Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Rituals

The Epiclesis

Also Known As The invocation of the Holy SpiritOriginal Term Epiclesis
Liturgical Rituals

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The epiclesis is the moment in the eucharistic prayer when the church asks God to send the Holy Spirit, and the Greek word means the calling down upon. In the Byzantine rite the priest, after the account of the institution, asks God to send the Spirit upon the gifts and upon the people, and the deacon and priest bow; this is where the Orthodox understand the church's prayer to be granted and the gifts to be sanctified. The Roman Canon has no single petition of that name, and its corresponding prayers stand on either side of the institution narrative, one asking God to bless the offering and one asking that it be carried to the altar on high. The eucharistic prayers added to the Roman Missal in 1969 restored an explicit invocation of the Spirit, placed before the narrative, with a second invocation on the communicants afterwards. The same word is used for the invocation of the Spirit in baptism, in the blessing of chrism and at ordination, so the eucharistic epiclesis is one instance of a general pattern rather than an isolated formula.

Facts
Disputed
Scholarly Note
Where in the prayer the consecration takes place divided Greek and Latin theologians from the fourteenth century 4
The epiclesis, the invocation of the Holy Spirit within the eucharistic prayer, sits at the centre of a long-standing East-West disagreement over exactly when and how the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. John Meyendorff's Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes (1979) sets out the Greek position, that the invocation of the Spirit is the moment at which the church asks for and receives the consecration, so that a formula understood to act automatically without that asking would make the priest an independent operator rather than a petitioner of God. The Latin position instead holds that Christ's own words of institution carry an unconditional promise sufficient in themselves, so praying afterward for a change already accomplished is theologically incoherent. Meyendorff's method is historical and doctrinal, tracing each position to its own patristic and scholastic sources. Modern liturgical scholarship in both communions increasingly treats the whole eucharistic prayer as consecratory in its entirety, reading the search for one precise instant of change as a scholastic question the earliest texts never set out to answer, a third position rather than a resolution.
Origins
Place of Origin
Roman Judaea and Galilee 1
The invocation of the Spirit is part of the shared early Christian eucharistic prayer; its own text describes the Byzantine and Roman traditions placing it differently, a later liturgical divergence rather than the prayer's origin.
Historical Origin
Eastern and Western eucharistic theology have historically differed over which moment of the liturgy effects consecration, Eastern tradition generally locating it at the epiclesis rather than, as in the West, at the Words of Institution alone. 4
Practice
Who Performs It
Clergy or ordained officiants 5
Liturgical and Scriptural Role
A petition within the eucharistic prayer asking God to send the Holy Spirit upon the gifts and upon the people 5
Observance
Observance Note
Placed after the institution narrative in the Byzantine rite and before it in the eucharistic prayers of the 1969 Roman Missal 2
Attributions
Tradition
Christianity 1
Purpose
The Byzantine Rite: A Short History describes the epiclesis as the prayer invoking the Holy Spirit to consecrate the bread and wine, the moment Eastern liturgical tradition treats as central to the Eucharist becoming Christ's body and blood. 2
Meaning
Literal Meaning
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church glosses the Greek term as invocation, naming the moment in the eucharistic prayer at which the Holy Spirit is called down upon the bread and wine or upon the gathered people. 1
Status
Status Within the TraditionSourced to the subject's own account
The Canon has no petition of that name; the words of Christ are held to be the form of the sacrament 3Tradition: Roman Catholicism
Status Within the Tradition
The point at which the church understands its prayer to be granted and the gifts sanctified 4Tradition: Eastern Orthodoxy
Learn More
Asking for the Spirit, and Where the Asking Sits

An epiclesis is a petition, and its position inside the eucharistic prayer decides a great deal that its wording does not. In the Byzantine anaphoras the priest recites the account of the institution, continues with the remembrance, and then asks God to send the Holy Spirit upon the assembly and upon the gifts set out, that the bread may become the body of Christ and what is in the cup his blood. The deacon and the priest bow, and in Slavic practice the troparion of the third hour is inserted at that point. Because the petition comes after the narrative, it reads naturally as the request that the narrative has led up to, and the Orthodox understanding follows the shape: the church asks, and God answers.

The Roman Canon has no petition of that name. Two prayers do comparable work and they stand on either side of the narrative, the first asking God to bless and approve the offering and the second asking that it be borne by an angel to the altar on high. Latin theology, reading the narrative as the form of the sacrament, had no need of a request for the Spirit and did not develop one. The eucharistic prayers added in 1969 restored an explicit invocation, and put it before the narrative rather than after, so that the Roman rite now has an epiclesis in a position that keeps its own account of consecration intact.

The same word covers the invocation of the Spirit at baptism, at the blessing of chrism and at ordination, which is why liturgical writers treat the eucharistic epiclesis as one case of a general pattern in Christian prayer rather than as a device peculiar to the eucharist.

A Quarrel Between Greeks and Latins, and How It Cooled

From the fourteenth century the epiclesis became a weapon. Greek writers argued that the Latins, by treating the words of Christ as the form that effects the change, had made the priest a magician working with a formula and had left no room for the church to ask anything of God. Latin writers replied that praying for the Spirit to change gifts already changed is incoherent, and that the Greek position amounts to asking God to do what he has already done. Both sides were defending something real. The Greek concern was that the eucharist is answered prayer and not an operation; the Latin concern was that the promise attached to the words of Christ is unconditional and does not wait on the church's petition.

The Council of Florence took the matter up in the fifteenth century and produced no settlement that either practice reflected, and the argument continued in the theological manuals of both communions into the twentieth century. What cooled it was scholarship rather than negotiation. Liturgical historians working on the earliest texts found prayers that do not divide neatly into a consecrating moment and the rest, and the view that the anaphora consecrates as a whole gained ground in both communions, which leaves the placing of the epiclesis a difference of structure rather than a difference about what God does.

The practical results are visible. The Roman Missal of 1969 restored an explicit invocation of the Spirit, Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist and Reformed revisions of the same decades did the same, and the ecumenical convergence text of 1982 treats the invocation as a normal part of a eucharistic prayer. None of that settles the older question, and neither church has withdrawn its position.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Belongs to Tradition

Kept in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first denomination in the United States founded by Black people. The Great Thanksgiving carries an explicit invocation of the Holy Spirit on the gifts and on the people, which the sixteenth-century English rite did not.

Kept in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. The Great Thanksgiving carries an explicit invocation of the Holy Spirit on the gifts and on the people, which the sixteenth-century English rite did not.

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. The invocation of the Spirit was in the 1549 book, removed in 1552, and restored in the Scottish and American books, from which it came back into the modern English ones.

The invocation of the Spirit was in the 1549 book, removed in 1552, and restored in the Scottish and American books, from which it came back into the modern English ones.

Kept in the Armenian Apostolic Church. The epiclesis follows the institution narrative, as in the Byzantine rite.

Kept in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. The Great Thanksgiving carries an explicit invocation of the Holy Spirit on the gifts and on the people, which the sixteenth-century English rite did not.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Kept in the Church of Cyprus, autocephalous since the Council of Ephesus in 431. The epiclesis follows the institution narrative and is held to be the moment of consecration, which is the central Eastern difference from Western eucharistic theology.

Kept in the Church of England, the province from which the Prayer Book tradition comes. The invocation of the Spirit was in the 1549 book, removed in 1552, and restored in the Scottish and American books, from which it came back into the modern English ones.

Kept in the Church of Greece. The epiclesis follows the institution narrative and is held to be the moment of consecration, which is the central Eastern difference from Western eucharistic theology.

Kept in the Church of Ireland. The invocation of the Spirit was in the 1549 book, removed in 1552, and restored in the Scottish and American books, from which it came back into the modern English ones.

Kept in the Church of the Nazarene, which stands in the Wesleyan holiness line. The Great Thanksgiving carries an explicit invocation of the Holy Spirit on the gifts and on the people, which the sixteenth-century English rite did not.

Kept in the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. The epiclesis follows the institution narrative, as in the Byzantine rite.

The epiclesis follows the institution narrative and is held to be the moment of consecration, which is the central Eastern difference from Western eucharistic theology.

Source Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic ChurchIsabel Florence Hapgood (compiler and translator)

Kept in the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the see of first honour among the Orthodox churches. The epiclesis follows the institution narrative and is held to be the moment of consecration, which is the central Eastern difference from Western eucharistic theology.

Kept in the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The epiclesis follows the institution narrative, as in the Byzantine rite.

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The epiclesis follows the institution narrative, as in the Byzantine rite.

Kept in the Free Methodist Church. The Great Thanksgiving carries an explicit invocation of the Holy Spirit on the gifts and on the people, which the sixteenth-century English rite did not.

Kept in the Georgian Orthodox Church, which has used its own language and script in worship since the fifth century. The epiclesis follows the institution narrative and is held to be the moment of consecration, which is the central Eastern difference from Western eucharistic theology.

Kept in the Global Methodist Church, formed in 2022. The Great Thanksgiving carries an explicit invocation of the Holy Spirit on the gifts and on the people, which the sixteenth-century English rite did not.

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches. The epiclesis follows the institution narrative and is held to be the moment of consecration, which is the central Eastern difference from Western eucharistic theology.

The Great Thanksgiving carries an explicit invocation of the Holy Spirit on the gifts and on the people, which the sixteenth-century English rite did not.

Source The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist ChurchUnited Methodist Churchthe holders' own account

The epiclesis follows the institution narrative, as in the Byzantine rite.

The Roman rite places the invocation of the Spirit before the institution narrative rather than after it, the reverse of the Byzantine order.

Source General Instruction of the Roman Missal, third typical editionCongregation for Divine Worshipthe holders' own account

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. The epiclesis follows the institution narrative and is held to be the moment of consecration, which is the central Eastern difference from Western eucharistic theology.

Kept in the Russian Orthodox Church, in the Slavonic recension of the Byzantine books. The epiclesis follows the institution narrative and is held to be the moment of consecration, which is the central Eastern difference from Western eucharistic theology.

Kept in the Serbian Orthodox Church. The epiclesis follows the institution narrative and is held to be the moment of consecration, which is the central Eastern difference from Western eucharistic theology.

Kept in the Episcopal Church, whose own Prayer Book descends from the Scottish rather than the English line. The invocation of the Spirit was in the 1549 book, removed in 1552, and restored in the Scottish and American books, from which it came back into the modern English ones.

Kept in the United Methodist Church. The Great Thanksgiving carries an explicit invocation of the Holy Spirit on the gifts and on the people, which the sixteenth-century English rite did not.

The epiclesis follows the institution narrative, in the Byzantine order.

Kept in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The epiclesis follows the institution narrative and is held to be the moment of consecration, which is the central Eastern difference from Western eucharistic theology.

Kept in the Wesleyan Church. The Great Thanksgiving carries an explicit invocation of the Holy Spirit on the gifts and on the people, which the sixteenth-century English rite did not.

Part Of

The epiclesis of the Byzantine liturgy attributed to Chrysostom.

Source The Byzantine Rite: A Short HistoryRobert F. Taft
The Anaphora, Rituals

A petition inside the great prayer.

Source The Shape of the LiturgyGregory Dix

Related To

Why this is disputed. The two candidates for the moment of consecration, and the order in which they stand differs East and West. Eastern Orthodox liturgy places the epiclesis after the words of institution and treats the Holy Spirit's invocation as integral to consecration, while the Latin scholastic tradition holds the words of institution alone effect the change, and the two churches have never resolved which position is correct.

Sources
1. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005View the Source
2. The Byzantine Rite: A Short History
Robert F. Taft, The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, 1992View the Source
3. General Instruction of the Roman Missal, third typical edition
Congregation for Divine Worship, Congregation for Divine Worship, 2002the holders' own accountView the Source
4. Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes
John Meyendorff, Fordham University Press, 1979View the Source
5. The Shape of the Liturgy
Gregory Dix, Dacre Press, 1945View the Source
The Egyptian or Coptic Church: A Detailed Description of Her Liturgical Services
O. H. E. KHS-Burmester, Societe d'Archeologie Copte, Cairo, 1967View the Source
Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church
Isabel Florence Hapgood (compiler and translator), Houghton Mifflin, 1906View the Source
The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church
United Methodist Church, The United Methodist Publishing Housethe holders' own accountView the Source
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