qui omnem sanctificationem compleret

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Nov 09, 2006

Last weekend I heard the 4th Eucharistic Prayer for the first time in a while. It struck me forcefully that, read together with its preface, it's an almost unimprovably succinct narrative of Catholic faith. In fact, if a curious Buddhist or Moslem were to ask, "What do you Catholics believe about God?" you could hardly do better than hand them that preface and prayer in response. It's all there: divine sublimity, creation, adoration, disobedience, covenant, prophecy, incarnation, redemption, resurrection, ascension, the gift of the Spirit, eucharistic vigil in expectation of the second coming of Christ. The Creed is also an epitome of Catholic faith, but as is proper to its purpose its affirmations are responses to doctrinal controversies. In EP4 the faith is presented as the simple unfolding of salvation history: no bush-fires or ice storms have left their mark on the tree.

It's a hope-illumined prayer. It keeps its gaze fixed on our sanctification: the sacramental business going on now as well as its consummation at the end of history. There's a monastic tranquility and recollectedness about it, taking in human, angelic, and divine activity in a single glance sub specie aeternitatis. If I were a monk I'd see it as a vocational Magna Carta.

For some years we used to hear the 4th Eucharistic Prayer pretty frequently, then a more politically fastidious clergy choked on all the masculine generics ("Even when HE disobeyed you and lost your friendship you did not abandon HIM to the power of death, but helped all MEN to seek and find you...) and it fell into disuse. I'm not certain it works perfectly in the Mass myself; there's a lot of sacred history crammed into second-person discourse, and that history seems more fittingly narrated to the people than addressed to God the Father. Yet something would be lost if it were to vanish in the combat to come. Most of the 1970s liturgical gimcrack deserves to end in the bonfire, but I hope this brand is plucked from the burning.