Knobbly variations in prayers, a bit like Bach
What a surprise it was to read a prayer I’d often heard in church. As the churches are locked I sat down on Sunday with my missal. Some prefer online live-streaming, but I know I join the communion of worshippers as I follow the words in a book.
The prayer that struck me anew was the Roman Canon, which is central to the Eucharist. It is not very easy to follow live, and is less used these days in most churches. But it remains almost the same as in the time of Gregory the Great in about 600 (when Augustine had just come to Kent).
How knobbly and encrusted it is. It reminds me of one of a golden cross from late antiquity studded with uneven rounded gems.
Christians in Rome had worshipped in Greek for 300 years after the time of Christ. There were earlier Eucharistic prayers in Latin, such as one from the 3rd century attributed to Hippolytus (giving us the so-called Eucharistic Prayer II), but that might come from Syria.
Anyway, it has been suggested that Latin liturgy in Rome could only develop after 313 when Constantine decriminalised Christianity.
As the still valuable work of Christine Mohrmann (1903-88) stresses, the liturgy of Rome was couched in sacral language. There would always have been lots of worshippers who couldn’t understand it straight off. A characteristic of such language is repetition, or variation. “What I tell you three times is true,” as Lewis Carroll said in another context. To me it is like poetry, or the music of Bach.
An example is the statement that we offer, from among God’s gifts “this pure victim, this holy victim, this spotless victim” (hostiam puram, hostiam sanctam, hostiam immaculatam). “Victim” is a technical term for a thing sacrificed, in this case “the holy bread of eternal life, and the chalice of everlasting salvation”.
This triple designation of the offering makes reference to the book of the prophet Malachi in the Old Testament. Naturally, the liturgical prayers are saturated with biblical references. Here it suggests
Malachi’s declaration: “From the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering.”
Malachi’s “from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same” (ab ortu enim solis usque ad occasum) – or from East to West – is taken up in yet another modern Eucharistic prayer, number III.
The verse in Malachi is also brought to mind in a prayer earlier in the Roman Canon that asks God to make the “oblation” or offering “blessed, approved, ratified, reasonable, and acceptable” In Latin it’s “benedictam, adscriptam, ratam, rationabilem, acceptabilemque”.
Two things about that. Oblation is a word used in the Hebrew Bible for a grain offering. Here it may refer to the bread brought to the altar, or to the Bread of Life, Jesus Christ, who offers himself in the Eucharist. His offering is foreshadowed in the book of Genesis by that of the priest Melchizedek, often depicted in early churches.
What does rationabilem mean? “Reasonable” hardly seems right. “Spiritual” may be a better bet.
Mohrmann identifies a “monumental verbosity coupled with juridical precision” in such language. St Augustine of Hippo in the 4th century called on God to free him from the “excess of words that torments my soul”. He meant his own thoughts and extempore expressions of them. He’d have been grateful for a prayer, no matter how knobbly, inherited from the Church to set his thoughts in order.