The Anaphora (The Offering)

The great eucharistic prayer, from "Let us lift up our hearts" to the Amen after the calling down of the Spirit. It is one prayer, not a series of them, and it holds the whole argument of the faith in order: thanksgiving to the Father, the angelic hymn, the account of creation and of the fall, the Incarnation, the supper, the cross, the tomb, the rising, the ascension and the second coming, all spoken in the past tense including the coming, because the Church remembers forward. Then the offering, then the epiclesis, then the remembrance of the saints and of the living and the dead. The Liturgy of St Basil keeps a far longer and older form of it than the one used on most Sundays.