Tomster, great post. Many sentiments in there that reflect what I understand. Epiclesis is good to bring up because yesterday, it was the
Epiklesis article from the Catholic Encyclopedia (for what it’s worth) that provided a description of what I am asking here about a “moment.” The official Euchologion of the Orthodox Church has a note after the words of Institution to explain that: “Since the demonstrative pronouns: This is my body, and again: This is my blood, do not refer to the Offerings that are present, but to those which Jesus, taking in His hands and blessing, gave to His Disciples; therefore those words of the Lord are repeated as a narrative [diegematikos], and consequently it is superfluous to show the Offerings (by an elevation) and indeed contrary to the right mind of the Eastern Church of Christ” (ed. Venice, 1898, p. 63). This would seem to imply that Christ’s words have no part in the form of the sacrament. On the other hand Dositheus in the Synod of Jerusalem (1672) apparently requires both words of Institution and Epiklesis: “It [the Holy Eucharist] is instituted by the essential word [remati uparktiko, i.e. Christ’s word] and sanctified by the invocation of the Holy Ghost” (Conf. Dosithei, in Kimmel, op. cit., I, 451), and this seems to be the common theory among the Orthodox in our time. Their arguments for the necessity of the Epiklesis as at any rate the perfecting part of the form are:
- that the context shows the words of Institution to be used only as a narrative;
- that otherwise the Epiklesis would be superfluous and deceptive: its very form shows that it consecrates; tradition.
The first and second points are not difficult to answer. The words of Institution are certainly used historically (“qui pridi quam pateretur, sumpsit panem…ac dixit: hoc est enim corpus meum,” as well as all Eastern forms, is an historical account of what happened at the Last Supper); but this is no proof that they may not be used effectively and with actual meaning too. Given the intention of so doing, they necessarily would be so used. The second point is already answered above: the succession of time in sacramental prayers necessarily involves nothing but a dramatic representation of what presumably really takes place in one instant (this point is further evolved by Fortescue, “The Orth. Eastern Church,” pp. 387 sq.). As for tradition, in any case it is only a question of Eastern tradition. In the West there has been a great unanimity in speaking of the words of Institution as consecrating, especially since St. Augustine; and the disappearance of any real Epiklesis in our Liturgy confirms this. Among Eastern Fathers there is less unanimity. Some, notably St. Cyril of Jerusalem, refer the consecration to the action of the Holy Ghost in a way that seems to imply that the Epiklesis is the moment (St. Cyril, Cat. xix, 7; xxi, 3; xxiii, 7, 19; cf. Basil, On the Holy Spirit 27 sqq.); others, as St. John Chrysostom (Hom. i, De prod. Iudæ, 6: “He [Christ] says: This is my body. This word changes the offering”; cf. Hom. ii, in II Tim. i), quite plainly refer Consecration to Christ’s words.
It should be noted that these Fathers were concerned to defend the Real Presence, not to explain the moment at which it began, that they always thought of the whole Eucharistic prayer as one form, containing both Christ’s words and the Invocation, and that a statement that the change takes place by the power of the Holy Ghost does not necessarily show that the writer attaches that change to this special prayer. For instance St. Irenæus says that “the bread which receives the Invocation of God is not common bread, but a Eucharist” (Against Heresies IV.18.5), and, yet immediately before (IV.18.4), he explains that that bread is the Body of Christ over which the earlier part of the Anaphora is said. The final argument against the Epiklesis as Consecration-form is the account of the Last Supper in the Gospels. We know what Christ did then, and that He told us to do the same thing. There is no hint of an Epiklesis at the Last Supper.
It may finally be noted that later, in the West too (since the sixteenth century especially), this question aroused some not very important discussion. The Dominican Ambrose Catharinus (sixteenth century) thought that our Consecration takes place at an Epiklesis that precedes the recital of Christ’s words. This Epiklesis he thinks to be the prayer “Quam oblationem.” A few others (including Renaudot) more or less shared his opinion. Against these Hoppe (op. cit. infra) showed that in any case the Epiklesis always follows the words of Institution and that our “Quam Oblationem” cannot be considered one at all. He and others suggest a mitigated theory, according to which the Invocation (in our case the “Supplice te rogamus”) belongs not to the essence of the sacrament, but in some way to its (accidental) integrity. John of Torquemada at the Council of Florence (Hardouin IX, 976), Francisco Suárez (De Sacram., disp. lviii, 3), Bellarmine (De Euch., iv, 14), Lugo (De Euch., disp. xi, 1) explain that the Invocation of the Holy Ghost is made rather that He may sanctify our reception of the Holy Eucharist. This is a theoretical explanation sought out to account for the fact of the Epiklesis, without giving up our insistence on the words of Institution as alone consecrating. Historically and according to the text of the old invocations they must rather be looked upon as dramatically postponed expressions of what happens at one moment.I admit, this explanation was a little confusing at times, but it seems there is no dogmatic declaration of a singular “moment” when consecration must occur, although you do have great liturgical saints like St. John Chrysostom who consider the change to occur at the words of “This is My body.”
