KNOW TH E MASS
Liturgy of the Eucharist PART TWO
BY FATHER KEVIN KENNEDY This article is part of the Know the Mass series. Father Kevin Kennedy is pastor of Our Lady of Fatima Russian Byzantine Catholic Church, administrator at St. MonicaSt. Thomas the Apostle Parish in San Francisco and formation adviser and spiritual director at St. Patrick’s Seminary & University.
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e complete this series on the Mass by providing the second part of our reflection on the Liturgy of the Eucharist, examining the basic structure of the very heart of the Mass, which is the Eucharistic prayer. Thanksgiving constitutes a fundamental element of Christian worship. As God’s own people, we are called to offer praise and thanksgiving for the gifts of creation, salvation and sanctification. Indeed, from the Greek, the word Eucharist means thanksgiving or to give thanks. Originally, the entire liturgical offering of thanks was a single or whole prayer which, by the seventh century, had been divided in two by an introductory part of the Eucharistic prayer called the preface and a hymn called the Sanctus. Preserving the original and essential focus on thanksgiving, the preface begins with a dialogue between the priest and the people common to
ancient liturgical tradition, both East and West. Then, on behalf of the people, the priest proclaims the prayer in which God is glorified for the whole work of salvation. There are a rich variety of prefaces composed for specific days or seasons of the liturgical year. The preface is then followed by the angelic prayer of praise and adoration (Holy, Holy, Holy, etc.) from Isaiah 6:2-3, along with a verse from Psalm 118. The next major part of the Eucharistic prayer is called the epiclesis which, in Greek, means invocation or calling down. This prayer is a petition or supplication in which the priest asks that God the Father send down the Holy Spirit upon the gifts of bread and wine so that they may truly become the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the different Eucharistic prayers of the Roman rite this invocation occurs in slightly different forms and with varying degrees of specificity, but the intention is the same. The calling down of the Holy Spirit upon the gifts is a preparation for their consecration or transformation. However, there is another, second epiclesis in which we pray that the same Spirit descend upon us, the assembly, so that we might become one body, one spirit, in Christ. By the power of the Holy Spirit we receive the Lord in the Eucharist and are thus enabled to become He whom we receive. JUNE 2022 | CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO
