The Training

This is all about a tradition, a teaching that frames human life in this world in a different perspective.
As you read this it is important to remember that a "name" reflects the MISSION of that being here on Earth called "Father", and that the "church" is the assembly of those beings who are drawn to a source for understanding life in this world.

Play that again, please!

Our choir works hard to master hymns that may not be very familiar to the congregation to help us through the words and thoughts of these weekly mini-lessons. As Father Charles mentioned during the Annual Meeting, it is important to make full use of this ancient teaching device if we are to grow in love and understanding.
I was especially struck by the Hymn #302 that we sang that morning, for I had the impression that here was a basic teaching handed down by tradition from the earliest days. You can imagine how surprised I was to see in the notes at the bottom of the page that the words were a Greek verse from the year 111CE. As often happens to me in these cases, I had to do a fair amount of detective work to find out where these lines originated.
The translator, F. Bland Tucker, gave us an English version in 1895, just a few years after the discovery of a document we now call The Didache, a short tractate (tract) on Christian life that survived oblivion in an ancient library in Constantinople. According to a leading modern scholar "The Didache represents the preserved oral tradition whereby mid-first-century house churches detailed the step-by-step transformation by which gentile converts were to be prepared for full active participation in their assemblies". (Aaron Milavec,2003)
What we have in the verses of this hymn is an early version of the Eucharistic Prayer that we repeat each time we celebrate the Christian sacrifice. Listen again to the words as they are recorded in this "book of common prayer" of the Second Century:

10.2 We give thanks to you holy Father
for your holy Name which you have made to dwell in our hearts
and for the knowledge, faith and immortality which you have revealed to us
through Jesus your servant.
To you be glory for ever.
10.3 You Lord almighty
have created everything for the sake of your Name;
you have given human beings food and drink
to partake with enjoyment so that they might give thanks;
but to us you have given the grace of spiritual food and drink and of eternal life
through Jesus your servant.
10.4 Above all we give you thanks because you are mighty.
To you be glory for ever.
10.5 Remember Lord your Church,
to preserve it from all evil and to make it perfect in your love.
And, sanctified, gather it from the four winds
into your kingdom which you have prepared for it.
Because yours is the power and the glory for ever.
10.6 Let grace come and let this world pass away.
Hosanna to the house of David.
If anyone is holy let him come,
If anyone is not let him repent.
Maranatha.
Amen.

Now let's try that hymn once again, and see what treasures we can find buried in the notes and staffs of our musical heritage. According to Milavec, the Didache is more like a mnemonic path: not merely to be repeated but illustrated, inquired of, questioned, listened to, and challenged by each candidate in such a way that not only the words but also the deep meanings of the way to life were being suitably assimilated and applied at every step. Thus a new
way of life, the way of life imposed on the new Christian, is the core of the Didache, a
document that in this way becomes an important witness to the countercultural force of
early Christianity.