EPICLESI. — According to its etymology, the word e. (in Greek: ἐκλένησις, from ἐκτι-καλῶς, “I call,” instead) means “invocation, prayer”; generically: “deprecatory formula.”
I. NOTION OF THE E
In the ritual of all the Churches, especially in the Rituale Sacramentorum, there are many e. or invocations. Thus there are baptismal, Eucharistic, penitential e., etc. From the sixteenth century, however, down to our own day, when one speaks of e., or rather of the e., one means a specific Eucharistic e. which, in the Ordinary of the Mass of almost all the Eastern rites and of several Western rites (Mozarabic, Gallican, etc.), immediately follows the narrative of the institution of the Eucharist: by means of it, the celebrant beseeches God the Father to send the Holy Spirit upon those present and upon the oblations placed on the altar, so that he may transform the bread into the Body and the wine into the Blood of Christ and render the sacrifice salutary for the faithful and for the Church in general. In brief: the e., as it has been understood by theologians for several centuries, is the supplication that the Holy Spirit intervene to effect the transubstantiation and the sanctification of the faithful, a supplication made after the words of the Lord: «This is my Body, this is my Blood».It is significant that in almost all liturgies for Masses, the prayer for the sanctification of the faithful is joined to that for the transubstantiation, just as the Father is asked to send his Spirit first upon the faithful and then upon the oblations. Many authors, in fact, pay no attention to this twofold object of the e. and focus exclusively on the prayer for the transubstantiation. The e. thus expressed is commonly called the e. of the Holy Spirit, a highly improper expression, because the celebrant’s prayer is not directed to the Holy Spirit but to the Father. It would therefore be more logical to call it the e. of the Father. On the other hand, in many Eastern Masses, the e. is directed not to the Father but to the Son, that is, to the Word. To find an e. directed to the Holy Spirit, one must turn to the Mozarabic Liber Sacramentorum, which also contains e. directed to the whole Trinity.
Here is transcribed, as an example, the e. taken from the Byzantine Mass ascribed to s. John Chrysostom. The celebrant, bowing his head, says in a low voice: «We ask You, we pray You, we beseech You: send Your Holy Spirit upon us and upon the oblations here present, and make this bread the precious Body of Your Christ and what is in the Chalice the precious Blood of Your Christ, transforming them by Your Spirit, so that they may become, for the faithful who receive them, purification of the soul, remission of sins, realization of the Kingdom of heaven, a pledge of confidence before You, and not judgment or condemnation».
The modern meaning of the term e., when used with the definite article (= the e.), does not correspond to the e. to which the Greek Fathers commonly refer. For them, the e. without further qualification, ἐκλένησις, denotes the Eucharistic prayer in general, that is, what we call the Canon of the Mass (including the Preface) and the Greeks call the Anaphora. The Lord’s words and the e. of modern usage both belong to the Canon and the Anaphora as parts of the whole. Hence all the confusions and misunderstandings into which many authors fall.
II. THE E. AND THE S. — It is a truly arbitrary usage, established in modern times, to use the term e. to indicate exclusively the consecratory and, at the same time, intercessory invocation just discussed. The origin of this abuse is to be sought in the controversy that arose between Greeks and Latins in the fourteenth century concerning the form of the Eucharist. The Latins were astonished that the Greeks, in their liturgy, requested the consecration of the offerings after the words of the Lord. CABASILAS, NICOLA (v.), first, and then Simeon of Thessalonica (d. in 1429) and Mark of Ephesus (d. in 1444), in arguing against the Latins, devised an unprecedented theory concerning the form of the Eucharist, according to which the Consecration takes place not at the moment when the priest says in persona Christi: «This is my Body, this is my Blood», but when he asks the Father to send the Holy Spirit upon the faithful and upon the offerings in order to accomplish the transubstantiation.
The words of the Lord, however, are not useless: they are the conditio sine qua non for the e. that follows to have its efficacy. Neither Greeks nor Latins noticed that in their own liturgies, as well as in the other Eastern and Western Masses, there were not one but several e. and invocations. Considered according to their object, these e. can be divided into two categories: strictly intercessory e.—by which graces for sanctification are requested—and consecratory e., by which the transformation of the offerings into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ is requested. If one considers the place they occupy in the liturgical text, the e. may be called antecedent and subsequent, according as they come before or after the words of the Lord. Now, surveying the various liturgies, one realizes precisely that in one and the same Mass there are not only many intercessory e., antecedent or subsequent, but also many consecratory e., likewise antecedent and subsequent. Why, then, use the word e. to indicate exclusively the subsequent consecratory e.? Consider, for example, the Byzantine Mass of s. John Chrysostom, as it was used until the end of the eighth century, according to Codex Burbertii 336. Already at the beginning of the Mass, the following consecratory e. addressed to Jesus Christ was read: «Our Lord God, who offered yourself as a spotless lamb for the salvation of the world, look upon us, this bread and this chalice, and make them your immaculate Body and your precious Blood for the nourishment of souls and bodies» (cf. E. Brightmann, Eastern Liturgies, I, Oxford 1896, p. 309). This e. no longer appears after the eighth century.
In the Coptic Masses of s. Basil and s. Cyril, in the Greek-Alexandrian liturgy of s. Gregory, in that of s. Mark in Greek, and in the other Greek liturgy of the papyrus of Dér Balizeh, there is a very explicit antecedent consecratory e., in addition to the subsequent consecratory e.
Various authors have maintained that the presence of a subsequent consecratory e. was a primitive and universal fact. This is not true, because the oldest liturgical texts currently known, such as the Traditio apostolica of s. Hippolytus and the Testamentum Domini, have only one subsequent intercessory e., in which the descent of the Holy Spirit is invoked in order to obtain graces of sanctification.
III. DOGMATIC DIFFICULTY AND ITS SOLUTION
A question of a dogmatic nature undoubtedly arises from the subsequent consecratory e. found in the liturgies. Indeed, according to Catholic doctrine, not yet solemnly defined but clearly proposed by the ordinary magisterium, the true form of the Eucharist consists in the Lord’s words: “This is my Body, this is my Blood.” It is at the moment when the priest pronounces them over the bread and wine, in nomine et persona Christi, that transubstantiation takes place. No other formula, before or after, is required to accomplish the mystery. At the Council of Florence, Eugenius IV wished to insert this doctrine into the Decree of Union with the Greeks and renounced the attempt only after the public declaration they made through Bessarion on 6 July 1439, in which they stated that they followed the teaching—on this point very clear—of their great doctor s. John Chrysostom. The same doctrine is found explicitly in the Decretum pro Armenis; it is presupposed by the Council of Trent (sess. XIII, can. 3) and by the rubrics of the Roman Missal; and it is upheld by many popes and by many decrees of the Roman SS. Congregations against the denials of the dissident Easterners. The last declaration on the matter was made by Pius X in the letter: Ex quo nono labente saeculo of 26 Dec. 1910 (AAS, 3 [1911], p. 119), in which the opinion of Prince Maximilian of Saxony was condemned, formulated as follows: “in the Eastern Church and according to its intentions, the e. that comes after the Lord’s words is the most important part of the Consecration; the words of Christ produce their effect through the e., and the real presence occurs only when it has ended.” Other Catholic theologians before Maximilian had maintained an identical or nearly identical theory. They include: Ambrogio Catarino and Cristoforo de Cheffontaines, of the sixteenth century; the liturgist Lebrun and Eusebio Renaudot, of the eighteenth century; H. Schell and G. Rauschen, of the nineteenth century.Undoubtedly, if attention is paid only to the subsequent consecratory e., it is difficult to reconcile this formula with Catholic doctrine, all the more so because, in the text of several liturgies, the Lord’s words appear in the simple course of the narrative. The difficulty disappears, or at least becomes less substantial, if attention is paid to the following two liturgical facts:
1) many liturgies contain antecedent consecratory e.’s in addition to the subsequent consecratory e.; sometimes the antecedent e. is found at the very beginning of the liturgical text, as in the ancient Byzantine Mass of s. John Chrysostom.
2) In every liturgy, even when presented in a purely narrative tone, the Lord’s words are accompanied by gestures or rites that express beyond any doubt the intention of applying those words to the matter present.
The first fact is explained by this: in sacramental euchology, the Church is accustomed to express several times, both before and after the essential act, the request for the effect or effects of the sacred action. Bossuet writes: “In order to make the sacred action more perceptible, the Church speaks at each point of it as though it were realizing it precisely then, without being overly concerned with whether it has already occurred or perhaps must still occur. She is delighted that everything should be found in the integrity of the action and that, in the end, the fullest, liveliest, and most perceptible explanation of the mystery imaginable should be obtained... The Church does not grow weary of explaining in many ways the great reality that has been accomplished, praying God to accomplish it again” (Explicitation de quelques difficultés sur les prières de la Messe, 45). The second fact is no less worthy of note, because it becomes part of the purely narrative context and highlights the explicit intention of attributing an actual significance to a past reality that is being commemorated.
It must be added that a clear demonstration of the Catholic doctrine concerning the form of the Eucharist must be sought in the patristic tradition. Although relatively rare, the explicit testimonies of this tradition are sufficiently numerous to establish that, from the beginning, the Lord’s words were everywhere regarded as the form of the Consecration. See Giustino, Ireneo, Ambrogio, Gregorio di Nissa, Giovanni Crisostomo, Agostino, Esichio di Gerusalemme, Fausto di Riez, Severo di Antiochia, Isidoro di Siviglia. The openly contrary testimonies found throughout antiquity are that of the pastorano Babai il Grande (d. around 648) and those of certain Orthodox polemicists of the iconoclastic period: the author of the Confutazione del Sinodo iconoclasta of 733, s. Nicotero di Costantinopoli, and Teodoro Abou-Qurra (d. in 820). The thought of s. Giovanni Damasceno is unclear.
After the patristic period, Catholic doctrine was taught in the dissident Eastern Churches by many theologians, especially among the Monophysites. Dissenting voices began to be heard only on the occasion of the attempt at union with the Latins. Thus, in the thirteenth century, the Armenian Vartan il Grande, an opponent of the union, maintained that the form of the Consecration was the subsequent e. In the fourteenth century, Nicola Cabasilia brought forward various theological reasons in defense of this opinion. In our own day, the majority of the dissident Easterners, despite the teaching of their ancient doctors and theologians, have commonly resumed defending II. Nevertheless, considerable nuances can be observed among them. Russian theologians, for example, maintain that the Lord’s words form part of the total form, in the sense that they condition the consecratory efficacy of the e. that follows, whereas for the Greeks they have a purely narrative value.
The Church’s practice, in sacramental euchology, of repeatedly requesting the effect of the sacred action, both before and after the principal rite, serves to explain all the forms of e. If the subsequent consecratory e., in the form of a petition to the Father to send the Holy Spirit, has become the most widespread, especially in the East, this is undoubtedly due to the fact that the formula has the twofold advantage of expressing the cooperation of the Father and the Holy Spirit in the mystery of transubstantiation and of emphasizing the office of sanctifier and consecrator attributed by the Fathers to the third person of the Holy Trinity. It has been seen, in fact, that the form of the e. in question does not ask solely for the conversion of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, but requests it with a specific purpose: the sanctification of the faithful and their union in charity. This petition is most appropriately placed immediately nearby, that is, in the immediate vicinity of S. Communion.
Theologians have offered other explanations of the e., more or less ingenious. Among the simplest is that of Giorgio Scholarios (d. after 1472), an explicit defender of Catholic doctrine, an explanation later taken up by Bassuet: this prayer, like other analogous formulas, is intended to express the celebrant’s intention to consecrate the Eucharist. There is also a so-called dramatic explanation, according to which the Mass is the synthetic expression of the entire work of salvation and marks its principal stages. The subsequent consecratory e. would correspond to the mystery of the Resurrection, according to Teodoro di Mopsuestia and the Nestorian liturgists; to the mystery of Pentecost, however, according to many Ethiopian liturgies and according to the dialogue between the priest and the deacon as it is interpolated in the present Byzantine Masses.