Why has the Eucharist been the centre of most Christians’ communal worship across the Church’s history, a practice we keep today?
There might be any number of reasons. We assemble and create a community of faith, because little worth doing is worth doing alone. We hear the tale of faith read and preached upon, and are invited to find our own place in God’s story. We place on the altar our and the world’s labours, joys and cares, and God transforms them by joining our lives with his, just as in the Incarnation Jesus joined God’s life with ours. We are blessed, and sent away ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven.
Another reason, though, might be that at perhaps its central moment, the offertory, the Eucharist summarises the whole Gospel in word and deed.
In deed, we re-enact the whole of God’s story in microcosm. A fallen Creation has been trending away from God. But at the offertory, God summons it back to be renewed.
In word, at the same time, we hear two short phrases. They encapsulate God’s journey to us, and our response of gratitude and wonder. In brief, they are the whole Gospel.
It’s just four words in the Latin form used by much of the Church in previous times. The writers of the Church of England’s Common Worship have admirably rendered it in nine syllables.
Dominus vobiscum: sursum corda.
The Lord be with you: lift up your hearts.
Chris Braganza
