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The Eucharist Prayer as a Story

 It begins with the invitation to lift up our hearts and give thanks to God, which is why it can rightly be called the Great Thanksgiving. It then unfolds as a story masterfully told. We read it (and hear it) as a coherent story that runs from the beginning of the universe to its end, a story that catches us up with all things in giving thanks to God.

    The shape of the story is like an hourglass. It begins with giving thanks in the broadest sense and it concludes with the longing that all history end in praise of God. At the opening we affirm it is “meet and right” or “right and just” for human beings to give thanks to God. We do so because he is the creator of all things. We do so also because he has given us salvation in Jesus Christ. And we do so by means of the action of the Holy Spirit. From the beginning, our thanksgiving is grounded in the Trinity. At the end the prayer wraps up everything that has been said, all the thanks and all the particular requests and desires and hopes that underlie the thanks. It turns all this—truly, all the longings of the universe—into praise of the vision of God, again identified trinitarianly. So it begins and ends with great breadth, the “everything” that God created at the beginning and the “everything” that is the substance of praise of God in the end.

    In between the prayer narrows, because it is only in Jesus Christ that this prayer is possible, and Jesus is a human being with his own story. That is to say, the story of Jesus is nestled at the heart of the story of the whole universe. This leads to a further narrowing of the hourglass. First we recall the entirety of Jesus’ life as, incarnate of the Virgin Mary, he lived and died as one of us, to reconcile us to his Father. Then we narrow to his death, to the cross on which, stretching out his arms of love, he offered himself as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. 

    The narrowest part of the hourglass comes next. We go to the night before he died, to the intimate space of his last supper with his friends. Even that is not our ultimate focus, because we bear down upon two moments in that final meal, the moments pertaining to the bread and the wine. Here the prayer moves in for a close-up that is almost, as we say, “in real time.” He takes bread. He breaks it. He gives thanks for it. He tells what the bread—this bread—really is: “This is my body, which is given for you.” Likewise with the cup: “This is my blood of the New Covenant, shed for you and for many.” And with each comes his command: to take, to eat, to drink.

    A story of such great, cosmic stretch—from the beginning of creation to the consummation of all things, which has at the middle this close-in focus on particular words over particular foods and the command given at that meal: such a story is not something to be rattled off casually or quickly. The story begins and ends big, and so should be the telling. But in the middle the voice should change, probably by slowing down a bit, probably by lowering volume a bit. In the middle it’s a “you are there” moment, going through particular actions and particular words that were done and said on that one particular night at the center of this story of everything.

    I once had a priest tell me just to clip through the prayer like it was a single story. I agree that it is a single story but disagree that that means we should clip through it. This priest was opposed to the idea that something “special” happens at the words over the bread and wine; he didn’t want any special attention paid to the middle of the prayer; he wanted the whole prayer to be said crisply without variation. This was because he opposed the “western” idea that something special happens when the words “This is my body [or blood]” are spoken.

    I am myself agnostic about when the transformation of the bread and the wine occurs; and nothing that I am saying requires the belief that the moment of change is at any particular place in the prayer. There are good theological arguments in favor of a variety of views. My point is not theological so much as literary. Rather than being read through crisply and without variation, the eucharistic prayer calls for a reading that brings out its inherent structure. To do so requires that we treat the special narrative, and especially the words Jesus said, differently than the rest of the prayer. A priest who does that is helping all of us take hold of the structure of the cosmic story, with its awesome pivot point in the midst of a supper with friends. And I think, moreover, to read it that way is simply good reading.

    I said above that, probably, this is accomplished by a small lowering of voice and slowing of pace. But it needn’t be done that way, nor need we have uniformity. What we priests should try to convey, however, is that we believe this really is the pivot point on which the world’s history has turned.

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    Out & About. This weekend, Feb. 7/8, I am to preach at All Souls’ Church in Oklahoma City; the services are at 5:30pm Sat., and on Sunday at 8 and 10am and 5pm.

    Sunday, Feb. 15, I get to visit the geographical center of the diocese of Dallas: St. Phillip’s Church, Sulphur Springs, Tex. I will preach at the 11am service and then, afterwards, talk about how believing in God is the beginning of an adventure.

    Upcoming book seminar: At St. Matthew’s in Dallas, Sunday, March 1, 5pm, we’ll discuss The Little Princesses by Marion Crawford, who was the governess to Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret for some 17 years. The royal family, not without reason, took the publication of this book as a violation of trust, though readers have been grateful for its sympathetic insight into the girls’ education and life.

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The Critters

 I like to jog before the sun rises. We moderns live in lights, all the time. The normal human experience before our time was to have dark nights and to see myriads of stars. I particularly like those rare occasions when the urban trail’s lights are out, and though it is then closer to dark, there are still nearby ambient lights that shine into the trail. I don’t get to experience what, say, would have been the ordinary life of Thomas Jefferson when he walked a few miles between dusk and dawn. Some of my readers caution me to be safe in the dark: but there really isn’t any significant danger. There’s always light.

    Indeed there can be too much light. Over the past year I’ve noticed that many walkers and runners have started wearing body lamps; their light is so intense I turn my head to the side and lift my hand to block it. These lights are like approaching car headlights on high beam: they blind you to seeing anything else. They are so bright that you can’t see the person to whom they are attached. 

    But other humans are hardly all that one sees. There are racoons in my neighborhood; they cautiously poke their heads out, then amble awkwardly across the path. I’ve also seen a possum with its long snout waddle from one side to another. He also looks like he wished there were less light. Rabbits are all around; they seem more native to the trail. Sometimes they just sit in the middle of the path, frozen as if I won’t know they are alive.

    There was a woman recently, stationary at the entrance to a bridge. She waved at me as I jogged past. Peripherally I then saw: cats. She was feeding the felines. I saw her again about ten minutes later but, with heroic restraint, managed not to growl.

    It is silent in the very early hours. As dawn gets closer, one starts to hear our fellow bipeds chirping and singing. I never see the birds, but I can tell the hour, if not the season, by their voices. It is actually quite moving to hear the birds: a single chirp, repeated at intervals; a trill somewhere else; a sort of answer-and-response later on. It’s like the world is coming to life.

    In a month or two we’ll start to hear the insects in the morning also, their own chirps and scratches and significant sounds (significant to others, not to us).

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    “Morning has broken,” begins the hymn, “like the first morning.” The hymn’s second line speaks of the blackbird’s first speech, which is like the first birdsong ever heard. There was once a first day, a new creation. It had its own morning, and in that morning a blackbird spoke. Every day God gives it to us again: the gift of creation, the many critters who praise him just by coming alive in the day. This day, every day, is the day that the Lord has made.

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    Out & About. On Sun., Feb. 1, the Good Books & Good Talk seminar will meet to discuss The Girls of Slender Means, a short novel by the Scottish writer Muriel Spark. Anyone who has read the novel is welcome to join the conversation (others may come and listen). We meet in Garrett Hall at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, Dallas, on the 2nd floor, from 5 to 6:30 p.m.

    I am to preach and then speak at St. Philip’s Church in Sulphur Springs, Tex., on Feb. 15.

 

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The Rev. Canon Victor Lee Austin. Ph.D., is the Theologian-in-Residence for the diocese and is the author of several books including, "Friendship: The Heart of Being Human" and "A Post-Covid Catechesis.: 

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