When I was attending an Orthodox Church, having walked away from the Roman Church for about a year, there were a few prayers in the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom that stood out to be on account of their beauty and profundity. One of them in particular had always really moved me, as I found it resonated with my Catholic background.
After the Institution Narrative, but before the Epiklesis, the priest lifts up the elements and prays thus:
Thine own of Thine own we offer unto Thee, on behalf of all and for all.
There exists somewhat of a disagreement between the two Churches pertaining to exactly when and how the bread and wine is changed into the Body and Blood of Christ. The Catholic Church has settled this question dogmatically: it is by the utterance of the Christ's own words "This is my body... this is my blood," by the priest, who stands in the person of Christ, that the bread and wine become that which they signify. For the Orthodox, this answer has never been universally settled, but the common "high point" of the Eucharistic liturgy is usually said to be the epiclesis, where the Holy Spirit is invoked to descend upon the gifts offered. Generally speaking, the words of institution, as well as the priestly blessing, are deemed necessary and important as well, though some have restricted the essential aspect to the epiclesis alone.
Well, as it turns out, that prayer was actually influenced by Catholicism! Reading up on the debate concerning the Words of Institution, I found and read a great article by Michael Zheltov, entitled "The Moment of Eucharistic Consecration in Byzantine Thought." In addressing this subject and ones related to it, he mentions how the Latin dogma of consecration actually found its way into the Orthodox liturgies for a time.
Another influence, this time unquestionable, resulted in the appearance in the Byzantine rite of a ritual of elevating the discos (paten) and the chalice during the ekphonesis “offering You your own” after the words of institution and before the epiclesis. This ritual is an imitation of the latin elevation of the host and the chalice, performed after the priest has pronounced the words of institution. It was instituted in the West in order to give the catholic believers a chance to participate in the sacrament with their eyes.
In the Orthodox milieu this ritual emerged in early seventeenth-century Ukraine. The rubrics of the printed ukrainian Leitourgika of this time have undergone some reworking. In particular, the revised rubrics instructed the priest to point at the bread and the wine during the words of institution, holding his fingers in a blessing gesture (or just to bless the gifts at this moment), and to elevate the discos and the chalice thereafter (i.e., precisely during the ekphonesis “offering You your own”). This was a clear sign of a strong influence of catholic theology, including the belief in the consecration through the words of institution.
In 1655 these “cryptocatholic” Ukrainian rubrics found their place in the revised Moscow edition of the Leitourgikon. The editions of 1656, 1657 (the first), 1657 (the second), 1658 (the first), 1658 (the second), 1667, 1668, 1676, and 1684, as well as the 1677 edition of the Archieratikon, also contain them. The obvious contradiction between the views held by the Ukrainian editions and the late- and post-Byzantine Greek theological thinking concerning the moment of consecration resulted in a controversy, which emerged in Moscow in the last third of the seventeenth century and which ended only in 1690, when an official refutation of the belief in the consecratory power of the words of institution was promulgated. In the 1699 Moscow edition of the Leitourgikon the appropriate rubrics were reworked, and the prescription to bless the bread and the wine during the words of institution was omitted. Still, the ritual of pointing at the bread and the wine during the words of institution (without holding the fingers in a specific gesture) remained—as did the ritual elevation after their recitation, which is now performed by orthodox everywhere, including Greece, Georgia, etc., although its original meaning is totally forgotten.
It really makes sense. What is the Church offering to God? His own... of His own? This is of course a reference to Jesus, His only begotten Son. But had the Spirit not yet descended upon the gifts, how could the Church be offering to the Father the precious body and blood of the Son? The inclusion of this prayer implies there is a consecratory value in the part which preceded it, namely, the Institution Narrative.
This doesn't serve as an apologia for the orthodoxy of the West's position -- i just thought this was interesting.
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