Understanding Our Faith

Taking 2: ‘Taking our lives in our hand

Last week in this column, we looked at the Presentation of the Bread and Wine. That is at our taking bread and wine to the altar or table of Jesus Christ.

Spiritually what are we doing?

Firstly, the people who take the bread and wine to the altar, do so as representatives of us all. They are performing one of the ministries which are part of the Mass. It is not an odd job or simply a practical addition to the Mass; nor are they just a different type of server. What they are doing is an integral part of the whole action of the Mass. What they are doing, they are doing for us all.

Given what we said last week about the meaning of bread and wine – and of bread in particular – these ministers are taking all of our lives in their hands and taking them to the altar of Christ to be joined with him. In what they do, they are putting into action the acknowledgment that all of us share that our lives and we ourselves come from God, and that this bread and wine are his life-giving gifts. We assert in this action that we have received our lives and that we believe that without God and his life-giving gifts, we would not exist.

And that acknowledgement is at the same time an entrusting of our present lives and our future into God’s hands. As the Eucharist continues, as we will see later on in this series, we will join with Christ in his entrusting himself to the Father.

This has repercussions for the way in which we do this part of the Mass. As said above, the people bringing up the gifts represent us all. They should go one to each side of the priest and one gives the bread into the priest’s hands who says the blessing over it and then the other gives the wine into the priest’s hands who then prays the Blessing over it. Each minister should stand right next to the priest and give the bread and the wine right into his hands. At the end of the blessing of the cup, they should return to their places in the Church. And then the Mass continues with the meaning of this bread and wine taken up into it……….

Fr Frank O’Loughlin