Eucharistic Prayers: A Brief History

by Fr. John Granato  |  09/15/2024  |  Words from Fr. John

My Dear Friends,

For over 1,500 years the Catholic Church of the Roman Rite used exclusively only one Eucharistic prayer, which is the prayer the priest prays while you are kneeling and the prayer that brings forth the transubstantiation of the bread and wine which will become our Lord’s Body and Blood. It is called the Roman Canon, or Eucharistic Prayer I in our new Mass since 1970. It is a very ancient canon and is closely associated with the city of Rome itself as the Catholic Church was in the early centuries forming itself as the center of the Catholic world.

Today we have three other Eucharistic prayers that were written and compiled in the Missal of 1970. When I was growing up and attending Mass in the1980’s and into the 1990’s, the Eucharistic prayer used almost exclusively was Eucharistic prayer II. It is allegedly based on the prayer of St. Hippolytus, who died in 235 AD. St Hippolytus was a priest who was disenchanted with several popes and broke away and called himself the Bishop of Rome. He is listed in the History of the Popes as an anti-pope. He was reconciled with Pope Pontian before he was martyred and is celebrated in our liturgy on August 13th with Pope St. Pontian. It is the shortest of all the Eucharistic prayers, hence the reason why many priests use this one almost exclusively. It also is the one that is preferred by the Anglican Communion and Lutheran Communion, and many Protestants have never had any problem with the language of this second Eucharistic prayer because it lacks the sacrificial language that is prevalent in the Roman Canon.

At the time when the Liturgical Commission was meeting to destroy many of the elements of the traditional Latin Mass, Fr. Louis Bouyer and Dom Bernard Botte met to discuss one of these texts, the second Eucharistic prayer. They met at a bistro in Trastevere and used texts associated with St. Hippolytus and needed to fix the texts by the morning to present them to the commission. According to the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, Eucharistic Prayer II is not meant to be said on Sundays. Yet, millions of Catholics worldwide hear the shortest Eucharistic prayer that was composed in a bistro in Italy and was never intended for Sunday Mass as the prime example of our once beautiful Roman Rite. I will be discussing the various Eucharistic prayers in these bulletin letters off and on for the next few weeks since the Eucharistic prayer is the heart of our Mass experience. God bless