When it comes to getting my nieces presents for birthdays and Christmas, I will admit that I’m always just making my best guess at what they want. I can even ask my sister for ideas, but I’m never quite sure if the gifts I get are the ones that my nieces want, or what my sister and brother-in-law want for their kids. But this year, I bucked the trend! One of the gifts that I got my nieces was a mini-backpack (apparently those are very chic right now), one with a koala and koala baby and one with a kangaroo and a joey. My nieces were so thrilled and wore the backpacks all throughout the rest of our Christmas celebration.
On this Solemnity of the Epiphany, we focus on the gifts that Jesus received, as we celebrate the magi bringing the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. One of the great liturgical reforms after the Second Vatican Council was the restoration of an extended offertory procession, with the gifts being presented by the people. There was nothing wrong with how it happened before, with the servers presenting the gifts from the credence table, as the servers represented the entire assembly. But there is something nice with the gifts of bread and wine being presented by parishioners.
Those gifts of bread and wine are not only used because they are necessary for the Mass. But they are meant to also symbolize so much more. So often during the Mass, we get caught up with the external things that are being done. When people think of full, active, and conscious participation, which had been called for in the liturgy since the beginning of the twentieth century, people often immediately go to the external things, like bringing up the gifts, or maybe being a reader at Mass, or an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion, or an altar server. And none of those things are bad. But everyone is called to participate fully, actively, and consciously, even if a person does not have a “special role.” Externally, this happens through singing the hymns, joining in the Ordinary of the Mass (the parts that never change, like the Gloria, the Sanctus, etc.), and responding to the prayers. But even those externals are meant to be the outer reality of something that is happening interiorly.
Interior participation in the Mass is the first step in fully, actively, and consciously participating. Just because one is responding or doing something does not mean one’s heart is in it. We can all say the Creed, but how often is that profession of faith an external sign of our internal belief in who God is: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? We are all called not simply to go through the motions of the prayers, but to work at making sure our inner reality is being conformed to the outer reality of the rites of the Mass.
And that brings us back to the gifts at the offertory. Each time the bread and wine (and on Sundays and Holydays the collection) are brought forward, that external action is meant to be united to our internal action of bringing to God everything that has happened since the last time we came to Mass. We are invited and called to unite in a mystical way our lives with the bread and the wine, which will be offered to God the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit, united to the perfect offering of Christ on the Cross.
Allow me to give you an example of what that could look like from my own life, extended a bit beyond what happened since the last time I went to Mass (yesterday) into the entire Christmas season thus far. While the collection is happening, while we’re singing the offertory hymn, in my mind I would be recalling the different parts of my life, and offering them to God. I would give God the blessing as well as the challenge and sorrow of seeing both my grandfathers, both widowers, as their own health declines, and their minds lose some of their sharpness that I remember. I would give God my own frustration at not being able to see a best friend who was in town for a couple of weeks, my fear that maybe our friendship isn’t as strong as I thought it was, but also my gratitude at the small ways that he confirmed for me that our friendship is a priority for him as well. I would give God thanks for the generosity of you, my parish family, to me as an individual, and to the parish which helps us keep St. Pius X running, not only by financial donation but also the donation of time and talents. I could go on, but you get the idea. The offertory is our opportunity to give gifts to Jesus.
When it comes to giving gifts to Jesus, I think it’s a little easier than my nieces. Jesus is pleased with any gift that we give Him, as long as it’s our best gift that we can give him. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it does need to be honest and come from us. It may not be gold, frankincense, or myrrh, but it’s meant to be the best that we offer to God from what we have experience since the last time we came to Mass. Today, every Sunday, and every time we go to Mass, unite those experiences, good and bad, joyful and sorrowful, to the bread and wine presented from you to God the Father, transformed by the Holy Spirit into a gift of new life which God returns to you from His love: the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.
