance, and identity. Let's start with why Christians meet on Sunday? Why not Saturday like the Jews? Why not any day? A well? Three reasons? What direction happened on a Sunday the earliest Christians, they called it the first day of the week or the Lord's Day. Gathering on Sunday was a weekly celebration of the resurrection, a mini Easter, the early Church. You wanted continuity with Judaism, but not dependence on it. They weren't rejecting the Sabbath. They were proclaiming something new had happened. Sunday gatherings were already happening by the end of the first century, saying Ignatius of Antioch his writings around the year one oh seven, talked about Christians no longer keeping the Sabbath, but living according to the Lord's Day. So why does the Mass have two parts? If you look at the Mass today, it has a very clear structure. One liturgy of the Word, two liturgy of the Eucharist. This is not a medieval invention.

4:39 It is not a Council of Trent inventions, not even a Constantinary invention. This structure is first century. So where did it come from? Well, the synagogue Jewish Shynagogue worship had two main components, reading and teaching the scriptures, and then prayers and blessings. So when the Apostles began preaching, they didn't throw structure out. They added it. Early Christian worship it went like this, scripture readings from the Old Testament. The New Testament wasn't written yet. A homily prayers are the faithful, and what separated Christians the Eucharist. This is why the Mass feels both familiar and different to Jewish worship. It's the synagogue pattern fulfilled and completed the early Christians. They didn't gather primarily to hear a sermon. They gathered to receive the Eucharists. From the beginning, the Eucharist was the sinner. The Eucharist was the identity. Euchrist was the dividing line between Christians and non Christians. Saint Paul wrote in about year fifty five. He describes that the Eucharist asked something he received from the Lord and handed on.

5:32 This is the earliest account of the Last Supper by the time of Pope Alexander. The Eucharist it wasn't symbolic, it wasn't a metaphor, and it wasn't a community meal. It was the real presence of Christ. Christians were willing to die for it rather than deny it. This is why the Mass is structured to build towards the Eucharist. Everything in the first half prepares you for the second half. So how did the early Christians pray the Eucharistic prayer? As I talked about earlier tradition says that Pope Alexander helped shape and stabilize parts of the US egoistic prayer, especially the narrative of the Last Supper, where it starts out on the night he was betrayed, and and so on. By the one hundreds, the Church was moving from spontaneous prayer to structured prayer to preserve apostic teaching, to prevent theological drift, to unify scattered communities, and to protect the eucharists from misunderstanding. The ecoistic prayer becomes a stable, recognizable pattern of thanksgiving, calling down the Holy Spirit, the words of Jesus, offers and sacrifice, prayers for the living and the dead, and the final doxology. You hear that every Sunday there are Jewish roots in Christian worship. The Mass is not a random collection of rituals. It is the fulfillment of Synagogue worship, which is the Word, and Temple worship, which is sacrifice. The Synagogue gave us reading Psalms, homily in prayers. The Temple gave us sacrifice, offering priesthood and the altar. Christianity did not erase Judaism. It completed it.

6:52 If you want to understand the early Church, you have to understand the Mass was the heart beat of the Christian identity. It shaped their theology, their commune unity, their courage, and their willingness to die. That leads us to one of the most important men in the early Church, Saint Ignatius of Antioch. Ignatius he was born into a pagan family in Syria. He became the Bishop of Antioch. Ignatius he lived and taught in the generation immediately after the Apostles. Yeah. It was during Alexander's time. He was the first Christian writer to give a fully developed picture of the role of the bishop, the structure of the church, the unity of the Christian community, the centrality of the Eucharist, and the meeting, the meaning of martyrdom. His letters give a snapshot of Christian life shortly after the Apostles died. They show how Christians worshiped, how they understood authority, how they view the Eucharist, how they handle false teaching, and how they thought about unity. These letters are not abstract theology, they are real Ignatius. He is famous for the line where the bishop is there is the church. This is not a metaphor, Ignatius, he meant it literally. For him, the bishop is the center of unity, the guaranteer of apostic teaching, the presider over the Eucharus, and the shepherd who holds the community together. Ignatius assumed without argument that every Christian community has one bishop, a council of priests and deacons. This is the earliest evidence of the threefold ministry that still exists today. Now remember this is around the year one oh seven. It's not a hierarchy that was imposed later on. This is the structure of the church, right off the belt. Ignatius. He is also the earliest

8:24 Christian writer to speak explicitly and forcibly about the eucharists. He said, the Eucharist is the real flesh of Christ, the medicine of immortality, and the center of Christian unity. The early Church did not see the eucharists as a symbol. They saw it as the literal sacremonial presence of Christ. Ignatius he was obsessed with unity, not as an ideal, but as a concrete, lived reality. For him, unity meant staying close to the bishop, avoiding false teachers, gathering for the eucharists maintaining charity work in the community. He saw division as the greatest threat to the church and the Eucharists as the antidote to division. Ignatius he was arrested in Antioch under Trajan. He was not executed locally. He was transported under military guard across Asian Minor to Rome.

9:07 Along the way he stopped in major Christian cities that included Smyrna that's in Turkey today. He met believers and he wrote letters. His letter to the Smerians is part of a group of seven letters he wrote just before he was martyred. He wrote it underguard, traveling city to city, preparing himself for martyrnom In it, Ignatief gave one of the most important moments in Christian history. He used the word Catholic for the first time to describe the church. He wrote, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. This is the oldest text where the church is called Catholic. Notice what he does here, though, Ignatius, he is not naming a denomination. He is not distinguishing Catholics over other Christians, though that division doesn't exist yet. For Ignatius, Catholic means the universal Church, the church that is whole, not fragmented.

9:53 The church gathered around the bishop celebrating the Eucharus, the church that holds the Apostolic faith handed down from the Apostles, So the Catholic Church did not become Catholic. Later Christians were already using the word just a decade after all the apostles died. When he arrived in Rome, he was taken to the coliseum and fed the lions. Literally he was the lions only left a couple of his larger bones and some of his supporters they were able to take those bones back to Antioch. He was in his sixties. I know, it kind of feels almost anti colmatic, that great guy, and then boom is over. Well, hopefully now you understand the sixth Pope Alexander and why the mass is structured ass is and you know Saint Ignashi's had gave us the word Catholic. Oh be sure. Thank you all for listening today. Make sure you follow us and check out the show notes and all that'll give you links to our website and everything you know. Until next time, God bless