Divine service made its appearance on earth simultaneously with man.
The goodness and almightiness of the Lord impel men to glorify and thank Him;
the consciousness of their wants prompts them to address their petitions to
Him. And as man consists of both body and soul most closely united, therefore
prayer is expressed in words and accompanied by certain motions of the body,
and, vice-versa, external objects arouse a prayerful inclination in man. In
this way private worship originated and developed, varied as to prayers and
rites.
But men came together and formed communities, and this gave rise to
uniform prayers for all the members of one community, and for these common
prayers there were gradually appointed: place, time, order of services and
persons to perform them. In this way, as human society became organized, public
worship also developed.
In Old Testament times, previous to Moses, divine service was of the
private, domestic type. The paterfamilias — the patriarch — on behalf of his
entire family or kin (tribe), selected the place, appointed the time and laid
down the order of prayer. Even then certain customs already began to harden
into rules which the patriarchs themselves observed, following their fathers’
example. But since Moses’ time, the Israelites had a public worship, instituted
by God Himself, with temple, priests and rites. Jesus Christ, the founder and
the Head of the Christian Church, while himself
complying with all the regulations of Jewish worship, did not give to His
disciples any definite ritual. But He instituted the Sacraments, commanded His
disciples to preach the Gospel, taught them how to pray, promised to be present
in the gatherings of Christians assembled in His name, and thereby laid the
foundation of His Church’s public worship. Thus it was that, immediately after
Christ’s ascension to Heaven, a certain order of public worship gradually began
to develop in the Christian community. In the Apostles’ lifetime already,
certain holy persons were consecrated, certain places were appointed for divine
service, and a ritual was instituted for those offices during which the
Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist are administered; furthermore the
principal rites were devised to accompany the celebration of the other
Sacraments, even to the appointing of the times for common prayer, certain
feast-days and fasts. The persecutions which the Christians suffered during the
first three centuries hindered them from composing an entire ritual for public
worship and making it uniform for all Christians; such a ritual was fully
developed and finally established only when Christianity was proclaimed the
ruling religion of the Roman Empire.