This oratio—the Eucharistic prayer, the “Canon”—is really more than speech; it is actio in the highest sense of the word. For what happens in it is that the human actio (as performed hitherto by the priests in the various religions of the world) steps back and makes way for the actio divina, the action of God. In this oratio the priest speaks with the I of the Lord—“This is my Body,” “This is my Blood.” He knows that he is not now speaking from his own resources but in virtue of the Sacrament that he has received, he has become the voice of Someone Else, who is now speaking and acting. This action of God, which takes place through human speech, is the real “action” for which all of creation is in expectation. The elements of the earth are transubstantiated, pulled, so to speak, from their creaturely anchorage, grasped at the deepest ground of their being, and changed into the Body and Blood of the Lord. The New Heaven and the New Earth are anticipated. The real “action” in the liturgy in which we are all supposed to participate is the action of God himself. This is what is new and distinctive about the Christian liturgy: God himself acts and does what is essential. He inaugurates the new creation, makes himself accessible to us, so that, through the things of the earth, through our gifts, we can communicate with him in a personal way. But how can we participate, have a part in this action? Are not God and man completely incommensurable? Can man, the finite and sinful one, cooperate with God, the Infinite and Holy One? Yes, he can, precisely because God himself has become man, become body, and here, again and again, he comes through his body to us who live in the body. The whole event of the Incarnation, Cross, Resurrection, and Second Coming is present as the way by which God draws man into cooperation with himself. As we have seen, this is expressed in the liturgy in the fact that the petition for acceptance is part of the oratio. True, the Sacrifice of the Logos is accepted already and forever. But we must still pray for it to become our sacrifice, that we ourselves, as we said, may be transformed into the Logos (logisiert), conformed to the Logos, and so be made the true Body of Christ. This is the issue, and that is what we have to pray for. The petition itself is a way into the Incarnation and the Resurrection, the path that we take in the wayfaring state of our existence… In the words of St. Paul, it is a question of being “united to the Lord” and thus becoming “one spirit with him” (1 Cor 6:17). The point is that, ultimately, the difference between the actio Christi and our own action is done away with. There is only one action, which is at the same time his and ours—ours because we have become “one body and one spirit” with him. The uniqueness of the Eucharistic liturgy lies precisely in the fact that God himself is acting and that we are drawn into that action of God. Everything else is, therefore, secondary.27
Theologie der Liturgie, pp. 148–49. ET: Theology of the Liturgy, pp. 107–8.
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