Number 202 - December 2000

The Eucharistic Prayer

Father FINET

Alouette N° 202 ­ Pages 14-17

Let us take the first Eucharistic Prayer, in order to underline two or three points, in conclusion.

The joy of love is the joy of exchange, and it is right at the heart of an exchange that the Mass takes place. We have received everything from God, but in the heart of the Mass we make everything go back, up to the sublime altar, facing God.

We begin by showing our gratitude: "We give you thanks for your immense glory." This praise is all the same limited to the dimensions of our poor human hearts. It's really tiny, faced with the fullness of the gift of God.

So, we make a kind of general mobilization; and, through the Preface, we call on the angels and the archangels, so as to climb back up to the altar of God by the singing of the Sanctus: "Heaven and Earth are filled with your glory". It's beautiful, but it's still only the limited song of a creature. Something is still missing in this exchange between us and God.

So, we have the daring of addressing Jesus Himself, the Sovereign Priest; and we enter into the Eucharistic prayer. And there, there is a very important point: it is in the plural. For it is the prayer of the ministry of the laity and the ministry of the priests joined together.

Don't forget to play your part by uniting yourselves to this prayer. I'll give you a few sentences from it:

"Infinitely good Father, You to whom our praises rise, we beg You, by Jesus Christ Your Son, Our Lord, to accept and bless these holy offerings".

The aim of the sacrifice is to be accepted by God.

And further on:
"Remember, Lord, Your servants, and all those here united, whose faith and attachment are known to You".
We are united by the bond of faith, that is to say by the Holy Spirit. And the attachment: it's not because we are sitting on benches together that we are united. It's much deeper: this reuniting of Christians is the Mystical Body of Christ.

"We offer You for them, and they offer You for themselves and for their own".

How widened out this offering is. We mustn't be skimpy: let's think of all the others, all those with whom we are joined together here And the others, that goes a long way. How often, in saying this prayer, I think of all the Foyers of the whole world and of their people. Don't diminish your spiritual role of the laity in offering the sacrifice.

"this sacrifice of praise, for their own redemption and the salvation they are hoping for".

It must be an immense mobilization: the whole church, with the glorious Church of Heaven and the souls suffering in Purgatory. It's the whole Church which will offer itself in each of our Masses.

Let's look first on the side of Heaven:
"In communion with the whole Church, we want to name in the first place the blessed Mary, ever Virgin, Mother of our God and Lord, Jesus Christ."

Mary is standing at the foot of the Cross when Jesus dies and the centurion wounds His side. Water and blood come out. And it is Mary who makes an offering of them. She is the first lay person to have exerted her spiritual ministry, to have made the offering. You, the baptized, you the confirmed, you are of the class of the laity, that is to say you are of the class of the Holy Virgin who offered in this way the body, the water and blood of her Son, at the foot of the Cross.

"Here is the offering we present before You, we, your servants and your entire family".

The family of God, is the Church. In his first epistle to the Ephesians, chapter III, St. Paul tells us that we are the family of God, in Heaven and on Earth.

"in Your bounty, accept it."

Always acceptation

Do you feel how that widens out the heart of the Mass, and that one doesn't remained closed in on one's little personal affairs?

Following this, the prayer is in the singular. It's the prayer of the priest in his priestly ministry

"The night before the Passion, He took the bread in His very holy hands and, His eyes raised towards Heaven, towards You, God, His almighty Father, in giving You thanks He blessed it, broke it, and gave it to His disciples saying: "Take, and drink of this all of you, for this is the chalice of my blood, the Blood of the new and eternal Alliance, which will be shed for you and for the multitude, in remission of sin".

Have you noticed a sentence which impresses me every day? The priest could say: "Take, and eat of this all of you, for this is the Body of Christ, the Blood of Christ." No, he goes much further: "Take, and eat of this all of you, for this is MY Body; take, and drink of this all of you, for this is MY Blood." The priesthood of priests is so united with the priesthood of the Sovereign Priest, Jesus, that in the offering of Jesus, the priest gives Himself to be eaten. In other words, the priest is the man who belongs to everyone, for everyone. In this offering, he gives his priestly ministry for everyone. My life is devoured, eaten up by everyone, without any restriction. That is what Pope John Paul II says to us in his Letter to priests on Maundy Thursday.

You understand why the Church, from the earliest times, inspired by the Holy Spirit, quickly asked for the celibacy of priests. The priest isn't made for a home and children, but for everyone. The man within the priest is a man of God: he is for everyone.
The prayer then goes on in the plural. Allow me to lay stress on the third prayer:
"Almighty God, we beg You: may it be carried by Your angel into the presence of Your glory on Your heavenly altar".

But who is the angel at the Mass? It's a bit of a mystery. Father de la Taille, in Rome, taught us that the angel of the Mass is Jesus Himself. Moreover, when we take Holy Communion to a sick person there is an allusion to this in the first prayer.

"So that, by receiving here the Body and Blood of Your Son, by our communion at the altar, we may be filled with Your grace and Your blessings".

God, in His goodness, comes down again to us, and gives us this fullness of His joy which is the Holy Spirit, the love exchanged between the Father and the Son. God rejoins us in this way, all of us who receive Holy Communion at the altar. How much better this makes us understand the Eucharist. And you feel where this is leading us; we have passed through Him, with Him and in Him, and in this way we climb back up "in the presence of Your glory, to Your heavenly Altar": the Body of Jesus who ceaselessly intercedes, and to which we are united.

"through Him, with Him and in Him".

this Altar, who intercedes and presents His glorious wounds to His Father for each one of us.

And then we understand that, climbing back up in this way through Jesus, with Jesus and in Jesus, the Angel, our representative to the Father, we can say with Him:

"Our Father, who are in Heaven, hallowed be Your name,
Your kingdom come, Your will be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven".

It's only in Jesus that we can say to God: "Father, my Father and our Father". It seems to me, that it is there that we arrive at the culminating point of the Mass: before the Father, united to the sublime altar, the Body of Jesus, who presents His glorious marks of Redemption and who ceaselessly intercedes as theothyte in the face of the Father. How beautiful it is to think that, and to feel in this way this climbing up again into the heart of the Father.

And let us finish by this prayer, which is found immediately after the Consecration:
"That is why we also, your servants and your holy people with you, commemorating the blessed Passion of Your Son, Jesus Christ, Our Lord".

How we like to call to mind the sentence to her son of the mother of Don Bosco, Mama Marguerite:
"Remember my son, that to begin to say the Mass is to begin to suffer".

In each Mass we symbolize the Passion of Jesus; we are in communion with the glorious Christ who is in Heaven, but who is entirely present in the species of Bread and Wine. We are in communion with the risen Christ but we always keep the perceptible sign: the separation of the bread and wine. This perceptible sign evokes our union with the Passion of Christ. "The road of faith, said Saint Paul, always encounters the Cross", because we are united with Jesus. That is why being committed to the priesthood, being committed in Christian life, being committed to offering in union with Christ Jesus is to commit oneself to suffering. The Holy Virgin said to Bernadette: "I don't promise you that you will be happy on Earth." Our vocation is a vocation of the crucified. If we don't understand that we are scandalized by many things.

Further on, we say: "May the peace of the Lord be with you", but not just any kind of peace; it's divine peace. If we are truly in communion with the Resurrection of Christ we become strong against sin.

And then, we are in communion with his glorious Ascension. We are carried off in Ascension onto the Altar of Christ, in the presence of the Father.

But, like after the Ascension, I want to say to you: "Don't stand there looking up. Go quickly and meet up with your brothers." Because, as Saint Paul says, "You who have received the Body and Blood of Christ, it's no longer you who are living, it's Christ who is living within you." Go then, and let yourself be eaten by your brothers! Whether in the world of factories, fields, towns or under-developed countries. The Christian must be a person who is eaten up. And how? by your fraternal charity, your devotion in all trials. "Ceaselessly given to each and every one, in a total gift to God". It's the vocation of the Foyers de Charité: to let ourselves be eaten up by everyone, whether we are in Africa, America, Asia, Oceania or in Europe: we must let ourselves be eaten up by our brothers. Jesus wanted that, as in the time of the first Christians but it's necessary to be appetizing!

And in the same way as the waters of the Nile which make Egypt fruitful, take each year a little of the miasma of Egypt, we also are exposed to taking the miasma of our brothers, because of living in the midst of all our sinner brothers. We finish by being a bit contaminated so much that we are invited to look, always in communion with our brothers, towards the sublime altar. We are called on to do this at least every Sunday.

And there, as we are marked with the poison which contaminates our brothers, we begin by asking forgiveness (in the plural) for ourselves and for our brothers. We draw them up with us through the "Gloria", the "Sanctus" and the "per Ipsum". And, from Mass to Mass, we draw all humanity up to God, and we bring the Grace and the Love of God down on humanity.