The Eucharistic Prayer: A Guide to Participation Sample - DO NOT DUPLICATE #1. Give God Thanks and Praise Do you remember the first prayer you ever learned? Perhaps it was: Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom Godʼs love commits me here, Ever this day be at my side, to light and guard and rule and guide. Or Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray, Thee, Lord, my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray, Thee, Lord, my soul to take. Do you notice all the personal pronouns, the ʻmyʼsʼ and ʻIʼsʼ and ʻmeʼs? We learned this and other childhood prayers at a time when we were, each of us, the center of a very small world. But, at the same time we were learning these bedtime prayers, we were also being taught to give thanks together at mealtimes: Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive, from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Our parents were teaching us to look beyond ourselves and our needs – our natural focus - and to see others. We learned about the ʻweʼ beyond the ʻI.ʼ We learned in our petitions to pray for our parents and siblings and friends. We learned to pray for people we had never met, and might never know. We learned at table to give thanks for the gifts laid out before us. We learned at table to bless. To bless a person or a thing is to acknowledge its true identity and its true source. When we bless a meal we acknowledge that it is a gift from God. We are not more deserving than the hungry people of Haiti; we simply accept our bounty as a gift, something we neither deserve nor earn. When we bless a child, we acknowledge that she is not our property, but a gift from God, from whom she came and to whom she belongs. Blessing teaches us to loosen our grip on all we believe to be ours – our families and friends, our husbands and wives, our health - and to return it to God, to whom all life belongs and from whom all life comes. Blessing teaches us to turn our eyes from ourselves and to turn them to the source of all that lives and moves and has being. Blessing teaches us to look to God for each day, whatever it may bring. Blessing, acknowledging the world as gift, leads us to thanksgiving, acknowledging the giver of the gift. Thanksgiving leads us to praise. Praise is beyond thanks for gifts given and received. Praise is a love song, a hymn to God. Like any lover gazing upon the beloved, we simply acknowledge who God is, in beauty, in wonder, in mercy, in might. We hear this hymn of praise every time we gather to celebrate the eucharist. The Preface, the opening movement of our Eucharistic Prayers, always begins with praise, Father in heaven, it is right that we should give you thanks and glory: You are the one God, living and true Through all eternity you live in unapproachable light. And ends by joining our thanks and praise to that of the angels and saints as we sing Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, Heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. We sing this praise Sunday after Sunday. We sing this praise when our children have run away from home, when our health has failed, when our houses have been foreclosed. We sing this praise at weddings and at funerals, in good times and in bad. And when our tears will not allow the words to form, the community sings Godʼs praise for us and with us, lifting us up with their praise. Sample - DO NOT DUPLICATE What we learn in praising God is what we first learned as children: Thanking God for the food on the table doesnʼt depend on the menu. We thank God for lentil soup as we thank God for beef tenderloin and chocolate cake. And we praise God not because of our circumstances, but because God is. God is: Is eternal, is strong to save, is loving, is forgiving. Because “countless hosts of angels look upon Godʼs splendor” even when we cannot see. Praise shapes our lives. Like water running over a rock, the praise of God sculpts us, forms us and turns us from a people looking in the mirror to a people looking at God and Godʼs world, at Godʼs creatures. It transforms us into a people whose very lives are a daily acknowledgement of Godʼs glory. Our tradition calls this “doxology” from the Greek meaning a word (logos) about glory (doxa). Seeing this glory, praising this glory, living and moving and having our being within this glory is the goal of all our prayer, indeed, of our very lives. This is why our highest form of prayer, the Eucharistic Prayer, always ends in doxology, Through him {Jesus Christ}, with him, in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, All glory and honor is yours, almighty Father, for ever and ever. Amen. FDLC #44680, Part 1 of 5 Authors: Andrew Ciferni and Melissa Musick Nussbaum Art: Jane Pitz © FDLC, Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions, 415 Michigan Avenue, N.E., Washington DC 20017. Web page: www.fdlc.org; email: publications@fdlc.org; voice: 202-635-6991. The Eucharistic Prayer: A Guide to Participation Sample - DO NOT DUPLICATE #2. Looking to Jesus Hereʼs what the tradition tells us about Jesusʼ conception and birth. When a pregnant Mary went out into the countryside to visit her cousin, Elizabeth, she received Elizabethʼs blessing. That is, Elizabeth recognized Mary for who she is, the god-bearer, and she recognized Maryʼs baby as the promised One of Israel. Elizabeth cried out, Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Mary responded to Elizabethʼs blessing with her own praise of God: My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; My spirit rejoices in God my savior…holy is his name. Jesus was conceived and delivered and raised in a culture of blessing and praise. He learned his first prayers as most of us did, taught by his parents. He was circumcised, according to Jewish law. He was taken to the Temple and presented to the Lord. He went with his parents to Jerusalem each year for the Passover festival. In fact, from the few biographical facts we know about Jesusʼ life, one is certain: Jesus prayed. Jesus prayed alone and with his followers. He prayed in the temple. He prayed at table with his friends. He took bread, blessing and breaking it before feeding the multitudes. He prayed before he spoke to the crowds and after he preached. He prayed before his passion and death. He walked and talked with God the Father, moment by moment, remembering by whom and for whom he was called. If we were to ask the popular evangelical question posed on t-shirts and posters, “WWJD, or, what would Jesus do?” we could honestly answer, “Pray.” Scholars argue whether the Last Supper was a Passover meal and whether our Eucharistic Prayer derives directly from first century Jewish table blessings, but no one disputes that the Jewish tradition of blessing and thanksgiving prayers at the beginning and end of Jewish meals are the foundation of the Eucharistic Prayer. Listen to this modern Jewish grace after meals: Blessed be the name of the Lord from now forevermore. Let us bless Him of whose bounty we have partaken Blessed be He of whose bounty we have partaken And through whose goodness we live. Blessed be He, blessed be His name. This hymn of praise to God, though Jewish, is familiar to Catholic ears. It would have been familiar to Jesus of Nazareth two thousand years ago. These are prayers Jesus knew by heart, from the simple blessing of the daily meal, to the expanded Passover prayers of thanks and praise for Israelʼs delivery in the Exodus. It was within the context of the Jewish table blessings that Jesus spoke at the Last Supper. Jesus inserted his own words and actions, transforming the prayer into the culmination of his teaching, a teaching fully revealed and understood only in his death and in his rising from the dead. But Jesus didnʼt only pray at the Last Supper. He presided at a meal. He ate with his followers, and commanded all of his followers, down throughout time, to share the same prayers and the same holy meal. Sample - DO NOT DUPLICATE When supper was ended, he took the cup. Again he gave you thanks and praise, gave the cup to his disciples, and said: Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is the cup of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven Do this in memory of me. We are to take of the Body of Christ that we might go out and be the Body of Christ for the world. We are to do what Jesus did: Hand over our bodies, shed our very blood, for the reconciliation of a broken world. Prayer and praise was the way Jesus lived and died in the world. Prayer and praise is the way we are to live and die in the world. Liturgical prayer is the public worship of the church, as when we gather for Mass. It is the time when all the personal moments, the daily moments of prayer and praise, are gathered into one. We hear the word of God proclaimed and preached and we come to understand that our story is part of the long, ancient story of God and of Godʼs people. We hear stories of betrayal and conflict and loss. We hear of the deaths of the righteous and the innocent. We hear in these stories the echoes of our own lives. And through it all, we hear of the faithfulness of God, the One who neither slumbers nor sleeps, but who keeps eternal watch. We lose our way, but God is the good shepherd who will not suffer a single lamb to be lost. We turn away from God, but God is the loving father, searching the road for his wandering child, ready to welcome him home. In liturgical prayer we remember: Who God is – “…holy indeed, the fountain of all holiness” - and who we are before and within the heart of God. This remembering compels us to bless, to thank and to praise the One who calls us by name: beloved daughter, beloved son. We are daughters and sons in triumph and in failure, in life and in death. Growing into that pattern – the pattern of Jesusʼ prayer and praise – brings us, through grace, to accept Godʼs will even in our own Gardens of Gethsemane. Growing into the pattern of Jesusʼ prayer and praise will bring us to be what Jesus is in and for the world: One who proclaims and enfleshes glad tidings for the poor, freedom for the captive, joy for those who mourn, and light for those who dwell in darkness. We are the people of whom the Eucharistic Prayer says From age to age you gather a people to yourself, So that from east to west A perfect offering may be made To the glory of your name. FDLC # 44680, Part 2 of 5 Authors: Andrew Ciferni and Melissa Musick Nussbaum Art: Jane Pitz © FDLC, Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions, 415 Michigan Avenue, N.E., Washington DC 20017. Web page: www.fdlc.org; email: publications@fdlc.org; voice: 202-635-6991. The Eucharistic Prayer: A Guide to Participation Sample - DO NOT DUPLICATE #3. The Shape of the Eucharistic Prayer Think back to the time you first learned the alphabet. Perhaps your parents or teachers taught you to sing the letters to the tune “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Most children sing the song over and over until they know the letters in order and by heart. Many adults, confused for a moment over just where ʻQʼ belongs, will find themselves humming the same nursery school song until they place ʻQʼ correctly between ʻPʼ and ʻR.ʼ We know what our ancestors knew. Repetition is the best way to learn. The scriptures of the Old Testament were spoken, memorized and handed orally, from one generation to the next long before they were written down. Today surgeons who perform the same operation over and over again have the lowest mortality rates. Musicians who attain professional careers are the ones who practice daily. Scientists speak of such repetitive learning as the cutting and clearing of neural pathways in the brain. It is like a clearing in the forest; the more you walk it, the easier walking becomes. Left alone and untended, the pathway will disappear, overgrown by vines and grasses. The same is true with prayer. When we first learn a new prayer or hymn, we concentrate on getting the words and rhythms right. Like hikers on an uncleared trail, we have our eyes on the ground, on the lookout for rocks and fallen branches. Weʼre afraid of tripping up. But once we learn a prayer or hymn weʼre set free. Most of us donʼt need a printed copy of the Hail Mary or the Our Father in order to pray. We can pray those familiar prayers anywhere, under any circumstances. Why? Because we have repeated them over and over again, ever since we were children. Just as repetition is the friend of learning, so is it the friend of prayer. Once we know a prayer by heart, we can stop focusing on the words and focus instead on the object of the words: the glory of God. We can lift our eyes, as the psalmist encourages, “to gaze on the Lordʼs beauty/ to visit his temple.” For some fourteen hundred years the Roman Catholic church prayed one Eucharistic Prayer. It is called the Roman Canon, “canon” meaning a “rule” or “standard.” Just as a carpenter will use a rule, or level, as a guide to measure whether a wall is true, so the church uses the canon of the Eucharistic Prayer as a guide for all our prayer, personal and communal. Since 1970 the Vatican has revised the Roman Canon and has added thirteen other Eucharistic Prayers. All of them – except the Eucharistic Prayer for Masses with Children, which is modeled after the Roman Canon – repeat an ancient pattern of eucharistic prayer that is set out in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal. This ancient pattern both shapes and expresses our relationship to God. It shapes and expresses our relationship to God in the same way requiring small children to say “Please” and “Thank you,” shapes, and expresses their relationship to other people. First, we ask them to act like grateful people, to say the words of thanks. Repetition, the habit of gratitude, helps form them in true gratitude and gives them the means to express it. So the Eucharistic Prayer becomes the rule, or standard, of our prayer and of our faith. Its pattern becomes the template for all prayer. Here is an easy memory aid to learn the pattern of the Eucharistic Prayer: You - Who - Do - Through. You – We begin by naming God, the “You” upon whom we call. When Jesus prayed, he called God “Father,” and in the Eucharistic Prayer, so do we: Father, it is our duty and our salvation, Always and everywhere To give you thanks… Sample - DO NOT DUPLICATE Who – We remember an act or quality of God; we remember who God is. When Jesus spoke of God as father, he spoke of one who protects and guides his own, of one who would lay down his life before allowing harm to those in his care. In the Eucharistic Prayer we remember that Time and again we broke your covenant but you did not abandon us. Instead, through your Son, Jesus the Lord, you bound yourself ever more closely to the human family by a bond that can never be broken. (Preface, Eucharistic Prayer 1 for Reconciliation) Do – Jesus laid down his life for us; he acted. God is at work in the world, acting on behalf of all. Knowing how God has acted throughout human history – bringing the Jews out of slavery in Egypt, sending Jesus to reveal the depth of the Fatherʼs love – we have the courage to bring our needs before God. We have the courage to ask that God will stand for us and with us, that we will not stand alone. In the Eucharistic prayer we proclaim Father, hear the prayers of the family you have gathered here before you. In mercy and love unite all your children wherever they may be. Through – Jesus comes to earth to reveal the nature of God. He says, “If you know me, then you will also know my Father.” (Jn 14:7) We come to the throne of Godʼs mercy through Christ and in the Holy Spirit. All prayer acknowledges the communion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and the Church. Grant this through our Lord, Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, One God, for ever and ever. Amen. FDLC # 44680, Part 3 of 5 Authors: Andrew Ciferni and Melissa Musick Nussbaum Art: Jane Pitz © FDLC, Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions, 415 Michigan Avenue, N.E., Washington DC 20017. Web page: www.fdlc.org; email: publications@fdlc.org; voice: 202-635-6991. The Eucharistic Prayer: A Guide to Participation Sample - DO NOT DUPLICATE #4. Praying or Making Lists? Multi-tasking is one of the words that define our age. It is a valued skill. The person who can take a phone call while checking e-mail and signing letters is top management material. The woman who can dice vegetables while holding an infant and doing a series of stomach tightening exercises is considered a super-mom. We admire the jogger who times his walk so that he can listen to NPR as he burns up calories. The old notion of “killing two birds with one stone” now seems quaint. Weʼre after the whole flock. There are a few activities which resist multi-tasking. Married couples will tell you that trying to – say – fold sheets while making love results in wrinkled laundry and bad sex. Shoving a meal down oneʼs throat kills table conversation and brings on heartburn and indigestion. Listening to a childʼs tearful tale of humiliation on the playground while surfing the internet lessens the chance he will ever tell you anything of consequence again. And babies being fed stare into the motherʼs or fatherʼs eyes with such intensity and curiosity as to demand a long, care-filled look in return. There are certain threads connecting these moments, for they involve times of human communion, sharing stories, sharing meals, sharing our very flesh. Consider our gathering for Mass. We come to hear the stories of Godʼs faithfulness told again and again. We come to share a feast laid before us by God. We come to eat and drink of the very flesh – the body and the blood – of Christ. These are moments which require attention. To do it right, to do it well, we have to be there. Not there and somewhere else, as multi-tasking requires, but there, fully present, fully active, fully conscious. It is one thing to speak of the Eucharistic Prayer as the canon, the “standard” or “rule” of our prayer and faith. It is quite another to live with the Eucharistic Prayer as the canon of our lives. But it is precisely that eucharistic way of life to which we are called. Such a life takes practice, and that is, in part, what we do every time we gather for Mass: We practice living the life of a baptized Christian. Part of the practice involves being present: Turning off the cell phone, leaving the morning paper behind, putting away the list of to-doʼs, entering one of the few spaces as yet untouched by television, radio, or the computer and turning oneʼs whole self to the work at hand. We sing together; we pray together; together we confess our sins. We sit quietly and listen to the long, long story of our faith. We bring our gifts to the altar. It all prepares the assembly for this momentous exchange. The priest exhorts us, “Lift up your hearts.” It is not a suggestion, nor is it a request. We are told, commanded, to lift up our hearts. And this is no easy or light command. In a world in which children die and spouses leave and cells turn malignant, we are told to lift up our hearts. If nothing else, such a call should command our complete attention. Lift up our hearts. Why? Because our eyes opened on this day. Because we are welcome here, in this church, at this altar. Many of us can lift our hearts for gifts beyond number: Health and friends, husbands and wives, children, good work, peace, homes and gardens. But we can also consciously lift up every loss, every longing, every burden, every pain. Why? Because God is. Mountains crumble, seas dry, we wither and die, but God, the faithful shepherd, is. We are never abandoned. And it is right, always and everywhere, give God thanks and praise. So we respond, often through tears, “We lift them up to the Lord.” This act of attending in thankfulness at the beginning of the Eucharistic Prayer is essential to our attention throughout. The priestʼs words are an invitation to follow, and in following, in saying, “Here is my heart, Lord,” we enter a doorway that leads us ever deeper into the rest of the prayer. It leads us into the holy work of remembering: Who God is, what God does. This, in turn, leads us into the holy work of praise. Like a symphony or a play, one movement, one act leads to the next. So the hymn to God calls for us to sing a hymn in reply. Like the angels who gathered above Bethlehem on the night Jesus was born, we sing Sample - DO NOT DUPLICATE Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might. Heaven and earth are full of your glory, Hosanna in the highest. The acclamation after the consecration is another call to attentiveness. We are bidden to offer our gifts to God. What gifts? Only those God has first given us, and they can only be given, lifted up, to God, in union with this memorial of Christʼs death, and through Christ, who sits now at Godʼs right hand. We are to become “an everlasting gift to you (God),” but only God can make it so. Multi-tasking is the work of breaking every act down into manageable bits: Iʼll check on my e-mail while I take this call; stir this pot with one hand while I scrub the burner with the other. But the Eucharistic Prayer so bids us to presence that we can begin to see what many cannot: The cloud of witnesses who surround us. We do not make this prayer alone. We do not make this prayer only with those we can touch. We make this prayer with the whole Church, both living and dead, Godʼs “pilgrim church,” all Godʼs children “wherever they may be.” We make this prayer with the dead whose faith is known to us and “those whose faith is known to God alone.” We make this prayer with “Mary, the virgin Mother of God; with the apostles, the martyrs, and all your saints, on whose constant intercession we rely for help.” Some parishes have taken the clocks from the walls, banned missalettes and even declined to hand out bulletins until after Mass. Why? Because itʼs hard for Americans to be still, to be present to one moment and one moment only. We are like parents hurrying a two-year old along on a walk. For the adult who will stop and see every shiny rock on the path and every flower pushing its way up through the asphalt, treasures await. Indeed, treasures abound. We just have to be there when it happens. FDLC #44680, Part 4 of 5 Authors: Andrew Ciferni and Melissa Musick Nussbaum Art: Jane Pitz © FDLC, Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions, 415 Michigan Avenue, N.E., Washington DC 20017. Web page: www.fdlc.org; email: publications@fdlc.org; voice: 202-635-6991. The Eucharistic Prayer: A Guide to Participation Sample - DO NOT DUPLICATE #5. From Prayer to Prayer Most of us have complaints about Mass. We donʼt like the music or the preaching or the sound system. Weʼre angered by the inattention of the altar servers or the mistakes of the lectors. But the first question any of us needs to ask when we complain is this, “What did we bring to the celebration?” Was this morning the first time we had ever heard the readings? The first time we learned that it was Pentecost? Have we come to the well but forgotten to bring a bucket? Then, of course, weʼll come away empty-handed, but not because there wasnʼt abundant water to be drawn. Imagine an assembly that had come together on Sunday morning soaked in the scriptures. Imagine families reading the gospel around the table and discussing it. Study is rarely so effective as when one has to teach what has been learned. If you can explain scripture to children, chances are you have learned it well. Imagine men and women reading the epistle, perhaps going to read a history of the church in Corinth or an explanation of Paulʼs missionary journeys. Imagine an assembly meditating all through the week on the words of the psalm. That would be a people ready to sing out the refrain, a people ready to hear the Word proclaimed and broken open in their sight and in their hearing. We expect such careful preparation from the homilist and the musicians, from the lectors and the cantors, but not from ourselves. Some Catholics mistakenly speak of themselves as the “audience,” as though we are spectators at a weekly production of the Holy Name Society Players. In fact, the Mass calls us all – lay and ordained - to “full, active, conscious participation.” True listening is full, active and conscious. (Think of the best listeners you know; listening is an art.) The silence of prayer is full, active and conscious. Singing, processing, interceding for the world, taking into our hands and into our bodies the Body and Blood of Christ, going out into the world to be the Body of Christ demands our full, active and conscious participation. How can we begin to become such Catholics? Lectio Divina (prayerful reading) is an ancient way of reading biblical or liturgical texts that is especially helpful in preparing for the liturgy. We read for information – the Who, Where and When of journalism – but Lectio Divina is reading for formation. How can we read in such a way as to become people of prayer and praise? Lectio Divina seems to have begun with the desert fathers of the fourth century church. Stories abound of their experiences with Godʼs word. The story is told of Abba Pambo that a brother came, asking him to teach a psalm. Pambo begin to teach Psalm 38. But hardly had he pronounced the first verse: I said, ʻI will be watchful of my ways, for fear I should sin with my tongue…ʼ when the brother stopped him. He wanted to hear no more. He told Pambo, “That verse is enough for me. Please God I may have the strength to learn it and to put it into practice.” The story says that nineteen years later the brother was still trying to live that verse. Someone asked Abba Abraham, who was famed as a scribe as well as a teacher, to copy Psalm 33. Abba Abraham copied only verse fifteen: Turn away from evil and do good; seek after peace and pursue it. He turned to the brother and said, “Put this into practice first, and then I will write the rest.” We have no idea if the brother got the rest of the psalm. Or if he needed it. Lectio Divina begins in silence. When one is still, in mind and body, read the biblical or liturgical text. Read it slowly, carefully. Allow an engaging phrase or word to capture your attention. What does it mean, for example, “to pursue peace”? Sit with those words. Repeat the word or phrase over and over again. Speak in time with your slow breathing. Then attend to the prayer that rises from the prayer. Sample - DO NOT DUPLICATE Or take a phrase from the Eucharistic Prayer for your Lectio Divina. You might begin with the whole prayer, which could be read in five or ten minutes, while riding the bus or the commuter train, before eating breakfast or during a lunch break. Do that for several days in a row, to learn the flow and rhythm of the prayer. Then take a particular section, say, the section on prayers for the dead. Then take a phrase, perhaps, “whose faith is known to you alone.” What can it mean that God knows each of us by name? That God knows the heart of each man and woman, even those who seem to us to be cut off from Godʼs love? Psychologists tell us that the primary emotional need of adolescence and adulthood is intimacy, to be known and loved as and for who we are. A God who knows the faith of those who never evidenced faith is One who is intimate with his creation, and with us. Now imagine that after some time spent practicing Lectio Divina you pick up the paper and read that one of our nationʼs enemies has been killed in a military raid, or that a criminal has been executed. Or you hear of a family member who has so offended the family as to be shunned. One need not ignore or excuse the crime or offense to remember that we do not know the hearts of all, that there are those “whose faith is known to God alone,” We bring this renewed understanding to Mass. We bring all the living and dead before God, even those we had judged condemned. We stand in wonder before the prayer that asks, “In mercy and love unite all your children wherever they may be.” Now imagine an entire parish preparing for the liturgy in this manner. Imagine how the deepening of prayer might infect the entire assembly, from the people in the pews to the people at the altar. A people who carry the words of scripture and prayer around with them - as they lie in bed, as they wake, as they dress for the day, as they bless the food before them, as they leave the house for jobs and school, as they attend to their work – this is a people for whom prayer and praise is not a nice custom, to be pulled out when the need arises. This is a people for whom prayer and praise is a way of life, as much a part of them as the need to eat or sleep. This is a fully human people, living as God created us to live, in fellowship, in company with God. FDLC # 44680, Part 5 of 5 Authors: Andrew Ciferni and Melissa Musick Nussbaum Art: Jane Pitz © FDLC, Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions, 415 Michigan Avenue, N.E., Washington DC 20017. Web page: www.fdlc.org; email: publications@fdlc.org; voice: 202-635-6991.
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