The Epiklesis of our Lives

"Eucharistic Dove"--a tabernacle or artophorion
in the form of a dove representing the Holy Spirit,
common during the early and high Middle Ages.

What is the Epiklesis?

One of the happier revisions to the Sacred Liturgy by the Consilium was the inclusion of an explicit epiklesis in the Anaphora (= Eucharistic Prayer, after the Preface).  From the Greek noun ἐπίκλησις, 'invocation,' the epiklesis (sometimes spelled epiclesis) is the invocation of the Holy Spirit to transform the Holy Gifts into the Body and Blood of Christ.

In Eucharistic Prayers II, III, and IV, they are easy to spot.  In the first place, when the priest-celebrant extends his hands over the chalice and paten, it is there that he will call on the Holy Spirit, and this is specifically called the Consecratory epiklesis.  For example, the Church prays in Eucharistic Prayer II:

Make holy, therefore, these Gifts, we pray, by sending down Your Holy Spirit upon them like the dewfall, so that they may become for us the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

There is a second, Communion epiklesis, whereby we ask the Holy Spirit to unite the Church by this Eucharistic Celebration (since growth in charity and ecclesial unity is the res tantum--the "thing itself" or the goal--of the Sacrament).  It takes place after the Institution Narrative and immediately after the Anamnesis (whereby we articulate the sequence of the Paschal Mystery).  An example from Eucharistic Prayer IV goes like this: 

Look, O Lord, upon the Sacrifice You Yourself have provided for Your Church, and grant in Your loving kindness to all who partake of this one Bread and one Chalice that, gathered into one body by the Holy Spirit, they may truly become a living sacrifice in Christ to the praise of Your glory.

In Eucharistic Prayer I--the Roman Canon--the epiklesis is a little less apparent, but by no means absent.  In the first place, all prayer is an invocation.  In the Older Rite, there is a kind of epiklesis during the Offertory (whose removal by the Consilium was ill-conceived):

Come, O Sanctifier, almighty eternal God:  Bless this oblation prepared for Your holy Name.

This "Sanctifier," obviously, is the Holy Spirit.  But, near the beginning of the Roman Canon, the priest-celebrant will make the sign(s) of the cross over the Holy Gifts, saying:

...that you accept and bless these gifts, these offerings, these holy and unblemished sacrifices...

There is a continuation of the epiklesis in the Roman Canon just prior to the Institution Narrative where the priest extends his hands over the Holy Gifts at the Quam oblationem tu (though, in the Older Rite, the hands are extended at the Hanc igitur):

Be pleased, O God, we pray, to bless, acknowledge, and approve this offering in every respect; make it spiritual and acceptable, so that it may become for us the Body and Blood of Your most beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

In any case, the importance of the epiklesis lies in the fact that, like Christ "who was conceived by the Holy Spirit" (Apostles' and Nicæne-Constantinopolitan Creed), the same Holy Spirit brings about the Presence of Christ upon the altar.  It is no less true that the Institution Narrative is the "form" of the Sacrament of the Eucharist, but it would be careless theology to isolate it from the whole Anaphora.

'Eucharistic Doves'

This is why, in the early and high Middle Ages, the early form of the 'tabernacle' was the so-called Eucharistic dove, a pyx containing the reserved Sacrament, hanging from the ceiling above or near the altar.  We are blessed in the Archdiocese of Edmonton to have such a Eucharistic dove in the lady chapel of St Joseph Seminary.  This dove-motif, taken obviously from the gospel narrative of Jesus' baptism (cf Lk 3:22), is intended to highlight the Pneumatological reality of the Eucharist.  It should be remembered, too, that it was in the Upper Room where the Lord Jesus celebrated the Last Supper that the Holy Spirit was poured out on the Church on that first Pentecost Sunday morning (Acts 2:2).  More to the point, St Thomas Aquinas teaches that the Lord Jesus instituted the Sacrament of Confirmation "not by bestowing, but by promising it" (S.th., 3a, q. 72, art. 1, ad 1), and goes on to cite John 16:7, "Nevertheless I tell you the truth:  It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counsellor will not come to you."

But this was the second time during the whole Farewell Discourse (Jn 14-17) that Jesus promised Pentecost; the first time was in the Upper Room (Jn 14:15-31), before leaving for Gethsemane (Jn 14:31).  In other words, Jesus promised that 'baptism in the Holy Spirit'  foretold by John the Baptist (cf Mt 3:11-12) shortly after the first Mass and in the Upper Room where he would be outpoured.  (This is why, in the Dominican Rite, the Sermo Domini is chanted after the repose of the Blessed Sacrament, bridging the gospel of Maundy Thursday to that of Good Friday--to remind us, among other things, that even if the Resurrection is 'right around the corner,' we have still got Pentecost to look towards.)

The Offertory of Ourselves

The Eucharist is not simply an 'amulet' to be hoarded, but the very paradigm of the Christian life.  When the Holy Gifts of bread and wine are placed upon the altar, the Church invites us to offer, alongside them, our own lives.  Hence, in the Older Rite, when the priest is preparing the chalice, he prays:

O God, who, in creating human nature, did wonderfully dignify it, and still more wonderfully restore it, grant that, by the Mystery of this water and wine, we may be made partakers of His divine nature, who vouchsafed to be made partaker of our human nature, even Jesus Christ our Lord...

The purpose of the Eucharist is be "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pt 1:4) or, in a word coined by St Gregory the Theologian, "divinized" (cf θέωσις), just as the bread and wine are "divinized" to become the Sacred Body and Precious Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, just as the Church prays that the Holy Spirit would effect the transformation of the Holy Gifts into Christ's Presence, so too does she pray that the Holy Spirit continue to transform Christians more and more into Christ Himself.  It is easy to partake of Eucharistic Communion; the challenge is to make way for that grace whereby we "become what we eat" (St Augustine).

We can draw a further lesson from the bread and wine used for the Eucharist:  As inanimate objects, bread and wine have no will of their own; its existence is passive and has no choice but to receive the transformation effected by the Holy Spirit to become really, truly, and substantially Christ present.

You and I, on the other hand, possess a will:  We can either resist the Holy Spirit's transformation or we can yield to it.  St Thomas Aquinas teaches that infused virtue has a twofold defect--one on the part of the virtue itself (and this is remedied by the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit), and one on the part of the agent's consent to being virtuous.  By repeated acts of conscious, intentional, and deliberate self-offering, the Holy Spirit is able to mold us more and more into Christ.

Speaking of the Holy Spirit, the entire purpose of his Seven Gifts is to effect, in our wills, docility and amenability to his promptings and movements.  St Thomas thus makes a special connexion between the Eucharist and the Seven Gifts:

But the priest greets the people seven times, namely, five times, by turning round to the people, and twice without turning round, namely, when he says, "The Lord be with you" before the "Preface," and again when he says, "May the peace of the Lord be ever with you": and this is to denote the sevenfold grace of the Holy Ghost (S.th., 3a, q. 83, art. 5, ad 6).

Making our Lives an Epiklesis

The Church is experiencing a difficult moment in her history.  If I had to pinpoint the source of her ills, it would be simply this:  Refusal to surrender to the Holy Spirit.  Since the Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church, then seeking any other source of empowerment is a betrayal of "being Church."  What is needed for reform is not another meeting, another programme, another bureaucratic process.  What is needed, rather, is a lifelong epiklesis of daily surrender to the Holy Spirit, of "eucharistizing" our lives.

The Eucharist is the re-enactment of the Sacrifice of Calvary.  But, as the sacred author of Hebrews tells us, Christ's self-sacrifice was not a matter of gumption and gall, but of an offering empowered by the Holy Spirit:

...how much more shall the Blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God (Heb 9:14).

May it be for us, too.