A Tour through the Mass!

The Blessings over Bread and Wine

When the bread and wine have been brought to the altar, the priest says a prayer of blessing over each of them.  They are as follows:

Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation
for through your goodness, we have received this bread we offer you:
fruit of the earth and work of human hands,
it will become for us the bread of life.

Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation,
for through your goodness, we have received the wine we offer you:
fruit of the vine and work of human hands,
it will become our spiritual drink.

To each of these, the congregation replies:

Blessed be God forever.

These blessings are rich in meaning.  Notice that they recognise God as the one who gives us these foods which give us life.  These foods which are the means by which, so to speak, God does what is his job: the giving of life.  The prayers recognise our dependence on God for the life that we have.

But they also recognise that these gifts of God come to us through the fruitful earth and by the labour of human beings.  They recognise well that God acts in and through his creation; he does not put it aside as he gives life but acts by means of it.  He works through the fruitful earth and the fruitful vine. 

And the gifts we bring to the altar do not come about without the work of human hands; they are taken from the earth and become life-giving things by the action of human beings with them.

And as we take that bread and wine to the altar to be taken up into the Eucharist, so also the fruits of the earth are taken up into it and human labour is also taken up into it.

Notice that the bread and wine are also treated separately.  This point will be developed later in this series of articles.

By Fr Frank O’Loughlin