'We prefix prayer and invocation': the Prayer of Consecration in the Prayer Book Holy Communion
The form of Consecration in the ancient Church was a repetition of the history of the institution, together with prayer to God, that he would sanctify the elements of bread and wine by his Holy Spirit, and make them to become the Body and Blood of Christ, not by altering their nature and substance, but their qualities and powers; and by exalting them from simple elements of bread and wine, to become types and symbols of the Body and Blood of Christ, and efficacious instruments of conveying to worthy receivers all the benefits of his death and passion.
What at least partly explains the difference between Shepherd and contemporary Anglican liturgists is his conviction - shared by 18th century Church of England divines and liturgists - that the Reformed eucharistic theology of the Prayer Book cohered with and shared the fundamental characteristics of patristic eucharistic theologies. Losing this conviction - or, what is worse, intentionally abandoning it because the Prayer Book's Reformed eucharistic theology comes to be regarded as inferior and erroneous - inevitably leads to a view that 1662 and patristic liturgical forms are contradictory, rather than complementary.
What makes Shepherd's approach even more interesting is that he fully quotes the eucharistic prayer regarded by 20th century Anglican liturgists as the patristic norm - that found in the Apostolic Constitutions. Whereas 20th century liturgists pointed to the eucharistic prayer of the Apostolic Constitutions in order to illustrate what they considered to be the failings of the 1662 Prayer of Consecration, Shepherd does so in order to illustrate the coherence and continuities of both:
In this form, the Consecration is evidently made by repeating the history of the institution and by prayer. In all things relating to the Consecration of the elements, we find the practice of the Ancients agreeing with the preceding order prescribed by the Constitutions: and to this order our form of consecration corresponds. We introduce the words employed at the institution, by a prayer, that we receiving these thy creatures of "bread and wine according to thy Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ's holy institution, in remembrance of his death and passion, maybe partakers of his most blessed body and blood; who, in the same night that he was betrayed, took bread", &c.
'And to this order our form of consecration corresponds.' While the jaws of contemporary Anglican liturgists may drop in disbelief at Shepherd's words, those of us who greatly value and are sustained by the use of the 1662 Holy Communion will give voice to our agreement. There is a gentle beauty and wholesome truth to Cranmer's invocation in the Prayer of Consecration. It gathers up all aspects of the holy Eucharist and does so just as we are about to hear the Words of Institution and then to receive the Sacrament.
Note, too, how Shepherd is not concerned about the absence of an explicit invocation of the Holy Spirit, such as is found in the Apostolic Constitutions. There is no reason for such concern, as all Christian prayer - including the Prayer of Consecration - is 'in the Spirit'. What is more, the 1662 rite opens with the invocation of the Spirit in the Collect for Purity, "Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit". The Creed, said at all celebrations in the 1662 rite, assures us that the Holy Spirit "the Giver of life, Who proceedth from the Father and the Son": all of the Christian life, all Christian prayer, and both Sacraments are therefore animated by the life-giving Spirit. To this we might add that the doxologies of the post-communion Prayer of Prayer and Prayer of Thanksgiving, with the Gloria in Excelsis, name the Holy Spirit in their praises - a clear recognition of the Spirit's presence and role in the Sacrament.
Shepherd then goes on to touch on the matter of how consecration is bestowed:
Whether prayer and supplication alone, as some some think, or the bare repetition of the words "This is my body, " as the Romanists maintain, be the instrumental cause and means of the sanctification of the elements, it is not necessary here to enquire. The propriety and validity of our form of Consecration cannot be questioned, for to the words of the original institution we prefix prayer and invocation.
While he does not explicitly decide between these options, the reference to "as the Romanists maintain" is hardly like to suggest agreement. The phrase "prayer and invocation" also evokes Jeremy Taylor's insistence, in Clerus Domini, that "the words which in the Latin Church have been for a long time called the words of Consecration (which indeed are more properly the words of Institution)" are not a 'formula' of consecration:
And therefore the Greek Churches which have with more severity kept the first and most ancient forms of consecration, than the Latin Church; affirm that the Consecration is made by solemn invocation alone, and the very recitation of the words spoken in the body of a prayer are used for argument to move God to hallow the gifts, and as an expression and determination of the desire. And this, Gabriel of Philadelphia observes out of an Apostolical Liturgy, The words of our Lord antecedently, and by way of institution, and incentive are the form, together with the words which the Priest afterwards recites according as it is set down in the divine Liturgy. It is supposed he means the Liturgy reported to be made by S. James, which is of the most ancient use in the Greek Church, and all Liturgies in the world in their several Canons of communion, do now, and did for ever, mingle solemn prayers together with recitation of Christ's words; The Church of England does most religiously observe it according to the custom and sense of the primitive Liturgies; who always did believe the consecration not to be a natural effect, and change, finished in any one instant, but a divine alteration consequent to the whole ministery: that is, the solemn prayer and invocation.
Shepherd's description of the debate over consecration - between "the bare repetition of the words ... as the Romanists maintain" and "prayer and invocation" - implies that he agrees with the latter. The similarity of his wording with that in Clerus Domini could point to Shepherd having Taylor explicitly in mind at this point. Also of significance is how we see in Taylor what Shepherd declares: the same confidence that the Prayer Book liturgy embodies the fundamental understanding of "the primitive Liturgies".
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