This is what PB had to say about the organic development of the mass over 1,600 years:

" The Holy Mass is a sacrifice, the perfect sacrifice, created by Jesus.

The first Mass was, of course, the Last Supper. Christ instituted both Holy Communion and the Priesthood that night, establishing Apostolic succession:

"Neither the apostles nor their successors 'made' a Christian liturgy; it grew organically as a result of the Christian reading of the Jewish inheritance, fashioning its own form as it did so. In this process there was a filtering of the individual communities' experiences of prayer, within the basic proportions of the one Church, gradually developing into the distinctive forms of the major regional churches. In this sense liturgy always imposed an obligatory form on the individual congregation and the individual celebrant. It is a guarantee, testifying to the fact that something greater is taking place here than can be brought about by any individual community or group of peo