We are together! May 2020

My mind keeps going back to the first century.  In the history of the Primitive Church (the first three centuries A.D.) that is the church without all of our institutional garb.  It is a church without vestments, without buildings.  It is a church without youth groups and choirs (because everyone sung who could sing).  It was a church without Sunday School.  Imagine! So many of the things that make church for us...didn't exist in the first century. The primitive church didn't even have pipe organs and some believe it only had voices as instruments.

But what do we share in common.  First, Jesus is Lord.  They prayed together and for one another when they were absent.  They sang songs in house churches.  They shared the Eucharist, Holy Communion, the Bread and the Wine.  They shared the stories of the life of Jesus.  They emulated his life.

Each gathering, in each city was a church.  They shared the oral telling of the life of Jesus.   The four gospels (in different decades) take at least 30-60 years after Jesus' resurrection to be written down in the forms that we have them today.

The epistles (letters) from the various apostles were actually written down first as a supplement to the oral stories of the life of Jesus.  And epistles existed regionally in places like Achaia and Asia Minor, and in cities like Ephesus, Philippi, and Rome.  To the primitive church scripture was what we call the Old Testament.  The New Testament was spread out over the Mediterranean world.  It wouldn't be until the Council of Nicaea in the 300s A.D. that we see a unified list of the Old and New Testaments.  The Spirit guided their understanding to compile and canonize (codify) what we call the Holy Scriptures.

How did they do it?  How did they stay connected in a time when the height of technology was parchment and pen?  How did they stay connected, when they weren't able to gather during random and regional persecutions?

I can articulate now what I know intuitively.  Truly, in a metaphysical way (spiritual way), through prayer we are united to one another because we are united to Christ. I pray for you; you pray for me, and we are together.  I'm glad we're together right now.  I'll also be glad when we are together in body underneath the roof of God's house.  God bless you all.

Fr. Stephen+