Consecration - I was taught wrong?

[ybeayf]

The Roman Canon (Eucharistic Prayer I) in the Western Church has no explicit epiclesis

I suppose that would depend on how explicit you would require it to be in order to qualify as an explicit epiclesis. The Eastern Church, following the tradition of St. Nicholas Cabasilas, has considered the Supplices te rogamus to be the equivalent of the Eastern epiclesis:

We humbly beseech thee, almighty God: command these offerings to be brought by the hands of thy holy Angel to thine altar on high, in sight of thy divine majesty: that all we who at this partaking of the altar shall receive the most sacred Body and Blood of thy Son may be fulfilled with all heavenly benediction and grace. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

St. Nicholas argues that it would be nonsensical for the priest to be praying for the gifts to be literally taken up to heaven, and if the gifts have already been consecrated at the words of institution, this prayer cannot be asking for them to be “raised in dignity from a humble state to the highest of all,” so what the priest is actually doing is praying that the gifts may be changed into the Body and Blood (“brought …] to thine altar on high”, namely, Christ, who is the divine altar). As St. Nicholas says, “Since the altar consecrates the gifts placed upon it, to pray that the gifts may be carried to the altar is to ask that they be consecrated.” So this prayer is accomplishing the same thing as the epiclesis when the Holy Spirit is petitioned to come down from heaven and change the gifts.