With the Father and the Son taking “top billing,” the third Person of the Trinity sometimes gets left out from our liturgical focus, relegated to being imagined simply as a bird or confined only to Pentecost and Confirmation. In my early days of music ministry, little did I know that I was snubbing the Spirit whenever I left out the third verse of a Trinitarian opening hymn because the procession had ended.
The Spirit is embedded in every epiclesis, the prayer and laying on of hands gesture that asks the Spirit to change something—bread and wine into Christ’s Body and Blood, an ordinary child into priest, prophet, and king in Christ. Click To TweetYet the Spirit is, liturgically and literally, all around us. At every Sign of the Cross, every doxology concluding a Collect or Eucharistic Prayer, and remembered in every dialogue of “The Lord be with you,” the Spirit is with us, enabling us to do the work of the liturgy.
Most importantly, the Spirit is embedded in every epiclesis, the prayer and laying on of hands gesture that asks the Spirit to change something—bread and wine into Christ’s Body and Blood, an ordinary child into priest, prophet, and king in Christ. Having shared in the Eucharist and reminded of our baptismal call, we receive the same prayer of transformation by the Spirit at the end of every Mass with the blessing and dismissal to go and change the world through the Spirit that has been given to us.
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