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Now that the Liturgy of the Word has concluded, we begin the third major part of the Mass, the Liturgy of the Eucharist, which consists of the Offertory, the Prayer over the Offerings, the Preface, the Sanctus, the Eucharistic Prayer, and the Communion Rite.

During the Offertory, there are generally two things happening at once, that both seem very practical: the altar is prepared, and a collection is taken and brought forward with the gifts of bread and wine. On Sundays, this double action is usually accompanied by the Offertory Chant which the congregation is invited to join in singing as they are seated once again. As with the entrance antiphon, the Church actually provides a specific text, known as the offertory antiphon, for every day of the liturgical year. These are less familiar to most of us than the entrance and communion antiphons, because they are not printed in the missal or most missalettes, and so in most churches another hymn is sung in their place, or instrumental music is played, or silence is observed.

Unsurprisingly, these actions also have important symbolic meanings that help us understand better and participate more fully in the Liturgy of the Eucharist. It is, of course, a practical necessity that certain things are brought to the altar that will be needed for the Liturgy of the Eucharist: the Roman Missal, which contains the texts of the prayers to be prayed; the corporal, or cloth that the vessels of bread and wine will be placed upon when they are brought to the altar; the vessels of bread and wine that, for practical reasons, are brought directly from the credence table in the sanctuary rather than brought up in the Offertory Procession. In the gospels, we read about how Jesus sent His apostles ahead of Him to make preparations for the Passover meal that would be His Last Supper. His apostles no doubt knew that this would be no ordinary Passover (the events that we commemorate on Palm Sunday had already occurred by that time), even if they did not know exactly what Jesus was going to do. We can imagine the care they took to make the preparations, and the anticipation and wonder with which they made the very practical arrangements to have all that was necessary to celebrate the Passover meal. During this part of the Mass, we can unite ourselves spiritually to the disciples as they made preparations for the Last Supper, anticipating and marveling at the magnitude of what we have come to celebrate. This is a moment for us to refocus and to prepare ourselves, and to bring what we have heard in the Liturgy of the Word into our prayer during the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

At the same time, on Sundays, the collection is usually taken up and then brought forward with bread and wine in the Offertory Procession. The collection is not only a practical means of providing an opportunity for people exercise active stewardship and give of their treasure, but the fact that it is commonly presented together with the bread and wine to be offered also has a deeper meaning, too. Think about what money is: the bits of paper and metal that we use for currency have almost no value in and of themselves – rather, they have symbolic or representative value. Money represents our time and our labor. Giving of our treasure this way is symbolic of giving our time and our talent, and symbolic of the gift of our own lives and selves that we also ought to be presenting with the bread and wine.

Of course, we use bread and wine for the celebration of the Mass today because Christ Himself chose bread and wine when He instituted the Eucharist, and what Christ established as the basic elements of the Sacrament, the Church does not have the authority to change. Christ’s own offering of bread and wine was foreshadowed already in the Old Testament by Melchizedek, King of Salem, and “a priest of God Most High,” who offered bread and wine (cf. Genesis 14 and Hebrews 7). The bread and wine also have a symbolic meaning. Neither bread nor wine occurs in nature. They are both “fruit of the earth [or vine] and work of human hands,” as the priest prays in the offertory prayers. They are created goods that we receive from God, transform by adding to them our humanity, and then offer back to God as a symbol of the offering we make of our own selves. And in our celebration of the Eucharist, God receives these human gifts of bread and wine, He transforms them into the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ, and then offers Himself to us through them.

Members of the assembly bring these gifts of bread and wine and the collection forward to the altar, where they give them to the priest, who places them on the altar. In this seemingly simple action, the relationship between the baptismal priesthood and the ministerial priesthood is beautifully demonstrated. It is in virtue of our baptism that every Christian is able to make an efficacious offering of himself or herself, a spiritual sacrifice, to God. And it is in virtue of his ordination that the priest is placed at the service of the community in order to sacramentally unite their offering of themselves to the offering that Christ made of Himself on the cross.

This week we have examined some of the actions of the Offertory, and next time we will look at a few of the prayers that accompany these actions.