  Previously the quark and meson properties in a many quark system at finite
temperature have been studied within effective QCD approaches in the Hartree
approximation. In the present paper we consider the influence of the mesonic
correlations on the quark self-energy and on the quark propagator within a
systematic $1/N_c$- expansion. Using a general separable ansatz for the
nonlocal interaction, we derive a selfconsistent equation for the $1/N_c$
correction to the quark propagator. For a separable model with cut-off
formfactor, we obtain a decrease of the condensate of the order of 20\% at zero
temperature. A lowering the critical temperature for the onset of the chiral
restoration transition due to the inclusion of mesonic correlations is obtained
what seems to be closer to the results from lattice calculations.
