Can someone please explain the consecration of the Eucharist to me?

[ConstantineTG]

Is it possible to believe that in the different but equally valid rites Our Lord graciously adapts Himself to our ways of celebrating this sacrament? Could both understandings be true? It seems to me this may be possible.

Well ultimately the externals point to the internal spiritual reality. Definitely the rites could change and still point towards the same internal reality. The reality is the same even though how we perceive it changes. So the moment when the change happens should be the same regardless of which rite is used. As I said earlier, the Anaphora of Addai and Mari does not have a clear coherent Words of Institution, yet they have a valid Consecration. That is why the conclusion is that we do not know exactly at what moment during the Eucharistic Prayer that the bread and wine changes, all we know is that at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer we no longer have bread and wine, but the Body and Blood of Christ.

 

[ConstantineTG]

The last item you mention is the narritive I referred to.

The Ukrainian Catechism states that the Mass has an epiclesis so it must be referring to the Mass of 1969, rather than the Mozarabic Rite or the Mass of 1962 which have no epiclesis and is therefore not essential to confection of the Eucharist.

The comments are diverging from the original remark, that the early Fathers mentioned earlier considered the moment of consecration as the words of insitution “This is my body… This is my blood…”; and that is not ambiguous.

Yes, but the Liturgy back then only consisted of the words of institution, not the epiclesis. That is why the conclusion today is that the change happens in the Eucharistic Prayer. At what point we do not know, just that for sure at the end the Body and Blood of Christ are present at the altar.

 

[Fergal]

At the moment of transubstatiation, there are two miracles

1. The bread and wine become the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
2. The body and blood of Jesus Christ take on the appearance of bread and wine.

 

[ConstantineTG]

On the contrary, the separate consecration of the bread and wine is a mystical re-presentation of the separation of Christ’s blood from His body. I am of the opinion that the words of Institution over the bread do, in fact, consecrate it, and the words of Institution over the wine do, in fact, consecrate it: so the bread is consecrated first, and the wine second.

Wait, what? Christ is not separated, he is whole, body, blood, soul and divinity. A body separated from its blood is a dead body. Because Christ is alive, His body and blood are together, always.

 

[Vico]

Yes, but the Liturgy back then only consisted of the words of institution, not the epiclesis. That is why the conclusion today is that the change happens in the Eucharistic Prayer. At what point we do not know, just that for sure at the end the Body and Blood of Christ are present at the altar.

Augustine and Ambrose were to a great extent responsible for changing emphasis from the epiklesis to the words of institution. (Also that epiklesis was a pagan practice in ancient times.) See the new Schaff-Herzog encyclopedia of religious knowledge, p. 153.

There has been an epiclesis in the liturgies since early days. The Clementine Liturgy was the basis of the Liturgy of Saint James. Pope Gregory the Great (590-604 A.D.) removed the epiklesis from the Roman Mass. The Clementine Liturgy from the Apostolic Constitutions appearing about 380 A.D., has epiklesis:

And do Thou accept them, to the honour of Thy Christ, and send down upon this sacrifice Thine Holy Spirit, the Witness of the Lord Jesus’ sufferings, that He may show this bread to be the body of Thy Christ, and the cup to be the blood of Thy Christ, that those who are partakers thereof may be strengthened for piety, may obtain the remission of their sins, may be delivered from the devil and his deceit, may be filled with the Holy Ghost, may be made worthy of Thy Christ, and may obtain eternal, life upon Thy reconciliation to them, O Lord Almighty.

rosarychurch.net/consecration/clementine.html

 

[Fergal]

A fantastic document on the theology of the Holy Mass especially the consecration and the Holy Species.

ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/SHEEDEUC.HTM

 

[japhy]

Wait, what? Christ is not separated, he is whole, body, blood, soul and divinity. A body separated from its blood is a dead body. Because Christ is alive, His body and blood are together, always.

I did not say that Christ is separated. I said that the separate consecration is “a mystical re-presentation of the separation of Christ’s blood from His body.” It is a sign or symbol of Christ’s death, just as the commixture of the Body and Blood in the Chalice later on in the Communion Rite is a sign or symbol of the Resurrection, of the reunion of the Body and Blood of our Lord.

While the consecrated bread is Jesus whole and entire (Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity), and the consecrated wine likewise, their outward appearance makes them individually signs, one of His Body, and the other of His Blood.