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Dear St. Christopher’s Family,
I remember the first time I celebrated Eucharist. I was nervous enough already, but when we got to the Sanctus, my knees actually buckled. I was so accustomed to kneeling at that point in the service that my body started to do it automatically. Fortunately, a friend was standing beside me and helped me catch myself. I managed to recover, but by the time we got to the fraction—the breaking of the bread—I had completely lost my place. My friend had to start walking me through the rest of the service, step by step.
It turns out that our bodies sometimes know the liturgy better than our minds do.
This Sunday, we'll be using Eucharistic Prayer C for five weeks. One of its distinctive features is the unusual amount of participation it asks of the congregation. Rather than simply listening while the priest prays, you'll find yourselves responding throughout the prayer.
Why?
The Eucharistic Prayer is not something the priest performs for the congregation. It is the prayer of the whole Church, offered together. The priest has a particular role in leading that prayer, but the thanksgiving belongs to all of us.
Prayer C makes that shared responsibility harder to overlook. Its repeated responses interrupt the familiar rhythm of the Eucharist and require us to pay attention to what we're saying. We cannot simply settle into the comfortable role of spectators.
And that's part of what makes trying something unfamiliar worthwhile. Changing the words, the rhythm, or even our posture can help us rediscover what we're actually doing when we worship together.
So if you find yourself wondering, as David Byrne might put it, "Well, how did I get here?"—you're in good company. Sometimes a little liturgical disorientation is exactly what we need.
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