Notre Dame Videos June, 2009 Video 4 Eucharistic Prayer as Transformative and Missioning [Slide 4-1] Hello. I m Dayton, Ohio Precious Blood Sister Joyce Ann Zimmerman. We meet for this fourth and final time to continue our reflections on the Eucharistic Prayer. We ve reflected on thanksgiving, mystery, presence. All of this surely describes what is happening in Eucharist. But there is even more. In this final quarter hour together, I want to come back to some of the elements and themes of Eucharist, especially how they affect us and move us to action to doing Eucharist in our everyday living. We must keep before us an ideal: the Eucharistic Prayer is a climactic Eucharistic moment and, as such, calls forth from the gathered assembly its commitment to active participation and surrender to God s action of self-disclosing divine presence. The key words here for the assembly are participation and surrender. Let s see how these two unfold in the Eucharistic Prayer. A prevailing fallacy weakens our understanding of liturgical participation. Many think that entertaining people is what liturgy is all about. We need to catch their fancy, hold their attention, give them something to do in order for the Eucharistic Prayer to be meaningful. In fact, the exact opposite is true. The meaningfulness of the Eucharistic Prayer lies much less in the engagement of the assembly in the external aspects of rendering the prayer (for example, standing or kneeling, singing the acclamations) than in their engagement in the internal dynamic of the proclamation of the mystery of salvation and sanctification. Active participation definitely includes a degree of active involvement using our voices and bodies to become engaged with the action but the kind of full and conscious participation for which the Council Fathers called is really a matter of surrender to God s activity in the proclamation of divine Presence. Notice that I said surrender to God s activity. While our own activity active engagement is surely essential, it is what God is doing that really brings us to the heart of the Eucharistic Mystery. Also, the kind of surrender I m talking about here is more than giving ourselves over to what is going on in the Eucharistic action, as important as that is. The surrender I think the Eucharistic mystery unquestionably calls forth is a free choice to place ourselves into God s Presence, allow God to form us and transform us, and then accept the responsibility to continue Jesus saving work in our daily living. This is a tall order! But we are not without God s help, either, as we trust ourselves into God s divine hands. In the second video we talked about the epiclesis rather, we talked about a double epiclesis. The epiclesis is an invocation calling down of the Holy Spirit upon the gifts before the institution narrative and upon the gathered assembly after the institution narrative. We pray that the Holy Spirit will change these gifts into the Body and Blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ. I think most of us have no problem with this. Yes, the Holy Spirit does change these gifts into Christ s risen Body and Blood. I think we know less about and maybe even have a harder time accepting the Holy Spirit s epicletic action upon us. The effect of the Spirit s action is the same over the gifts and over us there is transformation, change
taking place. However, the change is different. As we spoke about at length in the third video, the transformation of the gifts of bread and wine is into Christ s true Body and Blood that is, the transubstantiation. The epicletic action over us, the assembly, is both the same and different. Let s see how. I want to say something that will sound quite startling to some listeners. Each of us baptized folks have, in fact, already been transubstantiated. We ve already had our substance changed! What? Yes! It s true! This change in us took place at Baptism, where (to use St. Paul s language) the old self died in the waters of baptism and the new self rose to share in the risen Christ s new life. I think we ve not paid enough attention to what St. Paul wrote in Romans chapter 6: Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.... We know that our old self was crucified with him... you [are] alive to God in Christ Jesus... you are... under grace. Paul is not just spinning metaphoric yarns in this rich, rich passage. He is saying something foundational to our baptismal and Eucharistic theology: that we are born anew in Christ s resurrection through baptism, that we belong to God, that our new identity is to be member of Christ s Body. Now let s look more closely at what happens to us in the epiclesis over the people. The change which we pray the Holy Spirit will bring about in us is not to have our substance changed that happened in baptism. The change desired in us as we invoke the Holy Spirit to come upon us is that we be brought together in unity (Eucharistic Prayer II), that we become one body, one spirit in Christ (Eucharistic Prayer III), that all who share in this one bread and one cup [be gathered] into the one body of Christ, a living sacrifice of praise (Eucharistic Prayer IV). Notice that all three of these Eucharistic Prayers ask that the Holy Spirit make us one. In other words, the epiclesis over the people is about preserving and strengthening our identity in Christ, our membership in his one Body, our unity in the one Body. Yes, sometimes we stray from this unity. Through sin a conscious and willful neglect of our baptismal covenant we harm the Body of Christ. We ask the Holy Spirit to help us repair the damage our sinful ways have done to Christ s Body. Over and over in the gospels Jesus admonishes us to repentance and promises us divine mercy and forgiveness. The epiclesis over the people is an outward sign of Jesus fulfillment of this promise through the power of the Holy Spirit. This is one reason why the Eucharist has been called the sacrament of reconciliation par excellence. Through the Holy Spirit s action we can once again break down the barriers that separate us and become one in Christ s Body. Another aspect of the epiclesis over the people is mentioned in Eucharistic Prayer IV: we ask that the Holy Spirit makes us a living sacrifice of praise. This is a powerful phrase that deserves more comment. The Eucharistic Prayer begins with praise of God borne out in the thanksgiving words of the opening words of the preface. It concludes in praise with the great doxology: [Slide 4-2] Through him, with him, in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours, almighty Father, for ever and ever. To these exalted words of praise prayed by the presider, we respond with our rousing great Amen. Notice that our praise is lifted to the Father through the mediation of Christ our Savior, and we are so bold to do so because we share in the unity made possible
by the Holy Spirit made explicit in the epiclesis over the people. Shortly before the final doxology, in the third and final part of the Eucharistic Prayer, we make our offering to God. It is this offering which helps us understand what it means to be a living sacrifice of praise. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal puts this beautifully, and I quote it in full: [Slide 4-3] Offering: By which, in this very memorial, the Church and in particular the Church here and now gathered offers in the Holy Spirit the spotless Victim to the Father. The Church s intention, however, is that the faithful not only offer this spotless Victim but also learn to offer themselves, and so day by day to be consummated, through Christ the Mediator, into unity with God and with each other, so that at last God may be all in all. (GIRM 79.f) What we do in the offering during the Eucharistic Prayer is what we pray the Holy Spirit do to us in the epiclesis: to surrender ourselves to the Father so that we can be transformed. Sacrifice here surely isn t negative, something to be avoided. The sacrifice of which we speak here is surrendering ourselves to the Father through Christ in the Spirit so that we can be made holy, just as the Spirit makes the gifts of bread and wine holy, that is, consecrated. The Father gives us the gift of the divine Son; we give the Father in return the gift of ourselves. There is a double self-offering in the Eucharistic sacrifice, just as there is a double epiclesis. Christ offers himself to the Father; we also offer ourselves. The epiclesis over the people makes us into an offering through the power of the Holy Spirit. This second epiclesis transforms us and renews us in our identity as the Body of Christ, and as sharers in Christ s Body we offer ourselves for our own good and the salvation of all the world. Our self-offering self-sacrificing, self-surrendering would not be possible without the action of the Holy Spirit. The most profound living sacrifice of praise we can offer the Father is the surrender of ourselves, just as Jesus surrendered himself into his Father s hands throughout his life in obedience to the Father s will and on the Cross as he gave over his life into his Father s hands. Every time I speak of this or teach this mystery of uniting ourselves with Christ s offering, I am humbled and awed at the great mystery into which God invites us. My topic is the Eucharistic Prayer, but allow me, please, to digress a little into the Communion rite. During the Communion procession we generally come forward, toward the altar. The altar is a symbol of the messianic banquet. This Communion procession, then, is more than a pragmatic movement to receive Holy Communion and return to our places. The Communion procession is just that a procession. A procession always begins in one place and ends in another it is highly symbolic of our movement toward a desired end. At the Communion procession we move toward the messianic table we are a pilgrim people journeying toward God and eternal life. On the way God nourishes us on this heavenly Food we take into our very being. Eucharist is also called an eschatological sacrament. Here we go another big Greek word!
Eschatology comes from two Greek words which mean the word on or science of the eschaton the end times. So eschatology is the study of the end of time. Eschatology moves us toward our final fulfillment when Christ comes at the end of time to gather all creation back to the Father. Our Communion procession is a symbolic gesture of our yearning for this eschatological fulfillment. While, on the one hand, our final glory still awaits us, on the other hand, we already share in the risen life of Christ. Our unity with Christ, our share in his risen life is both future event and present event. We offer ourselves with Christ and ask God to make us holy, to make us one, so that we ourselves can be the Body of Christ for all those we meet in our everyday living. Way back in the late fourth-early fifth century St. Augustine grappled with this mystery of unity and identity in the Body of Christ. In what has become a very famous passage from his Sermon 272, he lays out for us the mystery we have been talking about. [Slide 4-4] If you are to understand what it means to be the Body of Christ, hear what Paul has to say: Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it (1 Cor 12:27). If you are the Body of Christ and members of it, then it is that mystery which is placed on the Lord s table: you receive the mystery, which is to say the Body of Christ, your very self. You answer Amen to who you are and in the answer you embrace yourself. You hear Body of Christ and answer Amen. Be a member of Christ s Body, that your Amen will be true. Can the mystery get any deeper or richer than that? Well, yes, it does, when we pause briefly to consider what it means for our Amen to be true. We noted in the second video on elements of the Eucharistic Prayer that our Great Thanksgiving also includes intercessions. This may seem odd to some we ve already prayed for the needs of the church, for the salvation of the world, for those in need, and for our own faith community during the prayer of the faithful that concludes the Liturgy of the Word. Why add intercessions at this point in the Eucharistic Prayer? The answer to this question lies in the movement of the prayer itself, and that these intercessions are surely connected both to the prayer of the faithful as well as to the dismissal at the end of Mass. Our intercessory prayer is a reminder that we still live in a sinful, broken world. For all God s gracious acts of goodness toward us, we still have that streak of Adam and Eve rebellion in us. Exactly during this final part of the Eucharistic Prayer when we remember God s saving deeds in Christ Jesus, when we invoke the Spirit to make us one, when we surrender-offer ourselves with Christ to the Father, do we pray for our needs. Intercessory prayer always reminds us that there is more work of salvation to be done. And although we make our needs known to God, that act of petition is not a matter of, OK, God, do something about this mess we ve made of your beautiful creation, but of, OK, God, you have fortified us with the identity and strength to roll up our sleeves and continue your divine Son s saving work. These intercessions remind us that our unity with Christ and each other in the Body places a responsibility on us. For this reason, at the end of Mass we are formally dismissed sent forth to be living Eucharist, living presence of Christ to all we meet. We cannot ignore those among us who need help, need forgiveness, need direction in their lives, need conversion, need... whatever. No, all the good that happens in the Eucharistic Prayer is an intensified invitation to be Christ for others. We are the signs and instruments of God s compassion and mercy, God s graciousness and forgiveness, God s nourishment and encouragement. And for this we always and everywhere give God thanks in all we do and all we are. Yes, it is truly fitting and just that we give God thanks. We do so best when our hearts are always with our loving and saving God.
One last time we take just a few seconds to reflect on what we ve talked about. [Slide 4-5] I find it easiest to surrender to God during Eucharist when... hardest when... I find it easiest to surrender to God during my daily living when... hardest when... I have experienced the Holy Spirit s transforming presence when... It led me to... I am best a living sacrifice for the good of others when... I find this most difficult when...