Kimberley Hope Belcher of Notre Dame, Indiana, is both a liturgical and ecumenical scholar. She has already written on baptism, sacramental and trinitarian themes in Efficacious Engagement Footnote ¹ . A third of the way through this book, Belcher develops a phenomenology of thanksgiving; the Eucharist as the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. This is not easy reading, but it undergirds her whole book. I think her account of a personal encounter between Christ and his people in the dynamic of the human person and liturgical action deserves attention. For her, today, this is a more satisfactory account of the Eucharist than scholastic (meta)physics. Her argument here relies heavily on the sacramental phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion and his followers. Occasionally, her terms are cumbersome; ritual-praxical and analytic discourse, for example. But her stress on the importance of understanding the Eucharist in terms of human communication and ritual is to be heeded.

Belcher begins, however, on the ecumenical imperative despite winter. Her study of the Eucharist is mainly but not exclusively Western. Her personal ecumenical experience as a Roman Catholic is mainly with the Lutheran and Reformed traditions as found in the USA. She quotes Luther and Calvin’s critique of the Mass as understood at the time of the Reformation. This does not lessen the book’s importance for Anglicans, though I would have welcomed a wider reference to the work of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, especially with its current stress on Receptive Ecumenism.Footnote ² Belcher is familiar with recent and not-so-recent writing on eucharistic presence and sacrifice: Schillebeeckx, Kilmartin and Power are influential. She cogently argues that eucharistic theology must move beyond the real presence to the deepest reality (res) of the sacrament; the communion of the Church and its transformation (understood ecumenically). Belcher makes clear that Catholic theologians have long (for example, De La Taille in 1915) discounted the death of a victim as essential to sacrifice. (I would also add such Anglicans as Sir Will Spens, Bishop F C N Hicks and Eric Mascall). She also strongly denies any theory of substitutionary atonement in the face of an angry God. She further rejoices in the diversity of eucharistic liturgies, Western, Eastern, Oriental and Reformation. No tradition is called to renounce its tradition; they are all called to recognize in other liturgical traditions an authentic Christian Eucharist. This includes the Assyrian (Church of the East), with one of its Eucharistic Prayers lacking the so-called words of institution. She twice cites the Vatican Agreement on partial communion with the Assyrian Church as a model for partial communion.

Belcher analyses fourth- and fifth-century eucharistic prayers, both Eastern and Western. She carefully analyses not only the Roman Canon but also the Ambrosian Canon. Indeed, there are hints that Ambrose’s version of the Western Canon of the Mass has a preferable simplicity to the more complex Roman Canon. This reviewer holds that with the revision of the liturgy, after Vatican II, a trick was missed by not offering an Ambrosian version among the several eucharistic prayers of the Roman Rite of Paul VI. In the Archdiocese of Milan, it is, of course, regularly used.

Belcher nevertheless carefully analyses the Roman Canon and commends it, if rightly understood. She argues – as with liturgical scholars before her, such as Joseph Jungmann – that the opening sections of the Roman Canon already speak of the offering of the (originally leaven) loaves and wine in the plural (haec dona, haec munera), prior to the words of institution. This is a major part of her argument; the Eucharist is about consecrating and offering the ordinary. This is not to eliminate a true presence of Christ but to invite the Church to be drawn into the cosmic Christ who draws humanity and all creation to the Father. There are resonances here with the ARCIC phrase that the Church here ‘enter(s) into the movement of (Christ’s) self-offering’Footnote ³ – a particular insight of the Dominican J M R Tillard. An original part of her argument is her analysis of the performative ritual, the Offertory, in 8th-century Roman liturgy (Ordo Romanus Primus), paralleled in the Communion Rite.

Belcher then moves to the question of eucharistic hospitality. It is the ‘eschatological exception’: looking at the ‘end’ of the Eucharist rather than just its present significance. She references Myriam Wijlens (an ARCIC III consultant) on post-Vatican II legislation on sharing the Eucharist and criticizes clumsy attempts to close positive ecumenical practice. On the recognition of ministries, she argues, along with the Orthodox, that the recognition of ecclesiality is prior to the recognition of ministries. The former includes the latter and takes precedence over juridical technicalities of validity.

All in all, this is a very stimulating and helpful book for liturgists and ecumenists. It is about recognizing each other in the Eucharist: receptive ecumenism indeed.