How to Pray

Session 3: Praying the Eucharist

How do you experience God in the Holy Eucharist?

Why should receiving the Eucharist be a part of the life of every Christian?

“I have never, not once, felt anything at the Eucharist.  Not a thing.  I have never felt stirred, or joyful, or peaceful, or sad.  I have never felt closeness.  I have never felt God at the communion rail.  Steven once said that after receiving communion, he felt woozy, as if he’d drunk two bottles of magic wine, not just one tiny sip; but I have never felt woozy.

I keep hoping one day God will give me some feeling at communion.  In the meantime, I figure he is helping me become something else.  He is calling me to know Him in the Eucharist even though I don’t feel him there.  He is calling me to a place where he is truer than everything else, truer even than how I feel.”  Lauren Winner, Girl Meets God, p. 181

“The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?  Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.”  I Corinthians 10:16-17

The Eucharist should be at the center of the Christian life-the root of true spirituality

• The Eucharist is specifically commanded by Christ as an ongoing means of worshipping God and of partaking of the mystery of salvation (Matt. 26:26-28, Mk. 14:22-24, Lk. 22:17-20)
• The Eucharist is a direct encounter with Christ, a “participation in His Body,” fellowship at the deepest aspect of our existence.  Form of prayer especially focused on the Incarnate Son. 
• The Eucharist is anamnesis-a memorial re-presentation of Christ’s saving death.  It makes real again Christ’s death, resurrection and ascension, so that we can partake in the gifts they bring
• The Eucharist is corporate-it unites us with other Christians and defines the Church (c.f. Gregory Dix below)-makes “the holy common people of God’

I. Preparing for the Eucharist

I Corinthians 12:18-34

“But in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse.

For, in the first place, when you assemble as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you; and I partly believe it, for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.  When you meet together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat.  For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal, and one is hungry and another is drunk.  What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not.

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”  In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”  For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.  For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself.  That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.  But if we judged ourselves truly, we should not be judged.  But when we are judged by the Lord, we are chastened so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

So then, my brethren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another — if any one is hungry, let him eat at home — lest you come together to be condemned. About the other things I will give directions when I come.”

1. What is the problem with the way the Eucharist is celebrated in the Corinthian Church?
2. What do you think Paul means by “eating the bread or drinking the cup in an unworthy manner?”  What does he mean by “discerning the body?”
3. What prayers and actions in the Communion ritual help us to discern the body and partake worthily of the Sacrament?

Prepare by confessing our sin-admit our need for God’s forgiveness and grace

• The General Confession in the liturgy is important-bring to mind specific sins in the time of silence, say the words mindfully
• Self-examination-reviewing the spiritual and moral life for signs of need and growth-tracts helpful, also Exhortation (BCP  316-317)
• Private confession and/or sacramental confession, especially when a sin is particularly troubling to the conscience

“In love and charity with your neighbor“-we should be reconciled to all

• The Peace-a time to share in a sign of reconciliation
• Keeps Communion from becoming solely an act of personal spirituality

“Desiring to lead a new life”-every communion is an act of recommitment to the Christian way-says I desire to follow Christ, to live for Him

• The Liturgy of the Word-proclaims the Gospel message in Scripture and Homily, response in Creed, Prayers, Offering-this pattern of response to Jesus meets its climax in receiving the Eucharist

• Psalms of Preparation (84, 85, 130) describe the longing for union with God and growth in the spiritual life
• Devotional Prayers-like those found in St. Augustine’s Prayer Book (SAPB 86-100), emphasize the need for God’s help in this new life-prayer to the Holy Spirit. 
• Eucharistic Fast: a fast of at least an hour before receiving communion is traditional in Eastern and Western Christianity-physical expression of our hunger for union with God

II.  Adoring Christ in the Eucharist

“Word made Flesh, by Word He maketh
     very bread his flesh to be;
Man in wine Christ’s Blood partaketh,
     And if senses fail to see,
Faith alone the true heart waketh
     To behold the mystery.”

Pange lingua gloriosi, by Thomas Aquinas, Trans. John Mason Neale

• Christ becomes truly present, so that we may find deep and sustaining communion with Him
• Sanctus Bells/Elevation: Draw our attention to the miracle of Christ’s Presence-traditional to say “my Lord and my God.”  (John 20:28) as an adoring declaration of faith.  May also make the sign of the Cross.
• Reverent Approach to Communion: bow or genuflect when facing the Altar, make the sign of the Cross before receiving-these gestures emphasize the holiness of the moment and help to prompt our devotion
• During Communion, focus attention on Christ’s death and resurrection, offer simple prayers of love and thankfulness
• A Eucharistic Hymn can be read or recited as a profession of faith and adoration after Communion-esp. Salutaris hostia (Hymnal 310) Tantum ergo (Hymnal 330) or Anima Christi (St. Augustine’s Prayer Book 106)
• Eucharistic Devotion Outside Mass: special times of adoration before the Blessed Sacrament (e.g. at the Night Watch on Maundy Thursday) can help increase our thankfulness for the Eucharist and for the fellowship with Christ we find in it.  Devotions like Eucharistic Adoration and Benediction focus on the worship of Christ in His Body and Blood, a supplement not a replacement for regular communion.

Eucharist and Fellowship with the Church

• In the Eucharist, we are united with all of Christ’s Body (I Cor. 10:17) “with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven” in praise of God for His works.  Our prayer is always corporate: “Our Father who art in heaven,” “we lift them up to the Lord,” “have mercy upon us,” etc. 
• The offering of Bread and Wine [and of “ourselves, our souls and bodies] by the priest and people is united with Christ’s own offering of Himself before the Father in Heaven-our prayers are joined with His and the prayers of all His Body (‘unite us to your Son in His sacrifice, that we may be acceptable through him” Prayer B, BCP p. 369)
• Eucharistic Intentions: one can offer powerful and concentrated intercession for a person or cause by bringing that prayer to the Eucharist, praising God and receiving Communion for that person or intention  A Declaration of Intention is a formal way of stating that request (SAPB 99).
• Remembering the Departed or those far away: the Eucharist can be a special time of fellowship through Christ with those who have died in faith, who share in the same act of praise and fellowship with Christ.  You can remember before God loved ones during the Communion, especially at the anniversary of death.
• You can ask a priest to offer a Eucharist for a particular cause.  He sends out a card to the person for whom the Eucharist was offered, explaining the community’s special prayers on their behalf. 

Eucharist and Thanksgiving

• Eucharist means “thanksgiving” and the entire act is one of praise and thanksgiving for God’s work of salvation in Christ (c.f. the Preface and Sanctus, Prayer of Thanksgiving after Communion).  Chanting helps encourage sense of celebration
• Special Prayers and Acts of Thanksgiving are important after Communion.  These praise God for this special opportunity of fellowship.  Canticles like Benedicite (BCP 47) and Te Deum Laudamus (BCP 52) are helpful, can be memorized, also c.f. SAPB 100-108
• Particular Resolutions: Christians live our thanksgiving (”assist us with thy grace, that we may continue in that holy fellowship, and do all good works as thou hast prepared us to walk in” BCP 339).  A special resolution about one thing to change in life or a practice to sustain may be made after each Communion.

Gregory Dix, from The Shape of the Liturgy

“Was ever another command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacle of earthly greatness to the refuge of fugitives in the caves and dens of the earth. Men have found no better thing than this to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold; for armies in triumph or for a bride and bridegroom in a little country church; for the proclamation of a dogma or for a good crop of wheat; for the wisdom of the Parliament of a mighty nation or for a sick old woman afraid to die; for a schoolboy sitting an examination or for Columbus setting out to discover America; for the famine of whole provinces or for the soul of a dead lover; in thankfulness because my father did not die of pneumonia; for a village headman much tempted to return to fetish because the yams had failed; because the Turk was at the gates of Vienna; for the repentance of Margaret; for the settlement of a strike; for a son for a barren woman; for Captain so-and-so wounded and prisoner of war; while the lions roared in the nearby amphitheatre; on the beach at Dunkirk; while the hiss of scythes in the thick June grass came faintly through the windows of the church; tremulously, by an old monk on the fiftieth anniversary of his vows; furtively, by an exiled bishop who had hewn timber all day in a prison camp near Murmansk; gorgeously, for the canonisation of S. Joan of Arc-one could fill many pages with the reasons why men have done this, and not tell a hundredth part of them. And best of all, week by week and month by month, on a hundred thousand successive Sundays, faithfully, unfailingly, across all the parishes of Christendom, the pastors have done this just to make the plebs sancta Dei-the holy common people of God.
To those who know a little of Christian history probably the most moving of all the reflections it brings is not the thought of the great events and the well-remembered saints, but of those innumerable millions of entirely obscure faithful men and women, every one with his or her own individual hopes and fears and joys and sorrows and loves-and sins and temptations and prayers-once every whit as vivid and alive as mine are now. They have left no slightest trace in this world, not even a name, but have passed to God utterly forgotten by men. Yet each of them once believed and prayed as I believe and pray, and found it hard and grew slack and sinned and repented and fell again. Each of them worshipped at the Eucharist, and found their thoughts wandering and tried again, and felt heavy and unresponsive and yet knew-just as really and pathetically as I do these things. There is a little ill-spelled ill-carved rustic epitaph of the fourth century from Asia Minor:-‘Here sleeps the blessed Chione, who has found Jerusalem for she prayed much’. Not another word is known of Chione, some peasant woman who lived in that vanished world of Christian Anatolia. But how lovely if all that should survive after sixteen centuries were that one had prayed much, so that the neighbours who saw all one’s life were sure one must have found Jerusalem! What did the Sunday Eucharist in her village church every week for a life-time mean to the blessed Chione-and to the millions like her then, and every year since? The sheer stupendous quantity of the love of God which this ever repeated action has drawn from the obscure Christian multitudes through the centuries is in itself an overwhelming thought. (All that going with one to the altar every morning!)
It is because it became embedded deep down in the life of the Christian peoples, colouring all the via vitae [ways of life] of the ordinary man and woman, marking its personal turning-points, marriage, sickness, death and the rest, running through it year by year with the feasts and fasts and the rhythm of the Sundays, that the eucharistic action became inextricably woven into the public history of the Western world. The thought of it is inseparable from its great turning-points also. Pope Leo doing this in the morning before he went out to daunt Attila, on the day that saw the continuity of Europe saved; and another Leo doing this three and a half centuries later when he crowned Charlemagne Roman Emperor, on the day that saw that continuity fulfilled. Or again Alfred wandering defeated by the Danes staying his soul on this, while mediaeval England struggled to be born; and Charles I also, on that morning of his execution when mediaeval England came to its final end. Such things strike the mind with their suggestions of a certain timelessness about the eucharistic action and an independence of its setting, in keeping with the stability in an ever-changing world of the forms of the liturgy themselves.

At Constantinople they ‘do this’ yet with the identical words and gestures that they used while the silver trumpets of the Basileus still called across the Bosphorus, in what seems to us now the strange fairy-tale land of the Byzantine empire. In this twentieth century Charles de Foucauld in his hermitage in the Sahara ‘did this’ with the same rite as Cuthbert twelve centuries before in his hermitage on Lindisfarne in the Northern seas. This very morning I did this with a set of texts which has not changed by more than a few syllables since Augustine used those very words at Canterbury on the third Sunday of Easter in the summer after he landed. Yet ‘this’ can still take hold of a man’s life and work with it.”

Resources for Praying the Eucharist

Saint Augustine’s Prayer Book.  West Park: Holy Cross Publications, 1993.  Can Order from All Saints Convent (410-747-4104)

In Saint Paul’s Library

Baycroft, John.  The Eucharistic Way.  Toronto: Anglican Book Center, 1981.  Call # 203B

Dobson, Theodore.  Say But the Word.  New York: Paulist, 1984.  Call # 205.1

Heffner, Christine.  Intercession: The Greatest Service.  West Park: Holy Cross, 1967.  Chapter 4.  Call # 205.1 H

Howard, Thomas.  The Liturgy Explained.  Wilton: Morehouse-Barlow, 1981.  Call # 203H

Parsons, Donald.  Holy Eucharist Rite II: A Devotional Commentary.  New York: Seabury, 1980.  Call # 203 P

Wright, J. Robert.  Ed.  Prayer Book Spirituality.  New York: The Church Hymnal Corp., 1989.  Chapter 7.  Call # 203 W.