Dear St. Christopher’s Family, 

Epiclesis is the Greek word for an invocation or calling down upon. It's the same word we see in the Greek translations of the Old Testament like "calling down fire" on something. In the Eucharistic Prayer, it refers to our asking the Holy Spirit to sanctify the bread and wine. In Prayer C, we say, “Sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ our Lord.” But literally it's asking the Holy Spirit to cover the whole operation.

But there's another dimension to the epiclesis that I think is just as important, and one that Prayer C leaves a little too subtle for my taste. We aren't simply asking God to transform the gifts on the altar. We're asking God to transform us.

Later in the prayer, we ask that the grace of Communion will “make us one body, one spirit in Christ, that we may worthily serve the world in his name.” That's an epiclesis over the people, even if the prayer doesn't explicitly invoke the Spirit a second time.

Think about what that means. We don't come to Communion simply to receive something holy. We come to be made holy ourselves—not because we've earned it, but because we need it.

There's an ancient Christian understanding of the Eucharist as medicine for the soul. Pope Francis expressed it particularly well when he described the Church as a place where the Eucharist is “not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.”

I think we sometimes get that backward. We imagine that we ought to have ourselves sorted out before approaching the altar, as though Communion were a reward for having gotten everything right. But the whole point of grace is that God meets us where we are and begins the work of making us what we are called to become.

The bread and wine are not the only things meant to be changed at the altar.

We are, too.