What do we mean when we speak of “the” West Syriac Eucharistic tradition? The West Syriac tradition preserves a remarkable diversity of Eucharistic prayers, hymnody, ritual practices, and theological expression. The West Syriac tradition contains roughly eighty anaphoras (or Eucharistic prayers), the range of which differs substantially in structure, theology, and even their institution narratives. Alongside these Eucharistic prayers stands an extraordinarily rich hymnographic tradition that has given successive generations of Syriac Christians distinctive ways of contemplating and celebrating the mysteries of Christ.

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This lecture will explore the West Syriac Eucharist as a tradition characterized not by liturgical uniformity but by creative continuity. It will consider the diversity of its anaphoras and hymnody and ask how such variety can coexist with a recognizable liturgical identity. Within this question of diversity and identity, particularly for communities that have existed in sustained contact with the dominant Latin West tradition, it is opportune to ask what does it mean for an Eastern Church to receive the universal Catholic faith without reducing its own liturgical inheritance to a variation of the Roman Rite?