For in eating every one takes first his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is drunken.
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Clement Of Alexandria
AD 215
If a person is wealthy and eats without restraint or is insatiable, he disgraces himself in a special way and does wrong on two accounts. First, he adds to the burden of those who do not have, and second, he lays his own intemperance bare in front of those who do have.
For in eating every one taketh before other his own supper. (1.) S. Augustine ( Ephesians 118) understands this to mean that they took their supper before they came to the Eucharist, and that ver33orders them to wait for one another at the supper before the Eucharist; because at the Eucharist itself or after it there was no need of waiting, since it was not celebrated till all had assembled, when the poor would receive it mingled indiscriminately with the rich.
We must remark that, at the time of S. Paul, in imitation of Christ, who, after the common meal on the Passover lamb, instituted the Eucharist, the Christians instituted before the Eucharist a meal common to all, rich and poor alike, in token of their mutual Christian charity. This custom lasted in some Churches for several centuries. As late as the time of Sozomen, as he relates (Hist.lib. vii. c29), it was the custom in many towns and villages of Egypt, first to take a meal in common, and then, following Christ"s example, cel...
Every one taketh before his own supper to eat. The sense seems to be, that he took and brought with him, what he designed to eat with others, and give at that supper: but as soon as some were met (without staying for others, as he orders them, ver. 33., when he again speaks of these suppers) the rich placing themselves together, began this supper, and did not take with them their poor brethren, who had brought nothing, or had nothing to bring; by this means, one indeed is hungry, and another is drunk, that is, had at least drunk plentifully, while the poor had nothing but shame, and confusion. By this means of eating and drinking without temperance and moderation, they were by no means disposed to receive afterwards the holy Eucharist. He tells such persons that committed these disorders, that if they be so hungry that they cannot fast, they should eat (ver. 34.) before they come from home. We find these Agape forbidden to be made in the Churches, in the 28th canon of the council of La...
The Corinthians were disgracing themselves by turning the Lord’s Supper into a private meal and thus depriving it of its greatest prerogative. The Lord’s Supper ought to be common to all, because it is the Master’s, whose property does not belong to one servant or to another but ought to be shared by all together.
Perceivest thou how he intimates that they were disgracing themselves rather? For that which is the Lord's, they make a private matter: so that themselves are the first to suffer indignity, depriving their own table of its greatest prerogative. How and in what manner? Because the Lord's Supper, i.e. the Master's, ought to be common. For the property of the master belongs not to this servant without belonging to that, but in common to all. So that by the Lord's Supper he expresses this, the community of the feast. As if he had said, If it be your master's, as assuredly it is, you ought not to withdraw it as private, but as belonging to your Lord and Master to set it in common before all. For this is the meaning of, 'the Lord's.' But now thou dost not suffer it to be the Lord's, not suffering it to be common but feasting by yourself. Wherefore also he goes on to say,
For each one takes before other his own supper. And he said not, cuts off, but takes before, tacitly censuring them bot...
