Father Robert Taft concludes that, although there were not extant pre- Nicene (325 AD) Eucharistic prayers that contained the Words of Institution, "the eucharistic gifts were consecrated in the eucharistic prayer." Ludwig Ott points to the First Apology of Justin Martyr from ca.
What was essential, she says, was the ritual, consisting of the four actions of taking bread, giving thanks, breaking it, and giving it to be eaten, accompanying the actions by saying some words identifying the bread with Jesus' body, and similarly with respect to the cup. She says that the evidence from the early church suggests that the words of institution were not then used liturgically, but only catechetically, and so the narrative of the Last Supper was not used in celebrating the Eucharist.
In her study The Function of the Words of Institution in the Celebration of the Lord's Supper Ros Clarke refers to evidence that suggests that Words of Institution were not used in the celebration during the 2nd century. There is no consensus among scholars if the Words of Institution were used in the celebrations of the Eucharist during the first two or three centuries or if their use was only sporadic. They may even insert other words, such as the phrase " Mysterium fidei", which for many centuries was found within the Roman Rite's Words of Institution, until that phrase was placed after it in 1970, and has a counterpart in the Syrian liturgy's τὸ μυστήριον τῆς καινῆς διαθήκης ("the mystery of the new covenant"). The formulas generally combine words from the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke and the Pauline account in 1 Corinthians 11:24–25. No formula of Words of Institution in any liturgy is claimed to be an exact reproduction of words that Jesus used, presumably in the Aramaic language, at his Last Supper. However, groups authorized by the Catholic Church to review the Qurbana recognized the validity of this Eucharistic celebration in its original form, without explicit mention of the Words of Institution, saying that "the words of Eucharistic Institution are indeed present in the Anaphora of Addai and Mari, not in a coherent narrative way and ad litteram, but rather in a dispersed euchological way, that is, integrated in successive prayers of thanksgiving, praise and intercession." The Chaldean Catholic Church and the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, two of the Eastern Catholic Churches, use the same Anaphora, but insert in it the Words of Institution. The only ancient Eucharistic ritual still in use that does not explicitly contain the Words of Institution is the Holy Qurbana of Addai and Mari, used for part of the year by the Assyrian and the Ancient Church of the East. This is the practice of the Latin Rite and Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and all the churches of Oriental Orthodoxy, including the Armenian, the Coptic, the Ethiopian and the Malankara, as well as the Anglican Communion, Lutheran Churches, Methodist Churches and Reformed Churches. Eucharistic scholars sometimes refer to them simply as the verba (Latin for "words").Īlmost all existing ancient Christian Churches explicitly include the Words of Institution in their Eucharistic celebrations, and consider them necessary for the validity of the sacrament. The Words of Institution (also called the Words of Consecration) are words echoing those of Jesus himself at his Last Supper that, when consecrating bread and wine, Christian Eucharistic liturgies include in a narrative of that event.
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