To turn unleavened bread into the Flesh of the Son of Man, the duly ordained Roman Catholic priest prays:
Qui pridie quam paterétur, accépit panem in sanctas ac venerábiles manus suas, et elevátis óculis in cælum, ad te Deum Patrem suum omnipotentem, tibi gratias agens, benedixit, fregit, deditque discípulis suis, dicens: Accípite, et manducáte ex hoc omnes.Hoc est enim Corpus meum.
Which I translate as:
Who, the day before He suffered, took bread into His holy and venerable hands, and with His eyes lifted up towards Heaven unto Thee, God, His almighty Father, giving thanks to Thee, He blessed it, broke it and gave it to His disciples saying: Take and eat ye all of this:For this is My Body.
The Qui pridie closely mirror the Last Supper accounts given in the synoptic Gospels and in 1 Corinthians 11, 23-25, with five exceptions.
First, the prayer identifies the time as the day before rather than the night before. Indeed, the Roman Canon is the only eucharistic prayer in Christendom that does so. I cannot think of a theological reason why, but it is distinctive.
Second, the Last Supper accounts do not state that Jesus lifted his eyes to Heaven. Our Lord did, however, lift His eyes up at the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. (see Jn. 6, 5) There are two possible explanations: either the authors of the Roman Canon engrafted this gesture onto the Institution narrative or Jesus did indeed lift His eyes up at the Last Supper and the memory of this gesture was preserved by oral rather than written tradition. St. Thomas Aquinas favors the latter explanation:
As is stated in the last chapter of John (verse 25), Our Lord said and did many things which are not written down by the Evangelists; and among them is the uplifting of His eyes to Heaven at the supper; nevertheless the Roman Church had it by tradition from the Apostles. For it seems reasonable that He Who lifted up His eyes to the Father in raising Lazarus to life, as related in John 11, 41, and in the prayer which He made for the disciples (John 17, 1), had more reason to do so in instituting this sacrament, as being of greater import. [1]
Aquinas and his contemporaries also puzzled over the third difference between the Canon and the Gospels, namely, that the Canon uses the verb manducare for eating while the Latin translations of the Bible use comedere. The Angelic Doctor concludes:
That manducate is said instead of comedite makes no difference in the meaning, nor does it matter much what is said, particularly because those words are not part of the form [of the sacrament]. [2]
As to why there is a difference in the first place, Craig Toth speculates that the basic classical Latin verb for eating (edere) fell out of favor in “vulgar” (popular) Latin and that it was replaced with other verbs like manducare and comedere. By the composition of the Canon, manducare was a perfectly respectable synonym for eating, despite its uncouth origins. Manducare originally meant “to chew, to eat with avidity”; And Manducus, “the Chewer,”
was a masked stock character that figured in the popular Atellan farces and in processions (pompae). The grotesque mask was fashioned with huge, widely gaping jaws and clattering teeth. [3]
It would therefore be highly inappropriate, but not technically incorrect, to translate Accipite et manducate ex hoc omnes as “Take and chow down on this, all of you.” One wonders if there is not a hidden providence in this arresting diction. Manduco, manduconis is the Latin word for a glutton or gourmand. Could Our Lord be telling us to be positively eager and avaricious when it comes to receiving Him sacramentally?
Fourth, the Qui pridie describes Christ’s hands as “holy and venerable,” even though the Gospels do not. But how can Our Lord’s hands not be holy and venerable? The prayer betrays a most tender love for Our Lord, marveling over His innocent hands that will soon be, as the narrative of His Passion unfolds, shackled by bonds and pierced by nails. And the description is an implicit reminder that the priest’s hands are also sacred, consecrated at his ordination for this most important service. [4]
Fifth, enim has been added to the Words of Institution. Enim in Latin is a demonstrative corroborative particle usually placed after the first or second word in a sentence. It either corroborates a preceding assertion, like the English “indeed” or “to be sure,” or it proves or shows the grounds of a preceding assertion, like the English “for.” Here, I believe it functions as both, as if to say, “I want you to take and eat this, for this indeed is My Body.” [5] It is a subtle way of confirming the core of our belief in the Eucharist.
The rubrics for this prayer create a perfect isomorphism between word and deed. When the priest says, “He took bread,” he takes the host into his hands; when he says, “with His eyes lifted up towards Heaven,” he lifts his eyes up to the crucifix; when he says, “giving thanks to You,” he bows his head in gratitude; and when he says, “He blessed it,” he blesses the host. The only action he does not imitate is breaking the bread; breaking a hard unleavened host would make it unwieldy. The West Syrians and the Copts, however, are able to crack their leavened host at this point without breaking it in two. [6] Overall, this highpoint of the Mass is a powerful dramatization of the doctrine that the priest celebrating Mass acts in persona Christi.
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| A page of a Roman Missal printed in 1521, with the words of consecration in larger type. |
As for the moment of consecration, the rubrics stipulate that Hoc est enim Corpus meum is to be said attentively, distinctly, continuously, and reverently. And since the priest’s mouth is only inches away from the host when he says the Words of Institution, the moment is redolent of an insufflation, when a spirit or the Spirit breathes on or is breathed onto something, e.g., the Holy Spirit moving over the face of the waters, (Gen. 1,2) the Lord God breathing a soul into the first man, (Gen. 2,7) and the risen Christ breathing the Holy Spirit onto the disciples. (John 20, 22) This pneumatological dimension of the Consecration is reinforced by the word choice. The “H” in “Hoc” is an aspirated consonant, which requires a strong burst of breath to pronounce. And so, for the priest to say the words correctly, he has to begin by breathing heavily onto the host. And the same is true for the consecration of the wine, which begins with “Hic.” This Spirit moment is further reinforced by the priest’s leaning over, hovering over the host and the chalice as he pronounces the Words of Institution, much like the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit during the Annunciation. (Luke 1, 35)
Notes
[1] Summa Theologiae III.83.4.ad 2.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Craig Toth and Louis Tofari, The Roman Canon: An Interlinear Translation (Romanitas Press, 2023), 57, n. 41.
[4] See Peter Kwasniewski, The Once and Future Roman Rite, 237-39.
[5] “Enim, conj.,” I and II.A, Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary.
