The Institute of Liturgical Studies at Valparaiso University will hold its Fifty-Eighth Session on April 24-26, 2006: "Saying and Doing the Gospel Today: Mass, Ministry, Mission". This is the third year under this title, and the focus will be on "Mission". For more information and registration info go to www.valpo.edu/ils

Transfiguration Sunday is February 26. You may want to use "Farewell to the Alleluia". See the February 2004 ("The Great and Holy WeeK") issue of the Sanctus at www.iksynod.org/ministry/sanctusFeb04.asp for that Rite.

Thank you! Thank you!! Thank you!!!

A child's simple question can be the doorway to fresh understanding. "Why do we do the bread and wine like this? It's not the same when we go to church with Grampa Joe and Gramma Gina!"

It's a question that comes up frequently in First Communion classes for children and their parents. Joe and Gina could well be members of another ELCA congregation, or they might be Episcopalian, UCC, Moravian, or Presbyterian- someone with whom the ELCA officially shares table fellowship- so… why indeed? What should we be teaching our very young children?

At its best, liturgy helps people of all ages make contact through all of our senses with the deep truth of our human condition - our utter dependence on God's grace. In making the experiential connections, the words we use matter. As Luther reminded his Latin speaking associates, people need to hear and speak the words of the Great Thanksgiving and Eucharistic prayers in language that "makes sense" for their daily lives. We must all take in the meaning of "for you."

We don't need the phrase "right and salutary" to help children learn the foundational meaning of the Eucharist, but we do need to use age-appropriate "salutary" language. The translation is not difficult if we keep two concepts in mind: gratitude and justice.

Gratitude: From a surprisingly early age, children easily learn to say "thank you." (They may even mean it!) If you ponder the peacefulness of a just-fed infant, you might well conclude that newborns arrive "hard-wired" for the state-of-being that we label gratitude and ready to learn words to match. But we can go a step further in helping children make connections to the liturgy and lay a Trinitarian foundation for a later understanding of "gratitude" and "grace" when we teach young children to say "Thank you! Thank you!! Thank you!!!" when they give thanks to God.

Justice: Young children also readily grasp the meaning of "it's not fair!!"- at least as it applies to themselves. Although children easily learn the pain of personal injustice, it takes time and teaching (along with some physiological maturity) for children to learn that "it's not fair" also applies to other people. We lay down salutary words and prepare children to understand the catechism for the third petition of the Lord's Prayer when we teach them that God loves us, AND God loves everyone and everything else in God's good creation!

The ELCA's resources on hunger include a short prayer which can help adults lay a Eucharistic foundation for children's thinking and behavior:

Blessed be God who is our Bread;
May all the world be clothed and fed!

This prayer can be recited as the second verse of the familiar "Come, Lord Jesus" table prayer, but the prayer will remain only words unless we also help children make sense of it with their lives. Even young children can help adults serve in a soup kitchen or get involved in fund-raising for Heifer Project. Tell the story of the child who shared his lunch!

As graceful reminders of the liturgy, the few words of this prayer could help feed a multitude by keeping people of all ages in touch with the needs of all of God's treasured creatures.

Regardless of the form "daily bread" takes in our lives, it is a gift of God which we are given to take and break and share, trusting that God can multiply our offering.

A Brief History of Eucharistic Prayers
By Rudy Mueller

The roots of the eucharistic prayer are found in Jewish table prayers, such as the berekah (blessing) and the todah (thanksgiving). These Jewish prayers recall the acts of God in narrative form and offer intercession for God's blessing. Christian prayers of blessing include the story of Jesus Christ. As part of those prayers that story came to include the narrative of the institution of the Lord's Supper, that is, the Words of Institution.

An important connection between Jewish prayers and the Christian eucharistic prayers is the element of anamenesis. The Greek word means "to remember", not just in the sense of a mental recall, but to make present by that remembrance the benefits and blessings of the event remembered.

Who is to remember? We would obviously say that the gathered assembly is to remember. But J. Jeremias argues in The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, p. 249, that the focus of "in remembrance of me" is God, that is, that God would remember the acts of Jesus and bestow the promised blessings. It is not unlike the sign of the rainbow in Genesis 9. There God promises that when the rainbow is seen, God will remember the covenant.

Jesus himself is the bridge between the Jewish table blessings and the thanksgiving over the bread and wine of Holy Communion. The "last supper" was a continuation of the table fellowship that Jesus practiced with his disciples and others throughout his ministry. This practice reached its high point in the Easter meals the risen Jesus shared with his disciples. Both the table fellowship of the "last supper" and of the Easter meals included table blessings, or thanksgivings (Luke 22.15-19 and Luke 24.30). The "last supper" was set in the context of Jesus' impending death and the Easter meals in the context of the eschatological joy and presence of the risen Christ. These two motifs influenced the direction of the church's worship life, including its thanksgivings.

The first compete text of a eucharistic prayer is the Liturgy of Addai and Mari, which dates to the third century. Prior to that prayer, we do have bits and pieces of eucharistic liturgies, including prayers in two chapters in the late first century Didache. We also find pieces of liturgy in the Bible, such as "marana tha" in 1Corinthians 16, which is also in the Didache.

Eucharistic prayers are found in the ancient liturgies of both the eastern and the western church. While there are similarities of pattern, Frank Senn, Christian Liturgy, p 65, points out that the prayers of the western church, following the prayer of Hippolytus, focused on "thanksgiving for redemption in Christ".

The prayers of the eastern church followed more closely Jewish prayers of blessing and gave thanks "for the work of creation, … God's work of salvation culminating in the Christ-event, and supplication for the Holy Spirit…"

The word used to describe the complete text of the eucharistic prayer with all its elements, is the "canon". (In the East, the "anaphora".) The canon of the western rite includes the preface (dialog + proper preface), the Sanctus, the prayer of thanksgiving proper - which includes the Words of Institution, the Great Amen, the Lord's Prayer, the Agnus Dei, and the fraction.

Martin Luther, of course, inherited the rite of the western church. In the Formula Missae he excised all the eucharistic prayers because of the abundance of sacrificial imagery, which in his mind had turned the sacrament from a gift of God into a work of the people. While there were some traditions in Lutheranism that sought to maintain the eucharistic prayer, the majority of American Lutherans did not experience it as part of their liturgy until the publication of the Service Book and Hymnal in 1958. [The Church of Sweden had a form of the eucharistic prayer and epiclesis (prayer for the Holy Spirit) which formed a complete unit and did not include, but preceded the words of institution (see Rubric 33 in the LBW communion rite).]

The Lutheran Book of Worship, and the materials published by the Inter Lutheran Commission on Worship, restored the eucharistic prayer as the principal text of the communion liturgy. There are many resources that provide these prayers, but one should use caution. Be sure and pray them out loud before using them to make sure they are a corporate prayer. Some may be well written, but are more stream of consciousness or a dialog than a public prayer of thanks and proclamation.

In the next issue we will continue with further discussion of content and style.