Epiclesis

Epiklesis means a calling-upon: the Church asking God to act. In the broad sense there is an epiclesis in nearly every Orthodox mystery — the Spirit is invoked over the waters of baptism, over the chrism, over the oil of unction — because Orthodoxy holds that nothing becomes holy except by God's own coming. But when Orthodox Christians say "the epiclesis" without qualification, they mean the invocation at the heart of the Divine Liturgy.

It comes near the end of the Anaphora. The priest has given thanks, recited the Lord's words of institution — "Take! Eat! This is My Body" — remembered the Cross, the Tomb, the Resurrection, and the Second Coming, and lifted the gifts with the words "Thine own of Thine own, we offer unto Thee, on behalf of all and for all." Then, bowing, he prays (in the wording used across the Orthodox world, here in the translation of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom used in the Orthodox Church in America): "Again we offer unto Thee this rational and bloodless worship, and ask Thee, and pray Thee, and supplicate Thee: Send down Thy Holy Spirit upon us and upon these Gifts here offered... and make this Bread the Precious Body of Thy Christ... And that which is in this Cup, the Precious Blood of Thy Christ... Making the change by Thy Holy Spirit." To each blessing the deacon answers "Amen" — and to the last, a threefold "Amen. Amen. Amen." In the Liturgy of St. Basil the same invocation is made in Basil's fuller wording, with the blessing of the Cup ending "Shed for the life of this world"; in much Slavic practice the priest first prays the troparion of the Third Hour, recalling Pentecost, an addition Greek service books do not include.

"Rational (or spiritual) and bloodless worship" is the old Christian language for the Eucharist: an offering not of slaughtered animals but of bread, wine, thanksgiving, and the worshippers themselves — St. Paul's "reasonable service" (Romans 12:1).

Two details of the prayer carry most of its theology. First, the Spirit is asked to come upon us and upon the gifts: the epiclesis consecrates a people as well as bread and wine, because the purpose of the change is Communion — that the faithful become what they receive, the Body of Christ. Second, the verbs are all petition: the Church does not command the change or effect it by formula; she asks, and God gives. Every Liturgy is in this sense a new Pentecost — the Spirit descending on the Church's offering as He descended on the apostles.

This is among the oldest attested parts of Christian worship. St. Cyril of Jerusalem, explaining the Liturgy to the newly baptized in the fourth century, describes it exactly: "Then having sanctified ourselves by these spiritual Hymns, we beseech the merciful God to send forth His Holy Spirit upon the gifts lying before Him; that He may make the Bread the Body of Christ, and the Wine the Blood of Christ; for whatsoever the Holy Ghost has touched, is surely sanctified and changed." What the change is, the Church confesses; how, she leaves a mystery (more here).

Medieval Latin theology, with its instinct for precision, taught that the consecration is effected when the priest recites Christ's own words, "This is My Body... This is My Blood" — on the reasoning, honorable in itself, that the Word of the Lord accomplishes what it declares. On that view the Byzantine epiclesis, coming after those words, could look redundant, and the difference became an open dispute between Greeks and Latins at the Council of Florence (1438–39). The fourteenth-century Orthodox commentator Nicholas Cabasilas had already given the classic reply: the Church has never consecrated by quotation alone but by thanksgiving and supplication, and the ancient Roman Canon itself continues praying for the acceptance of the gifts after the institution — so the two traditions are closer in substance than the polemics suggested.

The Orthodox position is not simply "our moment, not yours." The Church resists the whole project of isolating one mechanical instant: the entire Anaphora — praise, Sanctus, Christ's words, remembrance, offering, invocation — is one consecratory prayer, of which the epiclesis is the culmination and seal. After the triple Amen, the Church treats the Lamb on the altar as nothing less than the Body of Christ. It is fair to add that the West has largely moved toward the same wholeness: modern Roman Catholic Eucharistic prayers all include an explicit invocation of the Spirit, and Catholic theology today commonly speaks of the one Eucharistic prayer consecrating. Neither tradition doubts that both the Word's words and the Spirit's descent belong to the mystery; the Orthodox insistence is simply that the Eucharist is asked for and given, never manufactured.