After we pray the Creed, which in our Greek-Catholic Church is prayed at every Liturgy, we enter into the most sacred part of our worship, that is the ANAPHORA. This is a Greek work which also entered into the Latin and English vocabularies. It is composed to two Greek root words: ana, which means back, and pherein, which means to bear. So this important section of the Liturgy is to carry us back, in a real sense, to the original event in history when Jesus promised His Apostles that He would be with them all days by declaring that the bread and wine that He offered them was Himself. The ANAPHORA, which is frequently also referred to as the Eucharistic Canon (i.e., the group of prayers which, the Church believes, makes Christ present in a real way in the consecrated gifts of bread and wine) of our Liturgy takes us out of present time and brings us into the presence of Christ. He again promises us that He will be with us if we REMEMBER Him, not only thinking about Him but with faith experiencing Him in the present moment.
The general form of the eucharistic canon is that of the Old Testamental Passover ritual, now fulfilled and perfected in the new and everlasting covenant of God with men in the person and work of Jesus Christ the Messiah, “our Paschal Lamb Who has been sacrificed” (1Cor 4.7; Heb 5–10). Thus the anaphora begins these words: Let us stand aright! Let us stand with fear! Let us attentive to offer the holy oblation in peace. The response to exhortation is: The offering of peace, the sacrifice of praise.
The holy oblation (i.e., something offered or presented to God) is Christ, the Son of God who has become the Son of Man in order to offer Himself to His Father for the life of the world. In His own person Jesus is the perfect peace offering which alone brings God’s reconciling mercy. This is undoubtedly the meaning of the expression an offering of peace which has been a source of confusion for people over the years in all liturgical languages.
In addition to being the perfect peace offering, Jesus is also the only adequate sacrifice of praise which men can offer to God. There is nothing with which men can worthily thank and praise the Creator. Thus God himself provides men with their own most perfect sacrifice of praise.