A reader recently asked why there are four Eucharistic Prayers in the Mass and what governs which one is chosen.
Well, there are actually several more: three Eucharistic Prayers approved for use in Masses with Children, plus two for Masses in which the focus is on reconciliation. How did we get so many?
Up until Vatican II, the Roman Canon—Eucharistic Prayer I—was the Eucharistic Prayer, said everywhere, every day. In the very earliest Western Church, there were variants—e.g., Gallican liturgies in France, liturgies in Spain, etc.—not to mention the varieties in the East.
Over time, however, the liturgy of Rome—the pope’s liturgy—came to be regarded as the norm others would follow. Nor should we imagine that as merely Rome’s imposition. Alcuin, a clergyman and adviser to Charlemagne, sent for the papal liturgical books and had them copied for use throughout Charlemagne’s domains. He wanted a unified liturgy in that kingdom. (Remember, this was 700 years before the printing press, when Rome could send out a “typical edition”—i.e., the standard text—to everyone.)
During the medieval period and certainly the era of the Council of Trent, the Roman liturgy was the norm for the Western Church and the Roman Canon its Eucharistic Prayer. That situation prevailed until the 1960s.
When Vatican II undertook a reform of the liturgy, the Council said nothing specifically about changing the Eucharistic Prayer. Indeed, most of the council fathers took its fixed nature for granted. That did not stop the Consilium, the body Pope Paul VI had established to carry out the liturgical reform, from undertaking changes. One reason was a general liturgical effort called ressourcement, a “going back to the sources” that we find in the Church of the first five centuries, where there was liturgical pluralism. Another was criticisms of the Roman Canon, which some argued was stylistically inappropriate, not sufficiently conceptually unified, unclear in its theology of the Holy Spirit, etc. Finally, no doubt, there were some ecumenically inclined Consilium types who wanted to “tone down” the explicit theology of sacrifice found in the Roman Canon.
By the time of Vatican II, there were calls in northern Europe for more Eucharistic Prayers, and drafts had been circulated in Germany, Holland, and Switzerland. The Vatican wanted to tamp down on this proliferation as well as ensure the theological orthodoxy of any revisions. The Eucharistic Prayer is, after all, the central prayer of the Church’s life.
The Eucharistic Prayer (or anaphora, the technical term you might see when talking to liturgists) is the prayer that begins with the Preface (“The Lord be with you//and with your spirit//lift up your hearts”) and ends with the Final Doxology (“Through him, with him, in him . . .”). Its components include the Preface (which, in the Roman tradition, is variable); the Sanctus (“Holy, holy, holy”); a further extension of God’s holiness and his role in our salvation; the epiclesis (when the priest extends his hands over the bread and wine and calls on the Holy Spirit to transform these gifts “that they may become the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ”); the consecration (“this is my body,” this is the chalice of my blood”), further memorial of Christ’s work; intercessions for the Church, the living, and the dead; and the Final Doxology.
In practice, the Church today largely uses four Eucharistic Prayers.
Eucharistic Prayer I (EP I) is the Roman Canon. As proof that we should not too slavishly take as normative the tastes of a given moment, I’d note that EP I is used today far more than many 1960s liturgists might have imagined. Among the extant Eucharistic Prayers the longest in continuous use, it has stood the test of time. As de-emphasis on the understanding of Eucharist as sacrifice—with the consequent weakening of Eucharistic understanding—paled, many priests have recovered EP I because of its strong focus on sacrifice (e.g., the sacrifices of Abel, of Abraham, and Melchizedek). It can always be used but is most appropriate to Sundays and significant feasts (where inserts, or embolisms, can be added to its text).
EP II claims to be the revised version of an anaphora in use in the third century, which would make it among the oldest texts of a Eucharistic Prayer. It was recovered in part to meet the principle of “recovering the sources” and also as a shorter prayer, envisioned largely for weekdays.
EP III was a new composition by the Italian liturgist Cipriano Vagaggini. If one accepted the Consilium’s principle that Vatican II’s call for liturgical reform also entitled it to change the Eucharistic Prayer, and taking into account the calls for “variety” in that prayer coming from northern Europe, one would have to produce alternative texts. That is exactly what Vagaggini did, trying to shape a Eucharistic Prayer that compensated for what he saw as the weak points of the Roman Canon. EP III is the general Sunday alternative to the Roman Canon.
EP IV is based on an Eastern Eucharistic Prayer we might call in the tradition of St. Basil. EP IV traces the entire history of salvation from creation through Christ. Unlike the other Eucharistic Prayers (but like in the East), it has a fixed preface, which forms an integral part of that salvation history narrative. Because that preface is fixed, it cannot be replaced with prefaces for specific solemnities and feasts in the Western Church (e.g., Christmas, Easter, Lent, Advent), which essentially results in EP IV being usable only during Ordinary Time. (There was also a period of time when critics of “sexist language” boycotted EP IV because it repeatedly used the generic term “man” for humanity.)
The two Eucharistic Prayers for reconciliation were prepared in conjunction with Holy Year 1975, whose theme was reconciliation. They are sometimes used in Lent.
For a fuller history of the development of the Eucharistic Prayers in the 1960s and why Rome eventually had to stop their unrestrained proliferation, see here.