Whys of the Mass Part V
By Mike Lambrecht
Last week we left off with the preparation of the gifts. This week we explore the Eucharistic Prayers and Consecration.
The Eucharistic Prayer begins with the “Preface.” The Preface is a great prayer of thanksgiving. We are invited to lift our hearts up to God – to enter into a small taste of heaven on earth. Saint Cyril describes this part of the Mass very well in his lectures:
The priest cries out: ‘Lift up your hearts!’ For in this most solemn hour it is necessary for us to have our hearts raised up with God, and not fixed below, on the earth and earthly things. It is as if the priest instructs us at this hour to dismiss all physical cares and domestic anxieties, and to have our hearts in heaven with the benevolent God…Then the priest says, ‘Let us give thanks to the Lord.” Certainly we ought to give thanks to God for having invited us, unworthy as we are, to so great a gift;1
The Preface concludes with us joining the choirs of angels as we sing the Sanctus (Holy, Holy). This hymn of praise echoes that of the angels singing in heaven in the book of Revelation, it reminds us of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, and it offers the praise to God that is due.2
At the conclusion of the Sanctus, we kneel. Kneeling calls our attention to the very special part of the Mass that is about to take place. Kneeling is an act of adoration, repentance, and submission. We kneel because the Holy Spirit is about to come down upon the gifts of bread and wine and change them into the very body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. We call this part of the Mass where the Holy Spirit descends the Epiclesis. It takes place when the priest places his hands together over the gifts and calls down the Holy Spirit by virtue of his ordination and his acting in the person of Christ (in persona Christi).
After the Epiclesis we have the Consecration. The consecration is where the priest recites the words that Jesus used on Holy Thursday. It not only recounts what Jesus said and did at the first Eucharist, but makes it present to us again so that we may participate in it in the here and now. The Eucharist is such an important event in salvation history that it transcends time itself. The Catechism explains this memorial quite well:
In the sense of Sacred Scripture the memorial is not merely the recollection of past events but the proclamation of the mighty works wrought by God for men. In the liturgical celebration of these events, they become in a certain way present and real… In the New Testament, the memorial takes on new meaning. When the Church celebrates the Eucharist, she commemorates Christ’s Passover, and it is made present: the sacrifice Christ offered once for all on the cross remains ever present.3
This means that in a very mysterious way, we are participating in the events of the Last Supper and the sacrifice which took place on Calvary. We are not sacrificing Christ again, but are re-presenting His sacrifice in an unbloody manner. In allowing us to do so, Jesus is fulfilling his promise that he will be with us until the end of the age.4 We call the memorial and participation in these events the Anamnesis.
Once the priest pronounces the words of consecration, first over the bread and then over the wine, he genuflects as a sign of adoration because it is no longer bread and wine on the altar but the body and blood of Jesus Christ. We call this change Transubstantiation.
1 The How-To Book of the Mass p.169-170.
2 See Revelation 4:8, Mark 11:9-10, and Isaiah 6:3
3 Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraphs 1363-1364
4 See Matthew 28:20
5 The How-To Book of the Mass p.176-177.