The priest used a single chalice and a paten – a
tiny disk less than six inches in diameter.
Even on occasions when people received Holy Communion they never
received from the chalice and the Sacred Hosts would be taken from the
tabernacle, having been consecrated at a previous Mass . So only a very small quantity of wine –
enough for the priest – was consecrated and a single host for the priest which
was placed on the paten. Many priests
today never use a paten because all the breads may be placed in a larger dish,
called the ciborium.
Originally it was the paten that was the dish and
it was normally very large. The word
paten is a Greek word and it literally means a ‘bowl’. It needed to be large because for the first
thousand years of Christianity the bread consecrated at the Eucharist was a
loaf. St Paul gives us the first
description of how the early Christians celebrated the Eucharist. Writing about twenty years after the
Resurrection, to the community in Corinth he says: ‘The cup of blessing that we
bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The loaf that we break, is it not a sharing
in the body of Christ? Because there is
one loaf, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf’ (1
Cor.10:16-17). Some of the chalices and
patens of earlier centurieas have come down to us, reminding us of how the
early Church shared in the Eucharistic Meal.
In 1980 in a place called Derrynaflan in County
Tipperary a large chalice and paten dating from the 8th or 9th
Century were discovered. They were
donated to the Irish State and are on display in the National Museum in
Dublin. They were probably hidden during
the turbulent 10th and 12th Centuries when Viking raids
were not uncommon and were found near the site of an ancient monastery. The Derrynaflan Paten was assembled from over
three hundred separate components. It is
made from beaten silver trimmed with silver wire mesh bordered by a ring of gold
filigree panels and is fourteen inches in diameter. It is like a very large dinner plate or a
very ornate tray used to serve food and it would need two hands to hold
it. Scholars tell us that it is typical
of patens that survive in the west from before the year 1100 AD. Unfortunately few now exist because changes
in how the Eucharist came to be celebrated made such patens redundant and many
were re-cycled as valuable scrap metal.
The derrynaflan Chalice is one of the most
outstanding religious items of Irish art.
It, like the paten, has a gold filigree band of panels and the rim is
emblazoned with amber studs. It has
handles for giving and receiving it safely and with ease. It could have held about one and a half
litres of wine. Such an amount would
easily suffice for a hundred communicants.
The loaf of bread on the paten could have been broken into about one
hundred pieces. Other items in the
Derrynaflan Hoard were a liturgical strainer and a hoop that may have been a
stand for the paten, and a bronze basin.
The extraordinary workmanship that went into these
chalices and patens show us how they valued the celebration of the
Eucharist. Of course not every community
would have such elaborate and costly possessions. They would be more than likely to be found in
the flourishing monasteries but they would certainly tend to raise the tone of
celebrations of the Eucharist in surrounding parishes also. Nevertheless the level of participation did
fall enormously and people were encouraged to think that the Eucharist was too
sacred for them to receive. It was seen
as the Divine Presence to be revered and adored rather than the Banquet to
which Christ invites us.
To return to the time when I became a server! After the priest’s communion, if one was
aware that people were approaching for communion the servers recited – or
gabbled – the Confiteor in Latin. At the
beginning of the Mass the priest and servers had already separately said the ‘I
confess’ but the people’s communion was celebrated as a separate ceremony based
on reception of communion for the sick at home or in hospital. Hence the ‘I confess’ was needed before the
people received under the form of bread as in communion for the sick.
Sometimes I hear young priests bemoan today’s
liturgy and wish to return to the time when Mass was celebrated properly! But they want to go back only fifty or sixty
years! The Church however wants us to go
back much further than that. The
document on the Liturgy from the Second Vatican Council encourages us to use
bread in the Eucharist that more resembles ordinary bread. But not much heed is given to that. The Church places before us as an ideal the
picture of how the Mass was celebrated in St. Paul’s Corinth. In Palestine and for centuries later the
Eucharist was celebrated facing the people and the breaking of the loaf took a
long time and was clearly significant. When
the early Church spoke of the Eucharist they called it ‘the breaking of the
loaf’. The good people of the Church
for the first eleven hundred years – as evidenced by the Derrynaflan paten –
treasured the one loaf and the one cup that St Paul spoke of. That is why in our parish we consecrate one
ciborium and one chalice though we use smaller vessels when it comes to actual
communion. The bread we use is thicker
and more brown than was the case in the recent past. We try to ensure that people receive hosts
that are consecrated at the celebration at which they are taking part. It is far from ideal to receive sacred hosts
consecrated at another celebration. The
primary reason for reserving the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle is to be
able to give it to those who are unable to come to Mass
