Riches of the Roman Missal: the Sundays of Lent (I)– Supernatural Institutio generalis Missalis Romani lists eight main elements of the Eucharistic Prayer and emphasizes that the preface has the task of expressing the content of the thanksgiving: "The priest, in the name of all the holy people, glorifies God the Father and thanks him for the whole work of salvation or for some particular aspect of it, according to the diversity of the day, the feast or the Season".
For many centuries, the Eucharistic Prayer was one, what today we call the Roman Canon or Eucharistic Prayer I, and the preface - together with the Communicators and the Hanc igitur The purpose of the Eucharistic Prayer was to adapt the unique Eucharistic Prayer to the particular aspect of the mystery celebrated on a given day.
For this reason, the number of prefaces found in some ancient sources is quite high: this is the case of the Sacramentary of Veronese (6th century), which contains 267; or the Sacramentary of Fulda (10th century), which contains 320.
At the same time, over the centuries, the need was also felt to reduce the number of prefaces, also so that they would have a well-founded theological content and be truly meaningful. In this sense, for example, the Gregorian-Adrian Sacramentary (8th c.) presents only 14 prefaces. Depending on which tendency prevails, we find in the ancient sources a greater or lesser number of prefaces.
To this last trend belongs the Missal The most recent of St. Pius V, which established a number of prefaces of 11. Over the centuries, some additions were also made to this Missal, such as a preface for the Deceased (1919), St. Joseph (1919), Christ the King (1925) and the Sacred Heart (1928). In addition, with the reform of Holy Week, a preface of its own was introduced for the Chrism Mass (1955).
The main reason for the expansion of the corpus of prefaces was a qualitative enrichment of the Eucharistic celebration, paying special attention to the Eucharistic prayer, the true heart of the celebration. To this end, recourse was made to the immense Eucharistic patrimony of the Roman tradition, relying on the numerous ancient sources available at the time.
The structure of the preface, documented
The structure of the preface is stable and well documented. Every preface-and, since the preface is the initial part of the Eucharistic Prayer, every Eucharistic Prayer-opens with a dialogue, which is already attested in very ancient sources, such as the Apostolic Tradition, and which appears in most Western and Eastern liturgies.
Here too, as in the other particularly important moments of the Mass, the minister addresses the people with a greeting that wishes to emphasize that the Lord is present in the priestly people gathered for the celebration (in this case the implied Latin verb would be est: Dominus vobiscum est) and that it is at the same time a prayer that is raised to God to be present in the heart of each one of those present and therefore to act as the Church of Christ (in this case a sit: Dominus vobiscum sit). It is a greeting of origin biblical (Rt 2:4; 2 Chr 15:2; 2 Thess 3:16), already used in the liturgy in the time of St. Augustine.
The people's response Et cum spiritu tuo refers to the gift of the Spirit that the minister has received through the sacrament of Holy Orders and, in a way, reminds the presbyter that what he is about to accomplish goes far beyond his abilities: he can only do it by virtue of the gift of the Holy Spirit. This is why this dialogue is reserved to bishops, priests and deacons.
Elevate the heart to God
Then, the the priest invites the people to raise their hearts to God, and he does so also with the gesture of raising his hands. The biblical root of these expressions is found in Lam 3:41 and Col 3:1. Again, it is an exchange already attested to by St. Augustine, who, in a discourse addressed to the newly baptized, exhorted them that their response should correspond to the true attitude of the heart, since they are responding to divine acts. To raise the heart to God means to recollect oneself so that the interior and exterior attitude is truly attentive and participatory.
The dialogue ends with the invitation Gratias agamus Domino Deo nostro and the answer Dignum et iustum est. These expressions have a biblical parallel in Rev 11:17, but also in 1 Thess 1:2 and 2 Thess 1:2. Here the people are invited to join in the Eucharistic prayer pronounced by the minister, that is, to join Christ himself in magnifying the great works of God and offering the sacrifice: the priest is in fact acting in persona Christi and in the name of the Church. The response of the faithful manifests their willingness to effectively unite themselves to the Eucharistic prayer with their faith and devotion and constitutes a kind of bridge to the body of the Preface that immediately follows.
From the point of view of the structure of the preface, we can distinguish three parts: a more or less fixed introduction, a central nucleus called embolism and a conclusion, which, like the introduction, tends to be expressed in recurring phrases; the latter is intended to introduce the Sanctus, the great acclamation that immediately follows the preface.
As for the theological content of the preface, what interests us most is the embolism, which is the variable part of the preface and constitutes a specific look at the celebrated mystery.
Easter prefaces
As for the Easter prefaces, all five are introduced by a formula that is always identical and constitutes a specificity of these Eucharistic texts. In fact, they are all presented in this way:
It is indeed just and necessary, it is our duty and salvation to glorify you always, Lord, but more than ever in this time in which Christ, our Passover, has been immolated.
The Latin text is, in a way, even more transparent; the expression contained in the last sentence, in fact, clarifies why it is truly good and right to proclaim the glory of God on this day: cum Pascha nostrum immolatus est Christus.
It is a causal/temporal expression: when/when Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed. The almost direct quotation comes from 1 Cor 5:7 and immediately opens the understanding of the meaning of the preface, which is also underlined by the title: De mysterio paschali.
The death of Jesus, a true sacrifice
The Pauline expression introduces us to the meaning of what we are celebrating: the death of Jesus on the Cross is not a mere capital execution, but a true sacrifice. In fact, God has "openly made him an instrument of atonement through faith in his blood, as a manifestation of his righteousness for the forgiveness of sins that are past" (Rom 3:25). Here "instrument of atonement" translates the Greek ἱλαστήριον, indicating the golden lid of the ark of the covenant, which, on the day of Yom Kippur, the high priest sprinkled with the blood of the victims, to restore the covenant relationship with God broken by sins (Ex 24:1-8; Lev 16:14-17). "Christ loved us and gave himself for us, offering himself to God as a sacrifice for a sweet-smelling aroma" (Eph 5:2).
This introduces the embolism, the very heart of the preface:
For He is the true Lamb who took away the sin of the world; dying he destroyed our death, and rising from the dead restored life.
The Lamb that took away the sin of the world
It is a text interwoven with Sacred Scripture: we note the reminiscences of Jn 1:29, when the Baptist "seeing Jesus coming toward him, said: Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world", as well as 1 Pet 1:19, which defines Christ as "a lamb without blemish and without spot", using an expression proper to sacrificial language (Lv 14:10; 23:28; etc.). Below we can also note the reference to Rev 5:6, which contemplates the Lamb in the midst of the throne, "standing as if slain".
In the context of the old covenant, the lamb was sacrificed in an attempt to obtain divine benevolence in the face of the multitude of sins of the chosen people. However, it was an attempt that never achieved its objective, since that blood was incapable of purifying consciences; a sign of the ineffectiveness of such sacrifices was precisely the fact that they had to be repeated every year.
Now, however, Christ "has conquered death and has made life and incorruption shine forth through the Gospel" (2 Tim 1:10). This is why the Apocalypse contemplates the Lamb slain but at the same time upright: we could say dead and risen.
Thus Cromatius of Aquileia comments on the event celebrated at the Easter Vigil, which is present in every Eucharistic celebration: "Men on earth also celebrate [this vigil] because for the salvation of the human race Christ suffered death in order to conquer death by dying (...) [7] because the Son suffered death according to the will of the Father to give us life by his death".
Pontifical University of the Holy Cross (Rome)
