A listener named Alex asks Father Dave about the Eucharistic Prayer. Alex says, “In the Mass, Eucharistic Prayer I has a lengthy list of saints. How is this list determined, and can the presider add or subtract names to the list?”
Father Dave first explains how there are multiple Eucharistic Prayers in the Roman Missal. He says, “There are four main Eucharistic Prayers — I, II, III, and IV — and then there are several other ones that are also in the Roman Missal that we can choose from.” Father Dave notes that Eucharistic Prayer I has an alternate name, “The Roman Canon.”
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“This is the Roman Eucharistic Prayer. …There were, at a time, canons or Eucharistic Prayers that were native to other places. This was the original and most fully formed one in the early centuries that was used in Rome after Christianity became legal,” Father Dave continues.
He lists some of the saints named in this prayer, beginning with Mary and Joseph. “Then we start mentioning a few Apostles by name: Peter and Paul, Andrew, James, John, Thomas, James, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Simon and Jude,” Father Dave says. “Now come the less familiar names: Linus, Cletus, Clement, Sixtus, Cornelius, Cyprian, Lawrence, Chrysogonus, John and Paul, Cosmas and Damian and all your saints.”
“Almost all of these saints that are listed by name, other than the Apostles, are the early martyrs and saints of the city of Rome. There’s even a list later on that mentions more names,” Father Dave continues, and makes a modern-day comparison. “Many of them died prior to when we had a Roman Canon. So imagine if immediately after a tragedy, if we were praying, we might invoke people that had just given their lives. …We do this still on the anniversary of September 11th, 2001, in a ceremony where names are read of all 3000 people who lost their lives that day.”
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Similarly, Father Dave says, “This Roman Canon was developed in the immediate aftermath of these saints’ lives, who some people had known in person and who had died for the faith. Now, we’ve kept it and handed it on to the Universal Church.” This is also why modern saints are not usually added to this prayer, though the Roman Missal does detail options for the presider to reduce the number of names listed.
While other prayers could have been chosen from other regions, Father Dave underscores that Rome has special significance. “Even today, Rome is considered the headquarters or the home office of the Catholic Church. We call ourselves the Roman Catholic Church, and it is the Roman Missal that we pray from [during Mass],” he says. “So one [Eucharistic Prayer] they retained for everybody all around the world was the way it was prayed in the early centuries in the Diocese of Rome.”
