Below is a reflection of "The Liturgy of the Eucharist."
Families and the Eucharist
Dinner reservations are often required when you go out to dinner at a nice restaurant. But when you come to the Eucharist, no reservations are needed. Service is given to every person who comes to the Lord’s Table with love and a desire to receive Jesus.
At a restaurant or at home, preparation is needed so that the table is ready for guests at a meal. At church we do the same kind of preparation. The altar is prepared, bread and wine are brought forward in procession, and the choir or the assembly sings a song.
If you attend a birthday or anniversary celebration, there are gifts. The best gifts come from the heart. At Mass we bring forward precious gifts as well, not only the gifts of bread and wine, but also money, the fruits of our work, and an offering of ourselves. We pray to God that he change these gifts into something new and wonderful.
Once the table is prepared, the priest invites us to pray that our gifts, what we have sacrificed and offered back to God, are acceptable. The Eucharistic prayer is the high point of the Mass. It is a prayer of thanksgiving. In this prayer, we remember that Jesus sacrificed his life so that we might have eternal life with God.
The priest begins the Eucharistic Prayer with the Hosanna. Just as we praise our host at dinner for his hospitality, we praise God by saying, “Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of hosts!” The next important part of the Eucharistic Prayer is the Consecration. Through the words and ac(ons of the priest and through the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ sacrifice is made present again. The bread and wine become the Body and Precious Blood of Jesus.
We then sing or say the Memorial Acclamation and the Great Amen. This “Amen” is our “yes” to all that has happened and brings the Eucharistic Prayer to an end. We are about to enjoy the Great Feast!
Here is word scramble on the Liturgy of the Eucharist.
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A white cloth called a corporal (from the Latin word for body, because upon it will rest the Body of Christ) is placed on the altar along with the Roman Missal containing the prayers. The bread and wine in sacred vessels are also brought to the altar table, similar to the preparations you would make at home for a feast. But this is more than a festive meal; it is also a sacrifice. “The Christian altar is by its very nature a table of sacrifice and at the same time a table of the paschal banquet” (Rite of Dedication of a Church and Altar #4).
Copyright © 2008, World Library Publications, the music and liturgy division of J.S. Paluch Co., Inc. Used with permission.
Members of the assembly bring forward the gifts of bread and wine to be consecrated during the Eucharistic Prayer. We offer these signs of the work of our hands, that they may be transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ. On the fifth day in the Octave of Christmas, the prayer over the offerings specifically points to the offering we give and the incredible gift we receive in return: “Receive our oblation, O Lord, by which is brought about a glorious exchange, that, by offering what you have given, we may merit to receive your very self” (Roman Missal, 178).
Copyright © 2008, World Library Publications, the music and liturgy division of J.S. Paluch Co., Inc. Used with permission.
The priest says a series of prayers, some are said silently, some are said aloud when there is no music accompaniment. First, the priest holds up the bread and silently prays in words that derive from the Jewish tradition, “Baruch atah Adonai,” ”Blessed are you, Lord, God…” When water is added to wine, the priest prays silently, “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity”. Then the priest raises the chalice, offering to God the fruit of the vine in the same words as above, derived from the Jewish tradition. The priest, then, bows over the gifts, and prays silently: “Lord God, we ask you to receive us and be pleased with the sacrifice we offer you with humble and contrite hearts”. Finally, the priest washes his hands, saying “Lord, wash away my iniquity; cleanse me from my sin”, and we are reminded of our own need to seek God’s forgiveness, of our need to purify our hearts and lives. We are offered repeated opportunities for reconciliation throughout the Mass.
Copyright © 2008, World Library Publications, the music and liturgy division of J.S. Paluch Co., Inc. Used with permission.
The priest invites us to pray that the sacrifice we are about to make might be acceptable to God. We are reminded that we are not mere onlookers, but active participants in the sacrifice of this holy meal. “The Eucharistic celebration in your community, in your parish, is the offering of the sacrifice of the entire Church. Your assembly…does not create or invent its own Mass. Rather, you are invited to move beyond yourselves to enter into the action of the entire Church which is the action of Christ himself” (Lustiger, La Messe, 89).
Copyright © 2008, World Library Publications, the music and liturgy division of J.S. Paluch Co., Inc. Used with permission.
In the liturgy of the 1570 Missal, this prayer was called the “secret” prayer. it was “secret” not because its content was mysterious, but because it was prayed in silence by the priest, who only recited the conclusion aloud: per omnia saecula saeculorum (forever and ever). Now prayed aloud, the Prayer over the Gifts expresses in short summary all we hope this liturgy will accomplish in our lives (Cabié).
Copyright © 2008, World Library Publications, the music and liturgy division of J.S. Paluch Co., Inc. Used with permission.
For the third time we hear the words “The Lord be with you”, signifying something important is about to happen. “The greeting is repeated at this point in the liturgy because we are going to start praying now with much greater intensity, and if we are to manage it, we will need divine help” (Driscoll). This dialogue is followed by the Preface Prayer, so called not because it comes before the Eucharistic Prayer but because it is said before all the people. Each Preface Prayer expresses why we give thanks by painting the history of salvation with broad and bold strokes.
Copyright © 2008, World Library Publications, the music and liturgy division of J.S. Paluch Co., Inc. Used with permission.
As we sing the Sanctus, the “Holy, holy, holy,” we sing the music of the choirs of angels, the song of the great company of saints and all the powers of heaven. We are invited to take our place in the communion of saints, which unites us to all the faithful, the living and the dead. Not only are we united with the “horizontal” Body of Christ, joined with those standing next to us and throughout the world, but we are also united with the “vertical” Body of Christ,” those in the heavenly liturgy.
Copyright © 2008, World Library Publications, the music and liturgy division of J.S. Paluch Co., Inc. Used with permission.
The liturgy has always been a polyglot; that is, it has always been prayed in several languages. Throughout the liturgy, “embedded like precious stones,” (Cardinal Lustiger), are words and phrases from other tongues that have survived all the chances and changes of centuries to become part of the very language of prayer. We pray in Latin (Agnus Dei, “Lamb of God”), Greek (Kyrie eleison, “Lord, have mercy”), Hebrew (Amen, “So be it”; Alleluia, “Praise God”), and in Advent we pray in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke (Maran atha!, “Come, Lord Jesus, come!”).
Copyright © 2008, World Library Publications, the music and liturgy division of J.S. Paluch Co., Inc. Used with permission.
In Rome, the Eucharistic Prayer used to be called the canon actionis, meaning “the rule for the action” because the prayer is an action…the words make something happen. The priest invokes the power of the Holy Spirit to descend on the bread and wine so they become the Body and Blood of Christ. This is followed by the narrative account of the institution, sometimes referred to as the consecration, in which the priest, joined silently by all the faithful, prays the words of Christ from the Last Supper. During consecration, the action of the bread and wine becoming the Body and Blood of Christ takes place. However, by receiving Christ into our very beings, we are also called to action, to die to self in order to live as Christ calls us to live.
Copyright © 2008, World Library Publications, the music and liturgy division of J.S. Paluch Co., Inc. Used with permission.
While for much of Church history there was only one Eucharistic Prayer, there are now several others. Eucharistic Prayer I, the Roman Canon, holds pride of place as the first Eucharistic Prayer. Eucharistic Prayer II, used most often, is the most ancient, based on the earliest existing text attributed to St. Hippolytus who died around 235. Eucharistic Prayer III is a new prayer, composed in response to the Second Vatican Council, and Eucharistic Prayer IV is not often heard because of its great length and its rather difficult language. In addition to the four principal Eucharistic Prayers, there are also three adapted to the understanding of children, and two more for Masses of Reconciliation.
Copyright © 2008, World Library Publications, the music and liturgy division of J.S. Paluch Co., Inc. Used with permission.
More information on the Liturgy of the Eucharist can be found here:
Liturgy of the Eucharist
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