A Tour through the Mass!

The Eucharistic Prayer

With the Eucharistic Prayer, we come to the second of the actions of Jesus at the Last Supper: he blesses or give thanks to God over the bread and wine.

Both the words ‘blessing’ and ‘giving thanks’ need some explanation if we are to see what they mean in this context.  Biblically, the word blessing does not mean calling down God’s blessing on something which is how we are accustomed to think of it.

Firstly, it means blessing God, that is acknowledging the blessings which God has given us and thanking him for them, while at the same time calling upon him to continue his blessings.  In every Eucharistic Prayer, we begin by thanking God for what he has given us (the Preface especially) which we conclude by acclaiming him in the “Holy, Holy”.  Then at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer, we find that we are asking God to continue and complete what he has done for us.  So, thanksgiving and intercession make the beginning and the ending of each Eucharistic Prayer.  Once God begins to bless, he never ceases to bless. 

In the central part of the Eucharistic Prayers – which we will go into in later articles – we give expression to the gift we are especially thanking him for and asking him to complete.  That gift is the death and resurrection of Jesus and our sharing in that gift by our communion with him.  That gift is the gift of Jesus’ own self to us which he makes on the cross.

We pray in the final section of the Eucharistic Prayer, that that gift will come to be shared by all. 

The Eucharistic Prayer is the real communion prayer.  What we pray in that prayer is given to us when we receive that bread and wine over which it has been prayed.

The Eucharistic Prayer is not just padding around the words of Jesus at the Last Supper (or the Consecration), the Eucharistic Prayer is descended from the blessing prayer of Jesus at the Last Supper.  There are discernible similarities between ancient Jewish prayers of blessing over bread and wine and some of the earliest examples we have of Christian Eucharistic Prayers.

By Fr Frank O’Loughlin