Vatican II at 50 - The Spirit of the Eucharistic Prayer

One of my best friends and her husband are now separated.  Their six-year-old daughter who longs to have the family back together recently said to her mother, “Mommy, I want you and daddy to eat together!”  What a profound statement!  This child knows the power of sharing a meal together.  She understands that eating together can bring healing, reconciliation, and unity.  So did Jesus.  That’s why he gave us the Eucharist, so that we could be healed, reconciled and united. 

Sharing a meal together can change hearts.  That’s a grace for which we pray each time we celebrate the Eucharist.  Our Eucharistic prayers call upon the Holy Spirit to not only change the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ but to transform us as well.  Here is an example from Eucharistic Prayer II:

Make holy, therefore, these gifts, we pray

by sending down your Spirit upon them like the dewfall,

so that they may become for us 

Humbly we pray,

that, partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ

we may be gathered into one by the Holy Spirit.

The special term for invoking the Holy Spirit is a Greek word called epiclesis.  The epiclesis appears in most of our eucharistic prayers, save one.  Eucharistic Prayer I, also called the Roman Cannon, emphasizes Christ, the apostles and the saints, with scant mention of the Holy Spirit.  This was the only eucharistic prayer used from the 5^th Century until the Second Vatican Council.  Since Vatican II, the Church has added numerous eucharistic prayers, including eucharistic prayers for children and eucharistic prayers for reconciliation.  As we honor the Holy Trinity this weekend, let us pay close attention to the calling down of the Holy Spirit in our eucharistic prayers, for nothing the Spirit touches is ever the same.  Amen!