Eucharistic Prayer
By Linda Rex
It seems that so many of us go through life trying to fill some deep emptiness within our soul. We are driven by our needs, our hurts, and our losses. We live like we are poverty-stricken and as if we have to beg and plead with God to get him to do anything to help us. It’s as though we feel that we’re all alone in the universe trying to sort out and fix everything on our own.
But the truth is that this isn’t about us at all and never has been. We’re busy striving to fill this emptiness, trying to make life work, thinking we’re starving, poor orphans, when reality we are wealthy adopted children of God Almighty.
But God is calling us to rest, not to striving. God has given us rest in Jesus—all we need for life and godliness are ours. We’ve been given the “two hands of God”, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, and by doing so, God has given us his very self.
It’s not about us, but about the will of the Father worked out through his Son Jesus and in his Holy Spirit. We are bound in union with God in Christ and we share in the family relationship in the communion of the Holy Spirit. We are seated at the heavenly table of communion sharing in Christ’s intimate relationship of love with his Father in the Spirit. So we participate in the life and love of Father, Son and Spirit.
Our response to this rest in Christ is gratitude. Here in Colossians 4, Paul uses the word eucharisti which is translated “thanksgiving” in the NASB. Our attitude in prayer is one of thanksgiving or eucharist. We participate in the thanksgiving, gratitude of sharing in the heavenly life and love.
So our prayer isn’t done in a desperate plea, begging God somehow to consider possibly helping us—as though he was indifferent to our suffering and needs. We can ask, but we do so in an attitude of gratitude, resting in the reality that we are God’s beloved adopted children who he cares deeply for and is protectively watching over. Instead of seeing the world through the eyes of need and suffering, we see it through the eyes of gratitude, knowing we have nothing to fear.
Our life of prayer flows, then, out of gratitude. To live in gratitude requires faith, dependency upon God, living in relationship with God. We grow in our relationship with him, coming to know him more and more intimately and so coming to trust him more and more. We come to see his heart toward us is love and grace. We come to see and admit that we are not the center—he is.
This Eucharistic prayer reflects gratitude that God in Christ has freed us from sin, self and Satan and has given us his gifts and calling in the Spirit. We learn to trust God to do what is needed in each situation in our lives. We find ourselves thanking God more than asking him for things. We live in a relationship with God that is so meaningful we want to share it with others.
He has welcomed us to his table which is full and overflowing. So we are motivated then to invite others to come to the table to eat with us. We begin to pray for others to share in the Triune life. We are moved to share the good news of life in Christ, desiring others to share in the family circle with us. Our gratitude for God’s awesome gift motivates us to share the truth that we have new life in Christ—we are forgiven, accepted and beloved.
Thank you, Father, for your great love for us. Thank you for sharing your very self with us in Jesus your Son and in the Holy Spirit. Grant us the grace to live in gratitude, offering our prayers in an attitude of thankfulness, and inviting others to share in our abundant blessings through Jesus and in the Spirit. Amen.
“Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving; praying at the same time for us as well, that God will open up to us a door for the word, so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ, for which I have also been imprisoned; that I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak. Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunity. Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person.” Col 4:2–6 NASB
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