The Eucharistie Substance of George Herbert's "Prayer" (I) by William Bonnell In The Temple, George Herbert's sonnet "Prayer" (I) immediately precedes "The H. Communion." The full significance of this arrangement has not been realized, since "Prayer" (I) has generally been regarded as a sublime effusion of appositives dealing exclusively with the Christian act of prayer. Gene Edward Veith, Jr. has come closest to realizing the essential link between "Prayer" (I) and "The H. Communion ": he sees them as separate parts in a series, along with "Faith" and the three poems following "The H. Communion," which describe the various modes of communion with God.' Prayer is indeed such a mode, but Herbert's "Prayer" (I) is about the closest communion between God and hisfaithful on earth, the Holy Communion. Both "Prayer" (I) and "The H. Communion," each in its own mode, find their substance in the Eucharist.' A Eucharistie reading of "Prayer" (I) offers a solution to the problem Stanley Fish raises in The Living Temple: this sonnet separates "Repentance" and "Faith," the order of selfexamination , from the object of such preparation, "The H. Communion," yet the same sequence is not broken in the unit formed by "The Invitation" and "The Banquet."3 If "Prayer" (I) is as Eucharistie as I propose and so serves as a companion poem to "The H. Communion," then the movement from selfexamination to the Holy Communion remainsas uninterrupted here as it is at the end of "The Church." The two most obvious Eucharistie figures in "Prayer" (I) are "the Churches banquet" (1. 1 ), the poem's initial image, and "Exalted Manna" (1. 1O).4 The first is so familiar as a Eucharistie image that a few corroborative references will suffice: one of the Exhortations in the Prayer Book service for Holy Communion refers to the Eucharist as "this holy banquet" and "the 36William Bonnell banquet of most heavenly food,"5 and Herbert titles one of his unquestionably Eucharistie poems "The Banquet." "Exalted Manna" also makes use of a traditional Eucharistie image: Christ referred to himself as "the true bread from heaven" (John 6:32), which the Old Testament manna in the wilderness prefigured. But this figure is yoked to a modifier, "exalted," which as Mario Di Cesare has splendidly demonstrated reverberates with the theme of redemption as sounded in St. John's Gospel. The echoes of St. John's Gospel of the word "exalted" are most clearly heard in the Vulgate: "Et sicut Moyses exaltavit serpentem in deserto, ita exaltari oportet Filius hominis" (John 3:14) and "Et ego si exaltatus fuero a terra, omnia traham ad me ipsum" (John 12:32).* Thus, as Di Cesare notes, "in 'Exalted Manna' Herbert brilliantly concentrates and unites on the one hand Moses' serpent raised up in the desert and the manna, and on the other the bread of life and the Crucifixion."' This image thus focuses on human redemption in Christ and the grace flowing from him through the Sacrament. But preparation is necessary in order to receive the grace administered in the Sacrament. The first quatrain is concerned with this preparation, its images highlighting those points in the Communion service where the communicant opens up to the working of grace in the Sacrament. This theme of preparation emerges most strongly in "Gods breath in man returning to his birth" (I. 2). Di Cesare points out that behind "breath" is the "spiritus" of the Vulgate and the pneuma of the Greek New Testament, a word which includes spirit and grace.8 Here we have man returning to his birth, his origin in God. This line thus unites the creation and rebirth, for the tie between breath and "spiritus," Spirit, testifies that "rebirth through the Spirit leads to a higher kind of life." In the context of "spiritus" and pneuma, " 'birth' would presumably mean something like the origin of grace in God."8 This relationship between Spirit and grace finds full expression in the prayer that opens the Holy Communion service, the Collect for Purity, which entreats: Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid: cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy...
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Jan 1, 2013
Brian C Dennert 
Open Access