Abouna Robert Matheus: The spirituality of the forgotten anaphorasThe Church in India has been compelled under the pressure of a foreign power to abandon a part of her litur-gical treasure at the Synod of Diamper (1599). A part of this liturgical patrimony was the two Anaphoras ofthe sixth century. In 1957 Rome explicitly allowed the use of both anaphoras for the Syro Malabar Church. Itwas a time that not the smallest theological error was allowed to be published in a liturgical edition. Finally,after 62 years, these texts are available for liturgical use. The questions still remain: are they indeed profitablefor our spiritual life? Do they remind us of the important truths we find in God's revelation? Do they open atleast a little to us the Mystery of God: His Essence, His plan with us? Do they encourage us to lead a virtuallife? Do they help us to feel ourselves caring members of the Church and of the whole of mankind? I hope tobe able to give a partial answer in this article.Origin and StructureThe redactor of our second and third Eucharistic Prayers is Mar Aba (540-552)1. He travelled once to theWestern part of the Roman empire. There, he was impressed with the development of the Eucharistic theologyin the liturgy. He did not want to touch to the venerable Qudasha from his Church, so the Catholicos redactedtwo new Eucharistic Prayers. For AT2, he inspired himself from the writings of Theodore3, which couldexplain the attribution of this anaphora to this great theologian of the School of Antioch; for AN, he tooksome inspiration from the Byzantine liturgy, mainly from the Anaphora attributed to saint John Chrysostom.Before entering the proper theme of this article, we have to consider a preliminary matter, namely the struc-ture of the East Syrian 'Qudashe', Sanctifications; the Syriac word for Anaphoras.The first Qudasha, the one attributed to Mar Addai and Mar Mari, two among the 70 or 72 early disciples ofChrist; and the one attributed to Mar Theodore the Interp...