Page:Orthodox Eastern Church (Fortescue).djvu/424

386 the word, since they talk Greek and we Latin, they will go on saying while we say Transubstantiatio.

5. The Epiklesis.

A more serious discussion about the Holy Eucharist concerns the moment at which this change takes place. All the Eastern liturgies contain the words of institution, our Lord's own words "This is my Body," and "This is the chalice of my Blood." But the Orthodox do not believe that these are the words of Consecration; they recite them merely historically, and afterwards they have a solemn invocation of the Holy Ghost, praying him to change this bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. This invocation is the Epiklesis, and they believe that then, and not till then, are the bread and wine consecrated. They also reproach us that we have no Epiklesis in our liturgy, and are disposed to doubt the validity of our Holy Eucharist for this reason. In the first place we have an Epiklesis, although a hardly recognizable one. The prayer Supplices te rogamus in our missal is the remnant of the old Latin invocation. Secondly the Orthodox admit that the words of institution must be said first, and that an Epiklesis alone would not be sufficient. Both sides in this controversy, then, use the two forms, words of institution and Epiklesis; the only question at issue is as to the moment at which Consecration takes place, as to which is, as we should say, the form of the Sacrament. The Roman Church has settled the matter for us by commanding the priest to kneel, adore, and then elevate the Blessed Sacrament immediately after the words of institution

1 The Russians now seem to prefer a really Slav word, presushchestvlenie, which they say is an exact rendering of. They are certainly right in avoiding derived words as far as possible.