How the Fathers Shaped the Church's Eucharistic Faith

Among the great teachers and Fathers of the early Christian Church is Pope St. Gregory the Great (c. 540–604 A.D.). Just as monastic Christianity was flourishing in Ireland, the entire Christian Church that was in communion with the see of Rome was, directly, under the leadership of the successor to Peter.

Sometimes, writers like to believe that Celtic Christianity was something very separate and unique, to such an extent that something called 'Roman Christianity' arrived, more or less, with the Normans in the 12th Century. This is a distortion of Irish history. Yes, there were features unique to Ireland and what is now Britain, including an emphasis on nature, monasticism, asceticism and fashions and habits that might hint at ties to Eastern Christian traditions. Pragmatically, Christianity, as it did elsewhere, had to negotiate its way into local cultures, 'baptising' some pagan symbols and rites by removing what was idolatrous and centring attention on the Son of God and not the Sun. Pagan ritual sites became holy wells, and some scholars argue that the cult of St. Brigid absorbed elements of an earlier pagan goddess of the same name — though the extent of any direct continuity is debated among historians of early Ireland and should be taken as a contested thesis rather than settled fact.

One area of interest is the Eucharist, because we can be assured that what was believed and practiced in the universal Church - East and West - was also held in Ireland, notwithstanding any particular local adaptations in the liturgy.

St Gregory stands in a line of great Doctors including, in the West, the three great Fathers or Doctors of the Western Church active across the 4th and 5th centuries, viz., St Ambrose (c. 340–397), St Augustine (354–430) and St Jerome (c. 347–420). Among the great Doctors of the Church in the East, spanning the 4th and into the 5th century, are: St. Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 296–373), St. Ephrem the Syrian, St. Basil the Great (author of a Eucharistic liturgy still used today), St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. John Chrysostom (d. 407) and St. Cyril of Alexandria (Patriarch 412–444).

And, to these may be added many, many others including St Ignatius of Antioch, St Justin Martyr and St Irenaeus and some of whom I plan to cover in may daily 2026 Blog series, Bread for the Journey, before the close of this calendar year, God willing.

While Eucharistic doctrine and practice was, relatively speaking, in its infancy in the early centuries, we see clear points of agreement as well as development. There is a consistency of understanding in relation to the Eucharist as a sacrament or mystery, a real presence that is not merely symbolic and a communion with Christ and his Body, which is the Church.

What did St Gregory the Great teach about the Eucharist? We may start with the closing chapter of Book 4 of his Dialogues, completed in 593:

This Victim alone saves the soul from eternal ruin, the sacrificing of which presents to us in a mystical way the death of the Only-begotten, who — though He is now risen from the dead and dies no more, and death will no longer have dominion over Him, for He lives immortally and incorruptibly in Himself — is immolated for us again in this mystery of the sacred oblation. For His body is eaten there, His flesh is distributed among the people unto salvation, His blood is poured out, no longer in the hands of the faithless but in the mouth of the faithful. Let us take thought, therefore, of what this sacrifice means for us, which is in constant representation of the suffering of the Only-begotten Son, for the sake of our forgiveness. [Source]

The above quotation could be straight out of the Council of Trent over nine centuries later. To be clear, Gregory taught that the sacrifice of the Mass is not a repetition of Calvary but a sacramental participation in it. Gregory is a key witness to the early practice of offering Masses for the souls of the dead. This would prove very controversial during the Reformation, roughly 900 years later. Whereas St Augustine had highlighted the Eucharist as the sacrament of the Church's unity, Gregory highlighted the Eucharist as a sacrificial worship. The two approaches are complementary; Gregory built on what went before. Even today, Christians, while agreeing on the 'substance' of eucharistic doctrine, may differ in their emphasis on sacrificial offering, communal and individual transformation.

Gregory was instrumental in organising and streamlining the western liturgy. Tradition credits him with adding ‘grant us peace in our days’ (diesque nostros in tua pace disponas) to the Roman Canon, and with organising and stabilising much of the sacramentary and liturgical calendar. His work laid the groundwork for what would eventually become the Missale Romanum. Many Catholics point to a real historical continuity between the ‘Mass of St Gregory’ and the Mass used up to 1970 (usus antiquior) - though this continuity was not unbroken in a literal sense: the Roman liturgy underwent significant further development over the centuries, including its codification at the Council of Trent in the 16th century. Gregory's sacramentary is best understood as the acknowledged root and ancestor of the later Roman Missal, rather than an unchanged text handed down intact.

An important detail in the life of Gregory is that, while Pope, he sent the monk Augustine (of Canterbury) to evangelise the Anglo-Saxons in England, earning him the title 'Apostle of the English'. He was also responsible for the phrase servus servorum Dei ("servant of the servants of God"), used in relation to the Bishop of Rome, or Primate of the universal Church.

St Jerome (c. 347–420 A.D.) once famously wrote:

Ignorance of the scriptures is ignorance of Christ.

To this we may add, today, ignorance of the scriptures and the early doctors of the Church is ignorance of Christ in a living catholic tradition that continues to nourish our minds, understanding and wills.