The Epiclesis and the Consecration

The invocation of the Holy Spirit — the epiclesis — is the consummation of the Byzantine anaphora: “send down thy Holy Spirit upon us and upon these gifts… and make this bread the precious Body of thy Christ.” This file treats the epiclesis and the great East–West debate over the moment of consecration — the Spirit’s invocation as the East holds, or the words of institution as the Latin West traditionally held — presenting both sides, naming the proponents, and adjudicating neither (§4).

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Epiclesis in the Byzantine Anaphora

After the anamnesis and the offering “Thine own of Thine own” (the Eucharistic prayer), the anaphora rises to its climax in the epiclesis (Greek epiklēsis, “calling-upon”), the explicit invocation of the Holy Spirit upon the assembly and the gifts. In the Chrysostom anaphora the priest prays: “Again we offer unto thee this reasonable and bloodless service, and we ask thee, and pray thee, and supplicate thee: send down thy Holy Spirit upon us and upon these gifts here set forth” — and then, blessing the gifts: “And make this bread the precious Body of thy Christ… And that which is in this cup, the precious Blood of thy Christ… changing them by thy Holy Spirit” (Greek metabalōn tō Pneumati sou tō Hagiō), the people answering “Amen, Amen, Amen” (Anaphora of St. John Chrysostom; Hapgood, Service Book). The Basil anaphora has an equivalent, fuller invocation, asking the Spirit to come and “bless… and sanctify and show” the gifts to be the Body and Blood (Anaphora of St. Basil the Great). The verb metaballein, “to change,” gives the Byzantine tradition its ordinary name for what happens to the gifts — the metabolē, the “change” — a term the Orthodox prefer to the scholastic “transubstantiation” precisely because it names the reality of the change without binding it to a particular philosophical explanation (see The Holy Mysteries: The Mystery of the Body and Blood; Ware, The Orthodox Church, Penguin, 1993, Part II).

The epiclesis is ancient and central to the Eastern anaphoral tradition; St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in the later fourth century, already teaches it plainly to the newly baptized: “we call upon God to send forth his Holy Spirit upon the gifts lying before him, that he may make the bread the Body of Christ and the wine the Blood of Christ; for whatsoever the Holy Spirit has touched is surely sanctified and changed” (Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catechesis 5.7; trans. NPNF, Second Series, vol. 7). The whole logic of the Byzantine anaphora points to this invocation as the moment in which the Church, having given thanks, remembered the Lord’s command, and made the offering, asks the Father to accomplish the mystery by the descent of the Spirit — the same Spirit who overshadowed the Virgin at the Incarnation now overshadowing the gifts (Germanus, On the Divine Liturgy, trans. Paul Meyendorff, SVS Press, 1984; Schmemann, The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom, SVS Press, 1988, ch. 11, “The Sacrament of the Holy Spirit”).

The Orthodox Understanding: The Whole Anaphora, Consummated in the Epiclesis

Orthodox theology, properly stated, does not locate the consecration in an isolated instant. The change of the gifts is accomplished by the whole Eucharistic prayer — thanksgiving, institution narrative, anamnesis, and epiclesis together — as a single unbroken action of the Church in the Spirit. Within that unity, however, the Orthodox tradition understands the epiclesis as the culminating and consummating element, the point at which the prayer explicitly asks and receives the Spirit’s transforming act (Schmemann, The Eucharist, 1988, ch. 11; hub essay, Orthodoxy: The Divine Liturgy). This guards against two errors at once: against reducing the consecration to a formula of “magic words,” and against detaching the Lord’s institution from the Spirit’s fulfilment of it. The gifts are consecrated because the Father, invoked by the Church, sends the Spirit to make present the Body and Blood of the Son — a Trinitarian act, not a priestly incantation (Schmemann, The Eucharist, 1988, ch. 11; Cabasilas, A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy, trans. Hussey and McNulty, SPCK, 1960, chs. 27–30).

The East–West Debate: Both Sides

The question became a point of controversy between East and West in the later Middle Ages and after, and it remains a classic dividing-line in eucharistic theology. Per METHODOLOGY §4 it is presented here from both sides, with proponents named and no verdict rendered.

[Disputed: whether the gifts are consecrated by the words of institution or by the epiclesis (the invocation of the Holy Spirit). (a) The Latin/Western position, classically formulated in Scholastic theology, holds that the gifts are consecrated by Christ’s own words of institution spoken by the priest — “This is my Body… This is my Blood” — which, as the very words of the Lord, effect what they signify; the consecration is thus complete at the verba (so Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 78, that the words of Christ effect the consecration; the position embedded in the medieval and Tridentine Latin theology of the Mass). (b) The Byzantine/Orthodox position holds that, while the Lord’s words are essential and are recited, the consecration is consummated by the epiclesis, the invocation of the Holy Spirit upon the gifts; the whole anaphora consecrates, but its decisive moment is the calling-down of the Spirit. This was argued explicitly and at length by St. Nicholas Cabasilas in the fourteenth century, expressly against the Latin objection that the epiclesis is superfluous once the Lord’s words have been said (Cabasilas, Commentary, chs. 29–30, defending the necessity and efficacy of the epiclesis); it is the standard teaching of the Orthodox mystagogues and of modern Orthodox theology (Schmemann, The Eucharist, 1988, ch. 11; Ware, The Orthodox Church, 1993). No Ecumenical Council has defined a “moment” of consecration, and each tradition preserved the practice its own anaphoras embody. This compendium reports the two positions and adjudicates neither.]

Modern Convergences and a Decisive Datum

Twentieth-century liturgical scholarship, East and West, has considerably softened the old polemic by recovering the sense that the entire Eucharistic prayer is consecratory and that the “moment” question is itself a somewhat artificial, late-medieval framing. Fr. Alexander Schmemann and Robert Taft both resisted the reduction of the mystery to a debate over the instant of change, insisting that the whole anaphora, offered by the whole Church, effects the whole mystery (Schmemann, The Eucharist, 1988, ch. 11; Taft, The Byzantine Rite, Liturgical Press, 1992). Significantly, the reformed Roman eucharistic prayers of the twentieth century restored a clear epiclesis of the Spirit to the Latin Mass, narrowing the practical difference (Bradshaw and Johnson, The Eucharistic Liturgies, Liturgical Press, 2012).

One historical datum bears decisively on the whole debate: the ancient Anaphora of Addai and Mari, still used by the Assyrian Church of the East, contains in its traditional form no explicit institution narrative at all (from the Upper Room to the Byzantine rite; Gelston, The Eucharistic Prayer of Addai and Mari, Oxford, 1992). In 2001 the Roman Catholic Church, through the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity with the approval of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formally recognized this anaphora as valid and effecting a true Eucharist despite the absence of the words of institution (“Guidelines for Admission to the Eucharist between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the East,” 2001). This recognition — that a Eucharist can be effected by an anaphora lacking the verba — implicitly concedes that the consecration cannot depend on the recitation of the institution narrative alone, and thus that the Eastern instinct locating the mystery in the whole prayer and its invocation of the Spirit has strong warrant. The datum does not “settle” the medieval dispute, which was framed within the assumption that the verba were present; but it shows how far the recovery of the ancient anaphoral tradition has qualified the old certainties on both sides (Bradshaw and Johnson, The Eucharistic Liturgies, 2012).

After the Epiclesis

Once the epiclesis is completed and the gifts confessed to be the Body and Blood, the priest continues with the intercessions and commemorations: “that they may be to those who partake for the purification of soul, for the remission of sins, for the communion of thy Holy Spirit”; and then the naming of the whole Church — “especially our most holy, most pure, most blessed, and glorious Lady, the Theotokos and ever-virgin Mary,” at which the people sing “It is truly meet” (Axion estin) or, in the Basil Liturgy, “All of creation rejoices in thee” (Epi soi chairei); and the commemoration of the saints, the departed, the bishop, and all the living (Anaphora of St. John Chrysostom; hub essay). The anaphora closes with a doxology and the people’s “Amen,” and the Liturgy moves toward Holy Communion (Holy Communion: the preparation and the Lord’s Prayer).

References

Cyril of Jerusalem. Mystagogical Catechesis 5.7. Trans. NPNF, Second Series, vol. 7. (The epiclesis: the Spirit invoked to change the gifts.)
Cabasilas, Nicholas. A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy. Trans. Hussey and McNulty. London: SPCK, 1960. (Chs. 29–30: the defense of the epiclesis against the Latin objection.)
Schmemann, Alexander. The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1988. (Ch. 11: the sacrament of the Holy Spirit; the whole anaphora consecratory.)
Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae III, q. 78 (the words of Christ effect the consecration). Trans. English Dominican Province.
Taft, Robert F. The Byzantine Rite: A Short History. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992. (The “moment” question as a late framing.)
Bradshaw, Paul F., and Maxwell E. Johnson. The Eucharistic Liturgies. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012. (The restored Roman epiclesis; the Addai and Mari recognition.)
Gelston, Anthony. The Eucharistic Prayer of Addai and Mari. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. (The anaphora without an institution narrative.)
Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. “Guidelines for Admission to the Eucharist between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the East.” Rome, 2001. (The recognition of Addai and Mari.)
Ware, Kallistos. The Orthodox Church. New ed. London: Penguin, 1993. (Metabolē and the Orthodox reserve toward “transubstantiation.”)
The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and of St. Basil the Great (euchologion; Eng. in Hapgood, Service Book).