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Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults
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Archeologists Discover the Christians ‘ Great Secret
Did the early Christian community believe in the Real Presence, and if so, how does one prove it to a materialistic, skeptical age? Certainly one of the most valuable and conclusive proofs will be found in archeological findings, of which there are many dating back to the time of Christ. However, the early Christian Community was under continuous bloody persecution and was reluctant to expose itself. So much of what is found in Christian archaeological relics of the past is in symbolism. No symbolism occurs more frequently than Mat representing the Eucharist, The fact and the conclusions derived therefrom is beautifully brought out in the book, “The World’s Greatest Secret,” by John Haffert. The following article is excerpted from that book, with permission from the author.
MOST OF THE GREATEST archeological finds of our time have been made through readings of old documents. It was long known, for example, that probably an important cemetery of the first century was will undiscovered in Rome. To archeologists, cemeteries are more exciting than the smell of gold to treasure hunters. Cemeteries contain tombs, and ancient tombs with their pottery, coins and inscriptions, are time-capsules of the paw.
Unfortunately, most of the cemeteries of Rome had been emptied before the archeologists reached them. After the Roman Empire crumbled, wave upon wave of invaders pillaged mausoleums and catacombs.
But ancient documents spoke of an important cemetery on Vatican Hill.
There was every reason to believe that while the original church over the cemetery had been destroyed, the cemetery itself never had been found, never had been pillaged. It might indeed be intact!
In 1900, by unanimous vote, the International Archeologists’ Congress petitioned Pope Leo XIII to excavate beneath the church.
But the Pope refused. The church in question was St. Peter’s Basilica, the largest church in the world! In 1939, an accident led to discovery.
He Landed in a Different World
Pope Plus XII the reigning pontiff at that time, had ordered a portion of the floor of Saint Peter’s crypt lowered to receive the tomb of Plus XI and a workman fell through. It must have been a little like Alice’s falling through the rabbit hole. He landed in a different wend: in a first century cemetery.
With that the excavation was on.
Painstakingly, slowly, the work proceeded. Excitement and suspense mounted. Excavators hit a rich religious lode and began to discover things hidden since Constantine built the first basilica on the same spot back in the year 315.
The cemetery they found dated from the time of Christ. Some tombs were found so perfectly preserved that mosaic and fresco decorations seemed brand new. Excavations from the central Boor of the basilica slowly worked toward the spot where tradition said that Peter had been buried.
Almost at once two surprising facts came to light: First, some of the pagan tombs of the first century had been filled in during the 4th century by the then-pagan Emperor, Constantine, to serve as foundations of a Christian church.
Second, as the excavators approached that area where Peter was said to be interred, they found Christian tombs squeezed among pagan tombs in increasing numbers. They even round some Christians buried in the older pagan mausoleums which were there before Peter’s death.
Most amazing was the discovery of Peter’s grave.
It was a very poor tomb, lowered in the ground, sealed with a slab or stone. Ordinarily it would never have attracted any attention ... squeezed as it ass between magnificent pagan mausoleums.
Because of their immense respect for the dead, the Romans had never desecrated Peter’s tomb, despite the increasingly bitter persecutions of Christians. They had done the next thing: They had tried to camouflage or hide it. They had built a staircase from one level of the cemetery to an upper level right over this tomb. The date of this staircase was ascertained from a marked die in its foundation. The staircase was built less than a century after Peter’s death, when Christianity was beginning to spread like a consuming free through the pagan world. The red staircase wall, which had been built within the life span of a single man after Peter’s crucifixion, was covered with a maze of inscriptions.
One of the inscriptions, older than the enclosure of Constantine, reads: “PETER LIES WITHIN.” The name and symbol of Peter were found everywhere about. One line scribbled about 150 A.D. reads: “Paccius Eutychus remembered Glycon here.” In the eighteen centuries since then how many pilgrims to Peter’s tomb have written home : “I remembered you here.”
So this digging under the great Roman basilica to the tomb of Christ’s “witness” was a dramatic, scientific step into Christianity’s infancy. It was a direct contact with an important witness of Christian faith. After all, the writings and the spoken words of Christ’s later followers have often been confusing. Over two hundred Christian sects have grown out of different interpretations of the Gospels. So which teachings of Christ most impressed Peter, a man who walked with Christ, learned directly from his lips, and died at last for his belief in what he had heard Christ teaching? Because they partially answer this question, the inscriptions on the wall over Peter’s tomb were truly the great discovery made in our time ...
The symbols and the writings, meaningless to an outsider, like a lightning flash back over the centuries reveal how the early Christians lived.
Catacombs Ideal for Early Christian Worship
The catacombs, fetid, cold and damp were the meeting places of the brethren. There they could perform their religious rites hidden from hostile gaze, and protected by the Romans’ superstitious respect for cemeteries.
When partially trusted strangers or new converts from paganism attended Christian rites, they were allowed to stay only for the first part of the prayers and ceremonies. They were required to leave then the second, more private part was about to begin. The first part of the liturgical service was designated for “the catechumens” (that is for those still learning the catechism of the Faith) and the rest designated for “the faithful” (that is for those who had proved their steadfastness in the Faith and had been baptized). The great ACT of the liturgy of “the faithful’ was perhaps the most carefully guarded secret of all history. To this day in the liturgy it we referred to as “the secret” until 1964!
This secret so filled the hearts and minds of the first Christians that archeologists and historians working all around the Mediterranean keep uncovering the secret symbols day after day. Early Christians had not been afraid to express the secret in symbols and pictures because unless a man knew the secret, the symbols would be meaningless. The secret was too mystic for mere humans to guess. Indeed, it was almost too mystic for humans to believe.
Guarded in the caves of Palestine and in the subterranean cemeteries of Rome, the sacred rite of the Blessed Sacrament, which made Christians literally blood brothers, has been found hidden in symbols. Paul said it made them “Of one body, all partaking of one bread.” But who, except the initiated, could know the meaning of these powerful words let alone the symbols of them?
Recurring over and over again with more frequency than any others are the symbols of Christ, Mary, and above all, the Eucharist.
One symbol of Christ was an X (first letter of “Christos” in Greek) or an X with a T through its center. The symbol for Mary was sometimes just a simple M on which an A was superimposed. Paradoxically, this second symbol for Mary was not only clearer to the initiated, but it was less clear to the outsider.
Symbols for the Eucharist were multiple: a fish; loaves surmounted by a fish; a bunch of grapes or a vine; a cup often resembled a large vase.
These symbols found around Peter’s tomb make his burial place different from most found in the catacombs. The other tombs bear engravings or “graffiti” dealing with death and salvation. The graffiti on Peter’s tomb, like those on the wens surrounding an altar table and on the walls of the underground passages and rooms, were hiding something as well as telling something, and here it was that the symbol of the Eucharist dominated. Obviously the Eucharist was the treasure prized and reverenced by Peter and his contemporaries, and it nap the sine qua non of their religious rites.
Substantiating the cryptography and symbols are many pictures recently found in the catacombs. One well-preserved fresco was painted within the lifetime of persons directly instructed by Peter and Paul. It was found in the catacomb of the famous Roman martyr Priscilla who is mentioned by St. Paul in his second epistle to Timothy.
Like most of the other pictures from apostolic times, it does not depict baptism or the resurrection, nor a message about faith and or works. It shows seven people reclining at table, eating bread and drinking wine.
The number seven, as we know, is a favorite one in the Bible and it stands for an uncertain quantity. The same number of people, seven, are found in several other “Supper-of-the-Lord” scenes elsewhere in the catacombs. Now the pagan might well ask, what kind of banquet is this where the guests seem to be eating only bread and have but one cup of wine for all?
The most commonly seen picture is very simple: It is that of a fish. Sometimes the fish is surmounted by a basket of bread, and sometimes also a glass of red wine is depicted inside the basket and both bread and wine stand over a fish.
The fish has a double significance. Obviously it represents the miracle of the multiplication as well as the “food from heaven” which Christ promised the next day, the food which was himself, his body and blood. Also the letters of the Greek word for fish, icthys, are the initial letters in that language for “Jesus Son of God and Savior” (Jesus Christos Theou Uios Soter).
This most famous acrostic of the early Christian era interchangeably symbolized Christians, Christ himself, and Christ in the Sacrament of the Eucharist through which Christians and Christ unite in a special way.
Ours is a blessed age in which these facts of early Christianity are finally brought to light. They reveal what was once considered the secret of secrets, the transcendent Eucharistic doctrine. Together with the infusion of the Holy Spirit, this was the life principle of the Christian Church, or the Mystical Body of Christ, by which Christians “may be made end’ as the Savior said to his Father: “As You and I are One.”
But even a the world in general was not prepared to grasp such a secret after the miracle of the leaves and fishes, would the world be ready to gasp it when the secret began to leak into general knowledge? To what extent would it remain secret even down to the twentieth century.
It is little wonder that the fish (meaning Jesus Christ Son of God, Savior) was frescoed into the catacomb walls surmounted by leaves and wine.
When we turn from the discoveries and archeology to reread the Gospels, we find something we may never
really have seen before: that it was the Eucharist which Christ himself emphasized. Not only did he make a the test of faith at Capharnaum, but at me eleventh hour, on the very eve of his death, he held it up to his followers as his legacy and his pledge of his ever-abiding Presence
We may look up toward that white disc which shines in the monstrance as toward the chink in a wall through which, for just a moment shines the Light of the other world. For St. John writes: “In him was Life, and the Life was the light of men. The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not understand it ... he was in the world, and the world came to be through him, and the world did not acknowledge him . . .”
He is in the world now. That fact cannot be insisted upon too often. But how many of us can really know him? How many of us really acknowledge him?