MONEY

Every Sunday at the Eucharist the collecting bag comes round and you put in it the money you have brought with you.  But on one Sunday in the year you bring to church something else besides money.  That Sunday is Harvest Thanksgiving, when people bring gifts with them.  Years ago, in country churches, they used to bring fruit and flowers and vegetables that they had grown in their gardens or allotments.  These were then taken away after the service and given to people who were ill at home.  Nowadays, people may bring all kinds of gifts – like tinned food, cereals, tea and coffee – which are given to charities supporting people who are in need, such as homeless people.

In the Early Church

In the early days of the Church in the Roman Empire, the Christians used to bring with them to the Eucharist, not only the bread and wine for the service, but also other offerings such as olive oil, cheese, vegetables, fruit, flowers and so on. These were placed by each member of the congregation near the altar and were blessed during the service.  Afterwards they were given to those Christians who were sick or poor.  The Christians also gave money for those in distress.  So a writer, called Tertullian, writing in the second century A.D., said how this money was used to “support and bury poor people, to supply the wants of boys and girls destitute of means and parents, and of old persons confined now to the house; such, too, as have suffered shipwreck…”  The money was also used for any who, for the sake of the Faith, were in the mines or in exile or in prison and so needed to be cared for by the Church” (1)

During the first 200 years of the Church, the Eucharist used to be held in private houses, or in the catacombs – the underground burial tunnels.  This was in the time of the persecutions when they met in secret at the risk of their lives.  Even so, they did their best to make their worship as worthy of God as possible, and they were very generous either in giving ornaments or in giving money with which ornaments could be bought.  For example, we happen to have a list of the ornaments used by the Christians in 303 A.D. in a small town in North Africa where they still met for the Eucharist in a private house: two golden chalices, six silver chalices, six silver dishes, one silver bowel, seven silver lamps, two torches, seven short bronze candlesticks with their lamps and 11 bronze lamps with chains. (2)

When the persecutions were over, proper churches were built everywhere, and these were furnished and decorated in the most splendid and colourful way as a kind of thank-offering to God for having brought the Church safely through.  Only the best was good enough for God.