Prayer and the Eucharist

The graph of Christian prayer conforms very closely to the central action of the Eucharist.  First the Sanctus, the type of all adoring worship ‘with angels and archangels glorifying the Holy Name’ and lifting heart and mind to the contemplation of Reality.  Then the bread and wine, the ordinary stuff of life raised to the plane of sacrifice and freely offered that it may be blessed and transformed by the action of the Holy, made the food and salvation of the soul.  And now we stand at the central point on which all this is poised: where the heavenly prayer and the earthly prayer meet.  Our Father, which art in heaven . . . Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  The Will: that mysterious attribute of the Living Godhead of which a little crumb is given to men, in order that it may be united in love to the Whole from which it came.  Once again the priority of the Holy, the overruling interests of the Transcendent are re-affiliated as the very substance of the creature’s adoring prayer.

– Abba.  A meditation on the Lord’s Prayer (1940), by Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941)