[O God, the Eternal Father]: As in any other public prayer, the proper address is to God the Father. In keeping with the post-visit understanding of the distinction between the Father and Christ, there is an address to the Father, and the statement of authority through Jesus Christ.
[we ask thee]: The presentation of the sacrament is essentially a petition. There are two elements of the petition. The first concerns the physical symbols, and the second has to do with those who participate in the sacrament.
[in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ]: The authority of the petition comes through Jesus Christ. All of our ability to approach God comes through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, without which we could not be cleansed of sin, and therefore could never approach God, even in the distant presence of prayer. In this formula, the Father designation of God is clearly separated from the Son designation of Christ. Where earlier in the Book of Mormon we had Jesus as Father, after the appearance of the Savior we have him only as the son (with a single exception).
[to bless and sanctify this bread]: The first action of the sacramental petition is to alter the symbol. This is not the physical change of the bread into the body of Christ. That remains a symbol. It is, however, the sacralization of the bread. This is no longer lunch, it is sacred substance that has meaning above and beyond the physical need for food. The physical substance remains the same, but the meaning has changed.
[to the souls of all those who partake of it]: The transformation of meaning also effects the effect of eating. Where eating food is for the benefit of the body, eating the sacramental bread is for the benefit of the soul. We eat not for physical nourishment, but spiritual nourishment.
[that they may eat in remembrance of the body of thy Son]: This language echoes the description of the sacramental description given by the Savior in 3 Nephi 18:7: “And this shall ye do in remembrance of my body, which I have shown unto you.”
There are two elements in the sacrament, each with its own prayer and liturgical event. The bread is the solid, and the wine/water the liquid. In the Old World, the Savior connected this aspect of the sacrament with the miracle of manna in the wilderness:
John 6:48-58
48 I am that bread of life.
49 Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead.
50 This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die.
51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.
52 The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat?
53 Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.
54 Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.
55 For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.
56 He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.
57 As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.
58 This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever.
The connection is not made explicitly in the Book of Mormon, but there is every reason to believe that the institution of the sacrament in the New World would be bolstered by the same symbolical meanings as it was in the Old World, since the references were shared by the two communities. The mental image we are to have when we partake of the sacrament is not of an earthly meal, but of nourishment from heaven that will provide us with heavenly life as opposed to the temporal life of ordinary food.
[and witness unto thee, O God, the Eternal Father, that they are willing to take upon them the name of thy Son]: This language was also foreshadowed in the 3 Nephi presentation of the sacrament: “And it shall be a testimony unto the Father that ye do always remember me” (3 Nephi 18:7).
The acceptance of the sacrament is not simply the acceptance of a gift. It is a covenantal relationship between the partaker and God. The covenant is that one will take upon themselves the “name of thy Son.” The taking of the name is serious business in the ancient world. This is more than simply calling ourselves Christians. The name implies all that the name represents. This is not a covenant of identification, but a covenant of action.
[and always remember him, and keep his commandments which he hath given them]: Here are the actions implied by the name-covenant. The remembrance is not simply memory, but the active understanding that we are to be governed by the attributes he embodies. The evidence of the proper remembrance is that the commandments are followed.
[that they may always have his Spirit to be with them. Amen.]: This final blessing is the same as that promised by the Savior when he introduced the sacrament in his visit to Bountiful: “And if ye do always remember me ye shall have my Spirit to be with you.” (3 Nephi 18:7.)
Covenants consist of a dual promise and blessing. Here is the blessing of the covenants made to remember and keep the commandments.
Historical: It should be noted that there is no essential relationship between the prayer-form of the Nephite sacramental blessings and the forms of the sacramental prayers as they are known from the Old World. The developing evidence of the sacramental prayers and performances indicates that there is probably no single traceable original New Testament form. Rather, there were probably multiple different forms in different locations (Paul F. Bradshaw. The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship. Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 118-9). It appears that the best explanation for the commonalities among the diversity was a trait of early Jewish prayer-forms:
Footnote: John W. Welch has argued that there is a relationship between covenant language that may be traced from King Benjamin’s speech to the sacramental covenant language used when the Savior appeared to the Nephites, and finally in the sacramental prayers listed in Moroni. The sacramental covenants and language from the appearance of the Savior and the prayers as recorded by Moroni are certainly related, but the evidence Welch gives of the relationship between Benjamin’s language the sacramental language becomes too tenuous to accept. For instance, he suggests that there is a relationship to cup-language, even though the context in Benjamin is the cup of the wrath of God, and in the sacramental prayers to the cup holding the sacramental wine. Such a correlation leans far too heavily on the superficial similarity of the cup, and ignores the cup of the wrath of God as a typical phrase unto itself. The argument that one transformed into the other is similar quite weak. (John W. Welch, ed., Reexploring the Book of Mormon [Salt Lake City and Provo: Deseret Book Co., Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1992], 287.)
Textual: This is the end of a chapter in the 1830 edition.