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St. Thomas Aquinas (+1274) composed a Prayer of Thanksgiving after Communion that became a classic: I thank You, O holy Lord, almighty Father, eternal God, who have deigned, not through any merits of mine, but out of the condescension of Your goodness, to satisfy me a sinner, Your unworthy servant, with the precious Body and Blood of Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Christ's gesture of breaking bread at the Last Supper, which gave the entire Eucharistic Action its name in apostolic times, signifies that the many faithful are made one body (1 Cor 10:17) by receiving Communion from the one Bread of Life which is Christ, who died and rose for the salvation of the world. The fraction or breaking of bread is ...
The Anaphora, [a] Eucharistic Prayer, [b] or Great Thanksgiving, [1] [c] is a portion of the Christian liturgy of the Eucharist in which, through a prayer of thanksgiving, the elements of bread and wine are consecrated. The prevalent historical Roman Rite form is called the "Canon of the Mass".
Cyprian's Treatise On The Lord's Prayer, c. 250, identifies the Eucharist with the daily bread mentioned in The Lord's Prayer: "And we ask that this bread should be given to us daily, that we who are in Christ, and daily receive the Eucharist for the food of salvation, may not, by the interposition of some heinous sin, by being prevented, as ...
The bread used for the Liturgy is referred to as prosphora. A prosphoron is a round loaf of leavened bread baked in two layers to represent the two natures of Christ. It has a square seal on the top side which has inscribed on it a cross and the Greek letters IC (an abbreviation in Greek for "Jesus") XC ("Christ") and NIKA ("Conquers"). [2]
Sometimes, special kitchen implements are used for making the prosphora which are used for no other purpose. There may be special prayers said before commencing, and the baker tries to maintain a religious state of mind throughout, often saying the Jesus Prayer. Usually enough prosphora for a number of services are baked at the same time.
Breaking of the Bread The Lord Jesus, on the night of his arrest, took bread, and after giving thanks to God, he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying: Take, eat. This is my body, given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way he took the cup, saying: This cup is the new covenant sealed in my blood,
In more modern Anglican versions of the Communion service, such as Common Worship [9] used in the Church of England or the 1979 Book of Common Prayer [10] used in the Episcopal Church in the United States, the Collect of the Day follows the Gloria and precedes readings from the Bible.