Finding the right words is a sacred work

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Part Four: Liturgical Change

By FR. LEROY CLEMENTICH, CSC

CatholicAnchor.org

Friends, inasmuch as you will soon be receiving an abundance of information regarding the proposed revisions to the Roman Missal, you may simply wish to ask the obvious question: “Just what is the Roman Missal and what does it contain?” Essentially, the Missal is a book or collection of prayers, intercessions and blessings along with directions or rubrics. The central element in that collection, of course, is the Eucharistic Prayer itself, also referred to as the Anaphora or Canon, which is all of one piece assembled around the sacred words of Jesus over the bread and wine at the Last Supper.

The Missal has had a long and involved history, developing gradually into the form that we know today. In the early church, of course, there were few service books either for the presider or the assembly. Christians knew certain fundamental Christian prayers by heart like the Lord’s Prayer, the Gloria Patri and other short doxologies (expressions of praise to God) drawn from the letters of Saint Paul the apostle.

Until well into the 3rd century, bishops, also referred to as the president (presider) of the assembly, would call together the Christian community for prayer during which they would compose Eucharistic Prayers using sacred words. The various forms of those prayers that have survived until today have come to us from those early bishops and sacred writers.

Gradually, as time went on, however, it was thought appropriate to collect these Eucharistic Anaphora into books that could be used repeatedly and passed on to other churches. Eventually many of these “prayer books” became canonized or approved for use throughout the entire church, East or West.

I offer here only a few examples, the earliest in the West being The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles and the Canon of Hippolytus. In the Byzantine (Eastern) Church, Saint John Chrysostom, Saint Basil, Saint Cyril of Alexandria, Saint Cyril of Jerusalem and others developed Eucharistic prayers consistent with the culture and the common prayer forms of the East.

In short, those early bishops felt it their responsibility to make sure that the sacred words of Jesus and the annotations that flowed from them should not be lost to history.

It might be well to point out also that the only words in the Eucharistic canon that have remained precisely the same over the centuries are the words of Jesus at the Paschal Supper: “Take this bread and eat it … take this cup and drink from it. Do this in memory of me.” All the other complementary prayers used at the Eucharist have come from the minds of human authors (presidents of the assembly) under the divine guidance of the Holy Spirit, all with the intent of keeping sacred the memory of the Last Supper.

It should be added for the sake of emphasis that these prayers have often been changed and revised over the centuries, not because former versions were considered inaccurate, but rather because, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, new insights, new ways of expressing the sense of the sacred continued to grow and change over the centuries. Christian faith and culture, of course, have continued to develop into our own times. This says something important about our Christian determination to do what Jesus did and say what Jesus said. Our only resource in doing this is to search for human words and phrases that we feel are dependable, trustworthy and consistent with the mind of Jesus. To find ways to pray as Jesus did is truly a sacred task.

The writer formerly served the Anchorage Archdiocese as director of pastoral education. He now lives in Notre Dame, Indiana.

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