"Epiclesis as Epi-Pen" - Sermon for Pentecost Sunday, 5-24-26

† How many epicleses do you count in today’s liturgy? Epiclesis is a Greek word that means to ask or to invoke. In Christian liturgy, it means to ask or to invoke the presence of or the work of the Holy Spirit in what we do. The principal liturgical epiclesis happens after the bread and wine are offered in the Eucharistic Prayer: “Sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of your Son.” At the epiclesis, I will place my hands over the bread and the wine and then make the Sign of the Cross over them, a manual, ritual action to signify visually the words of the invocation.

Right after this epiclesis comes another: “Sanctify us also, that we may faithfully receive this holy Sacrament.” During this epiclesis you are invited to make the Sign of the Cross upon yourselves – again, an action that matches our words.

I haven’t tallied all of this morning’s liturgy’s epicleses, but among the prayers and hymns I see that there are many times we ask for the Holy Spirit’s presence, or ask the Holy Spirit to do something, or see that the Holy Spirit has already acted on a prior epiclesis in some way. These epicleses are more evident today as we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost: the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples of Jesus gathered in an upper room.

The Day of Pentecost is a big epiclesis of the Holy Spirit, but it was not the first. At God’s behest, the Holy Spirit moved over the face of the primordial waters, beginning the work of creation. The Lord took some of the Holy Spirit that was upon Moses and gave it to the seventy elders, plus two more. On Easter Day, the risen Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit upon his disciples. And during the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, yours and mine, we asked that the candidates be filled with the Holy and life-giving Spirit. We invoked the Holy Spirit’s blessing upon the water in the font. And we prayed to the Father that the Holy Spirit’s life-long sustenance fills the newly-baptized.

The Sacrament of Holy Baptism makes us all priests, set apart to offer to God the sacrifice of our very selves, our souls and our substance. Baptism also consecrates us to invoke the Holy Spirit; to bid an epiclesis every time we ask of God something good in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is not only ordained priests who are allowed to do this. It is a power God entrusts to all the baptized and, I expect, even to the yet-to-be-baptized – to any who call upon the Holy Spirit in hope, to fill them with grace and heavenly aid.

On the Day of Pentecost, we recognize the power of the epiclesis in a particular way, remembering the one, singular event when the Holy Spirit, at the Father and the Son’s behest, filled those fortunate few with the promised power from on high. In this way, Pentecost Day is like our own baptism – the one, singular, unrepeatable event which sets our life in Christ in motion.

But just as Christ’s Church gives us the oft-repeatable Sacrament of Holy Eucharist for solace and strength and pardon and renewal, so too the Church bids us the epiclesis, as often as we need, to ask for any of the multiple gifts of the Holy Spirit that God desires to give us; the seven-fold gifts in particular for which we soon shall pray.

These gifts – the Eucharist and the multiform attributes of the Holy Spirit – are much-needed signs of God’s great love for us. Think of them as medicine, the Eucharist and the epiclesis. They are your EpiPen; your ready and repeatable defense against Satan’s mortal allergens of sin and despair that constrict the trachea of your soul.

We – individuals and collected in Christ’s Body, the Church – we live in difficult times. Each of us face challenges, whether the global existential threats that consume us, or the instabilities in our own households and hearts that cause us worry.  But then, we have always lived in challenging times. It has always been the Holy Eucharist and the gifts of the Holy Spirit received after our epicleses, these shots from the holy EpiPen, that continue to protect and sustain the Church, from its birth on Pentecost Day until the end of the age at the eschaton. †

Father Daniel S.J. Scheid, SCP

Pentecost Sunday A – May 24, 2026

All Saints’ Episcopal Church, San Francisco

“Epiclesis as EpiPen”