Hello and welcome again to Catholic Answers Focus. I am Cy Kellett, your host. We've

been having some conversations in recent weeks with Tim Stapels, Director of Apologetics and Evangelization

here at Catholic Answers, about the early church and some of the things that are said about

the early church and trying to dig into what's true about the life of the early church.

So this time we ask Tim if there's any relationship with the current liturgical state of Christianity for most Christians in most of the world and the early church was the early church liturgical thanks for being with us Tim

It is great to be with you my friend all right so the early church did what and then invented liturgy yeah

you know it being a convert as you know I am that was a given you know that the early church actually

you know was like we Pentecostals man they just just went with the flow of the holy ghost and preached and ran the church

and jumped up and down and praise God, right? There was no liturgy. That came probably Constantine. Everything came at Constantine.

Yeah, okay, right. You know, but actually nothing could be further from the truth. In fact,

the the early church from the first century forward was liturgical and of course so because

it comes right out of the old covenant where you had a very elaborate liturgy centered on the temple

and the offering of sacrifices and such, but every aspect of the liturgy was choreographed

in Old Testament times, not that there weren't different liturgical traditions even in the Old Testament there were I mean you had the

the Pharisees I should say the Sadyses, the asines, the therapeutic.

There were different sects among that had their different.

But liturgy is everywhere in the Old Testament.

And most people acknowledge that, but what even our fundamentalist friends

But what they seem to miss is that when Jesus you know as you and I say

Instituted the Eucharist and the priesthood on Holy Thursday, he's coming out of a, and I love the book, The Eucharist by Boier, Louis Boier, where you know he points out how that Jesus

is actually following very much along the prayers of the synagogue when he

institutes the Eucharist, the Barakah, the blessing, the

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