The Apostolic Tradition, an early “church order”—a collection of directives on liturgy and administration—gives us the words of a prayer used most likely in Rome in the third century. We give thanks to you God, through your beloved child Jesus Christ, whom in the last times, you sent to us as savior and redeemer and angel of your will, who is your inseparable Word through whom you made all things and who was well pleasing to you. When he was handed over to voluntary suffering, in order to dissolve death and break the chains of the devil . . . he took bread and giving thanks to you he said;
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